Israel Active

The 8th annual Hack.Her.It competition, organized by the Schreiber LevTech Entrepreneurship Center at JCT, brought together 136 Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish women to create Tech solutions to challenges.

Tel Aviv University Professor Michael Belkin, at 83, received the "Visionary Award" from the American Glaucoma Research Foundation and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the MIXiii conference. He invented the Belkin Eagle (glaucoma treatment) and sold Belkin Vision for $330 million.

Technion graduate Dr Dean Leitersdorf is CEO of Israeli startup Decart (see previously). He is now helping advance AI in Israel by funding millions of shekels for a joint Technion–Decart Excellence Program. They will also establish a joint AI research center.

Israeli researchers have harvested 20kg of Byzantine-era grape varieties, two years after ancient 1,500-year-old grape seeds were planted at a restored vineyard at Avdat National Park in the Negev Desert. They aim to recreate an renowned ancient wine that was once massively exported throughout Europe.

Thanks to the Maimonides Fund’s Future Scientists Center and its partnership with Israel’s Education Ministry, Israeli students soared into the world top ten of the Olympiads in 2025 for Math and Chemistry. Israel came 6th in Math (4 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze) and 10th in Chemistry (2 gold, 2 silver).

Israel Innovation Authority is to select up to three new technological incubators for startups developing semiconductors, advanced robotics, and bio-convergence. Incubators will receive up to NIS 40 million over five years. Startups may receive up to NIS 21 million to progress from initial research.

Israel’s Tavily has developed a search layer for AI agents to navigate live web data through a single search layer. It says it has achieved a million monthly downloads and is already serving leading Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing tech firms, like Cohere and Groq.

Israel’s BioCatch (see previously) has just launched Scams360™. For the first time ever, financial institutions can stop their customers from deception by social engineering scammers using techniques such as romance, investment advice, email-compromise, and impersonation.

Israel’s Technion Institute has just launched the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center (see ) and the Esther and Herbert Hecht Sustainable Protein Research Center (see ). They will both promote education, research, and innovation in the food sector.

Nearly a third of the recent posts on social media to boycott Amazon and McDonald’s were generated by AI bots. Israel’s Cyabra found fake users coordinated a digital attack of negative posts across X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.