Israeli Professors Receive Prestigious European Research Grants

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded its prestigious Synergy Grant for 2026 to three international projects led by Israeli researchers. Two of these groundbreaking initiatives are spearheaded by professors from Tel Aviv University, and one by a researcher from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The ERC Synergy Grant is designed to support leading researchers in their fields across all disciplines, enabling them to pursue ambitious research goals and foster interdisciplinary breakthroughs.

One of the funded projects, "Dynamic Digital Twin for State Dependent Intervention in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)," is led by Professor Talma Hendler of Tel Aviv University. This project aims to revolutionize the understanding and treatment of PTSD by integrating neuroscience, psychiatry, artificial intelligence, and complex dynamic systems modeling. It seeks to view mental health not as static conditions but as dynamic systems, focusing on brain activity fluctuations and bodily responses to predict an individual's mental future and tailor treatments. The approximately 10 million Euro grant supports a collaboration between research groups in Israel, Germany, and Japan, involving data collection on stressor exposure and the development of a "digital brain twin" for simulating patient responses.

Another significant grant, worth approximately 10.7 million Euros, goes to Professor Avi Ashkenazi of Tel Aviv University for the project "The Hidden Entry: How Skin and Environment Shape Parkinson’s Disease." This research hypothesizes that Parkinson's disease may originate in the skin's nerve endings years before motor symptoms appear. The study will investigate how prolonged environmental exposure might damage sympathetic nervous system cells, which regulate heart rate and blood pressure. This international collaboration with researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark will utilize advanced stem cell technologies and laboratory-based neural system simulations to uncover early disease mechanisms, paving the way for earlier diagnosis and prevention strategies.

The third grant, totaling 10 million Euros, is awarded to Professor Keren Weinshall from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her international partners for the JUSTGOV project. This research will examine the role of judges as protectors of democracy in 48 high courts worldwide. Moving beyond the traditional focus on whether court rulings favor or oppose the government, the project will analyze judges as individuals operating within social, institutional, and political systems. The study aims to map how judges function as agents of democracy during periods of stability, under threats to democratic regimes, and in processes of institutional rehabilitation, a critical issue given current global challenges to democracies.