To celebrate the establishment of the Stein Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the official launch of the Israeli Computer Science Association, we are pleased to invite the Israeli computer science community to a festive national conference. The event will take place on Thursday, October 8, 2026, at the campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
A special focus of the conference will be: "Transformations in the Era of Artificial Intelligence." As part of this theme, we will host a keynote lecture by Prof. Amnon Shashua on: "On the Development of Machine Intelligence and its Impact on Scientists, Researchers, and Experts."
The conference is designed to serve as a broad gathering for faculty members from all academic institutions in Israel working in computer science and related fields. Alongside celebrating the newly established faculty in Beer-Sheva, the conference will mark an important milestone in the organization of Israel's scientific community within a shared national framework: the Israeli Computer Science Association.
The conference program will feature a joint plenary session for all participants, a festive keynote lecture, parallel sessions covering core research areas in computer and information sciences, and the official launch event of the Israeli Computer Science Association. The conference will also include a community lunch, providing an opportunity for researchers from various institutions across the country to connect, converse, and collaborate.
The Stein Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences was established in the summer of 2025 through the merger of the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering. The faculty's unique character lies in its academic structure: rather than being divided into traditional departments, faculty members belong to research institutes based on their areas of expertise. This structure reflects a modern view of computer science as a broad, diverse, and dynamic field that bridges theoretical foundations, systems, data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, software engineering, and additional application areas.
Further details regarding the conference program, exact location, keynote lecture, research sessions, and registration will be published in due course.
The conference committee includes Prof. Ariel Felner, Vice Dean; Ms. Mila Mogilevsky (Conference Coordinator and Industry Relations Coordinator); and the session chairs. For any inquiries, please contact Ariel Felner at felner@bgu.ac.il or Mila Mogilevsky at milamog@bgu.ac.il. You may also contact the session chairs directly using the details provided on the respective session pages below.
