In December 2017, Dr. Aviv Gibalil from Braude College came to the University of Innsbruck as AIANI-Fellow. Dr. Gibali is Senior Lecturer at the Mathematics Department at Braude College and Research Associate at the Center for Computational Mathematics and Scientific Computation at the University of Haifa. He got his PhD from the Technion in Israel. He was invited by Prof. Markus Haltmeier from Applied Mathematics. During his stay in Innsbruck, both researchers worked on joint projects and developed new ideas for future collaborations, such as a joint event in Innsbruck or in Karmiel, in the spirit of a Modelling Week or an Industrial Workshop. Plans for such joint endeavors are being made for the next year. Dr. Gibali also gave a guest lecture on “Speedup of lexicographic Optimization by Superiorization and its Applications to Cancer Radiotherapy treatment” on December 7, 2017. Dr. Gibali invited Prof. Haltmeier to Braude College for the next step in the joint collaboration. His stay was made possible by a grant from the City of Innsbruck.

Dr. Rafal Zalas from the Technion in Israel came to the University of Innsbruck as “AIANI-Fellow” in November/December 2017 to work on joint research projects with Dipl. Ing. Dr. Christian Bargetz from the Department of Mathematics. The two scientists have known each other from previous stays of Dipl. Ing. Dr. Bargetz at the Technion and have started to work together on a joint research project with other collegues. Dr. Zalas studied Mathematics at the University of Zielona Gora in Poland and came as post-doctoral fellow to the Department of Mathematics at the Technion in Israel.

On December 5, 2017, Dr. Zalas gave a public guest lecture on “Projection methods in Feasibility” at the Department of Mathematics in Innsbruck. Students and colleagues enjoyed this interesting presentation. The stay of Dr. Zalas was supported by the City of Innsbruck.

In cooperation with the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) and several departments at the University of Innsbruck, AIANI organizes an interdisciplinary workshop/hackathon for students, entitled “Enabling Music”. The workshop will take place at HIT in Israel in March 2018 and aims at developing interactive music instruments for children with motor impairments. As preparation for the workshop, an innovative course project was launched at the University of Innsbruck for the winter semester 2017/2018. The project is supervised by Prof. Alexander Ostermann, head of the Research Area Scientific Computing. Faculty from different departments take part in the teaching of the course and the preparation of the workshop. These departments include Applied Mathematics, Computer Science and Psychology. Students will work on the topic of “Enabling Music” from different perspectives, learn about Music Therapy, Machine Learning, Recommendation Systems, Mathematical Models of Music, Sound Engineering etc.

They will then be matched with Israeli students from HIT to form joint teams of four people. The course project is supported by the Vice Rector for Student Affairs and Teaching. The workshop in Israel is made possible by a grant from the "1669 Wissenschafft Gesellschaft - Förderkreis der Universität Innsbruck". It will be the first such interdisciplinary project carried out between the University of Innsbruck and a partner institution from Israel. AIANI is supporting and coordinating both, the course and the workshop.