German-Israeli Center for Brain Research Dedicated in Recent Ceremony

A new center for collaborative brain research between German and Israeli scientists was dedicated in a ceremony held recently in Jerusalem.

The new center, called the Max Planck-Hebrew University Center for Sensory Processing of the Brain in Action, will be staffed by researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology (Martinsried, Germany) and the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel).

The new center, which is to be housed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will be funded at three million euros for its first five years. It is one of only nine such international partnerships between the Max Planck Society and a foreign research institution and is the only one in the field of brain research.

Researchers from the two institutions will be studying both individual nerve cells as well as circuits of cells and analyzing how sensory perceptions are processed in the brain. These topics mesh well with the Hebrew University's interdisciplinary approach that includes neuroscientists, physicists, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, and others who focus on several broad areas of inquiry, including genes and neurons, neural networks learning and plasticity, cognitive neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and sensory and motor functions.

Special emphasis will be placed on recruiting young Israeli and German investigators through fellowships and joint research programs.

“The center raises our long-standing partnership in the field of neuroscience to a new level of quality. It offers the prospect of an entirely new dimension in the study of the brain in particular,” said Dr. Peter Gruss, the president of the Max Planck Society.

President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Dr. Menahem Ben-Sasson, said, “Cooperation with Germany in science and research is among the most important and fruitful of our international contacts, and makes it possible for us to be at the forefront of science. We are happy to be one of the first universities in the world outside of Germany in which a joint research center is being established with the Max Planck Society, and look forward to further cooperation in the future.”

Related Links:
Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology
Hebrew University of Jerusalem