The Institute for Applied AI Research at Ben-Gurion University advances cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence, with a mission to translate scientific breakthroughs into deployable solutions that create measurable impact. At the Applied AI Institute, our goal is to leverage cutting-edge artificial intelligence to address real-world challenges and foster innovation across a range of fields; from healthcare to finance, we are committed to creating solutions that have a tangible impact on society. The institute explores core challenges in AI and Machine Learning and includes 20 scientists with diverse expertise spanning modern ML and deep learning (optimization, representation learning, self-supervision), natural language processing (multilingual NLP, information extraction, text generation, clinical/legal NLP), computer vision and multimodal learning, recommender systems and information retrieval, trustworthy and explainable AI (fairness, privacy, robustness, auditability), sequential decision-making and reinforcement learning, time-series modeling and forecasting, graph and causal learning, and data-centric AI/MLOps. We cultivate deep, long-term partnerships with industry through joint research programs and co-led projects, including shared testbeds and datasets, co-authored publications, and ongoing mentorship and internships that keep our collaborations scientifically rigorous and practically relevant.
Institute Chair
Prof. Bracha Shapira
Bracha Shapira is a full professor in the Faculty of Computer and Information Science at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). She previously served as department head for six years and is now Head of the Institute for Applied AI Research. Her research focuses on machine learning for recommender systems and related areas, including personalization, explainable AI, evaluation, and applications in cybersecurity and health informatics. She is a co-editor/author of the influential Recommender Systems Handbook and has published 250+ papers in leading journals and conferences. She leads a research group of students working on funded ML projects. Bracha Shapira has collaborated with many companies—Deutsche Telekom, Audi, KBC Group, Elbit, and the IDF—and has held hands-on industry roles, as well as consulting for multiple companies. She is also serving as the member of the Planning & Budgeting Committee (PBC) of Israel’s Council for Higher Education (CHE) since 2024.
