Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Pfizer, one of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies, recently signed a collaboration framework agreement to identify opportunities to collaborate and bring forward scientific breakthroughs at the interface between artificial intelligence and drug development.
The framework agreement was finalized during the visit of a delegation from Pfizer to the Technion. The delegation was led by Pfizer Chairman and CEO, Dr. Albert Bourla, and included Dr. Mikael Dolsten, Chief Scientific Officer and President, Worldwide Research, Development and Medical; Lidia Fonseca, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Technology Officer; and other senior executives.
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Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla with the Technion delegation led by Technion President Professor Uri Sivan.
(Nitzan Zohar, Technion spokesperson’s office)
Pfizer leaders met with the Technion President Professor Uri Sivan, members of the Technion’s senior management and Technion faculty members from the fields of life sciences and engineering.
Pfizer has made an enormous impact on global health in recent years through its development, with BioNTech, of vaccines that help protect against the Covid-19 virus. In addition to its internal drug discovery efforts, Pfizer regularly collaborates with the biotech industry and academia to identify research and technologies that could lead to scientific breakthroughs. The framework agreement with the Technion is consistent with the Institute’s ambition to advance technological and medical developments by identifying new technologies and various digital tools with potential industrial application.
“Human health is one of the grand challenges facing humanity in the 21st century,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “Like other global challenges, today’s scientific and technological breakthroughs require multidisciplinary research and close cooperation between academia and industry. We recently launched Tech.AI, Technion’s Artificial Intelligence Hub, to serve as the main Technion platform providing faculty & students from all Technion units with the best possible access to the forefront of AI research and application. Cooperation with industry, where the great challenges lie, is vital to an undertaking of this kind, and I am therefore looking forward to Pfizer’s potential contributions to this mission.”
