Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan has welcomed a new cohort of 24 international graduate students from 14 countries to commence their studies in neuroscience as part of the NeuroData Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in Brain and Data Science, the school said on Thursday.
The students—from Belgium, Brazil, Costa Rica, Estonia, Ethiopia, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States—arrived in Israel this week for the start of the academic year and recently toured Tel Aviv together.
The neuroscience program, launched in 2022, was made possible through a $4.18 million Erasmus+ grant, the first ever awarded to an Israeli university for this category.
Erasmus+ is a European Union program that helps organize student and doctoral candidate exchanges for countries that are enrolled in the program.
According to Bar-Ilan, the Erasmus Mundus initiative brings together the university and five top European institutions in training a new generation of researchers at the intersection of neuroscience and data science.
“Each year, this program attracts some of the brightest minds from around the world to study in Israel,” said Professor Moshe Lewenstein, deputy president of Bar-Ilan University.
“Their arrival not only strengthens our academic community but underscores Israel’s growing role as a global hub for brain and data science research,” he said.
The Erasmus Mundus consortium includes the University of Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal), University of Padua (Italy), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands), University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and University of Zagreb (Croatia).