Ophthalmology Innovation Challenge & Pilot Program

Prof. Rita Ehrlich

Prof. Ehrlich is professor of ophthalmology at the faculty of medicine at Tel Aviv university and is head of ophthalmology at the faculty of medicine at Tel Aviv university. She is the director of the retina service at Rabin Medical center.

She is a member of the Israeli Ophthalmological Society committee and head of ophthalmology of IMA’s Online School for the Medical Professions. She performed a 2 year clinical research fellowship on retinal blood flow at Indiana university and a 2 year of vitreoretinal fellowship at Auckland, New Zealand. She leads the pediatric retina clinic at Schneider children’s medical center.

Her research focuses on clinical research both in the field of medical as well as surgical retina. She is PI in multi center studies performed at Rabin medical center in the retina field.

Hagit Hendel 

Hagit is the Chief Innovation Officer of Rabin Medical Center, one of Israel’s largest hospitals. She is a member of the Rabin Medical Center Management team, responsible for digital transformation, innovation, planning and execution of IT projects. She is the head of project MANOR, overseeing the transition of all Clalit Health hospitals to the latest SAP ISH modules. Led the development of a new innovative real-time departmental patients dash-board called ELMA – system is fully implemented and operational; won multiple awards and accolades. She is actively leading collaboration around groundbreaking medical innovation between Rabin Medical Center and companies like Intuitive Surgery, Intel, IBM, Zebra, AIDOC and several others, and led Rabin Medical Center and Microsoft joint team to winning first place at the Microsoft Israel Hackathon – the team demonstrated innovative approaches for preventing elderly people from falling and consequent injuries.

Prof. Anat Loewenstein

Prof. Loewenstein is a professor of Ophthalmology, Chairman of the Division of Ophthalmology at the Tel Aviv Medical Center, Sidney Fox Chair of Ophthalmology at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, President of the Israeli Ophthalmological Society and the President Elect of the Euretina board. Her main field of interest is the investigation of drug administration and toxicity to the retina, early detection of macular degeneration and home monitoring of retinal disease. She has been leading several cutting edge technologies implemented in large scale clinical trials and in clinical setting

Prof. Loewenstein published more than 450 papers in peer reviewed journals, and contributed multiple chapters to ophthalmology textbooks. She serves as the Editor in Chief of the Journal Case Reports in Ophthalmology, is an associate editor of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science Journal, European Journal of Ophthalmology and of Ophthalmologica.

Prof. Itay Chowers

Professor Chowers serves as the Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at the Hadassah Medical Center and holds the Jonas Friedenwald Chair in Ophthalmological Research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a retina specialist, dedicated clinician-researcher, and leads a research laboratory and an Ophthalmic clinical research center. Professor Chowers has earned a place as a member of the Israeli National Academy for Science in Medicine and the 8400 Health Network. He has also held leadership roles in professional organizations, including past chairmanship of the Israeli Society for Vision and Eye Research (ISVER) and the Israeli Retina Society. Additionally, he serves as an integral member of the Executive Committee of the International AMD Genomic Consortium (IAMDGC), contributes to the research committee of the Macula Society, and participates in the review board for the Bright Focus AMD program. Professor Chowers’ primary research focus revolves around retinal diseases, with a particular emphasis on age-related macular degeneration (AMD). His investigations delve into the underlying mechanisms of AMD, aiming to uncover innovative biomarkers and therapeutic approaches for both the atrophic and neovascular forms of the condition. To achieve these goals, he employs a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses genetics, cell biology, and cutting-edge computational methodologies, including artificial intelligence-based analysis of omics data, imaging, and clinical information. His research endeavors are supported by numerous competitive grants and fruitful collaborations with industry. Professor Chowers co-authored over 140 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Furthermore, his work has led to the establishment of three start-up companies, all stemming from the insights gained through his research pursuits.

Prof. Sascha Fauser 

 Sascha is the  Vice President and Global Head of Ophthalmology, pRED, Roche. He joined Roche in 2016 as the Head of the pRED Ophthalmology group. Prior to joining Roche, Sascha worked as a Professor of Ophthalmology (vitreoretinal surgery) at the University Hospital of Cologne, Germany. As a physician-scientist with more than 20 years of experience in clinical ophthalmology and more than 25 years in basic retinal research, he has extensive knowledge of clinical and research leadership with the acquisition of major grants. Sascha earned his doctorate at the University of Tübingen and completed an ophthalmology residency, as well as fellowships in surgical and medical retina, at the University Hospital of Cologne, Germany.

 Neta Gruber Perry

Neta Gruber Perry is Head of Health-tech & Europe Desk Director at the International Collaboration Division of the Israel Innovation Authority, where she creates and leads collaboration opportunities for Israeli startups with a variety of international partners, with a special focus on Health-tech and Climate-tech. Neta has diverse experience in the fields of innovation, research, business development and social entrepreneurship, spanning private, public and non-profit sectors. She holds a BA (Honors) in Amirim Interdisciplinary Excellence Program and International Relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford and is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Program.

Dr. Irit Yaniv

Dr. Yaniv is Co-founder and CEO, Almeda ventures, the first HealthTech focused public R&D partnership.
As a senior manager, skilled physician, and experienced board member, she possesses a highly developed combination of leadership, decision making and business skills. She served as an Executive Director and Chairperson of Accelmed’s Innovation Hub portfolio companies. She is a co-founder of We@healthtech, a program aiming to propel junior women managers to executive positions in the health tech sector by mentoring them and putting them through an eight-month program of lectures and networking events.

Prof. Ran Gilad-Bachrach

Professor of Bio-Medical Engineering, Head of Digital Sciences for Hi-Tech,Tel-Aviv University

Prof. Ran Gilad-Bachrach leads the MLwell lab, in the Bio-Medical Engineering Department at Tel-Aviv University. The lab studies machine learning and its applications for health and wellbeing. Ran is the head of the Digital Sciences for Hi-Tech program at Tel-Aviv University, a member of the steering committee of Clinical Bioinformatics Program at the Safra Center, and a member of Sagol Brain Research Center.  Ran earned his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ran was a researcher at Intel Research, Bing, and Microsoft Research. In 2019 Ran Joined Tel-Aviv University as an Associate Professor. Ran published over 40 papers in the leading venues of machine learning and AI. Among his contributions are machine-learning algorithms that preserve privacy, algorithms for parallel training, algorithms for learning on graphs and sets, methods for using AI to help people cope with mental stress, and many additional contributions.