FAU-Israeli Partnerships Win Two International Grants

A 2019 Florida trade mission to Israel in which FAU President John Kelly and Vice President for Research Daniel Flynn took part, led to two joint research awards.

Erik Duboué, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, and Prof. Yoav Gothilf of Tel Aviv University have received a $320,000 grant from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation for their work on the neuronal and genetic basis of anxiety. Duboué, a molecular geneticist, has conducted extensive research on how the brain perceives, processes and responds to changes in the environment. He has studied fear behaviors in the zebrafish, whose small size and transparency permits monitoring activity of neurons in the brain in vivo. His work is shedding new light on how neural circuits are altered in fear/anxiety disorders.

“We know a good deal about how neurons in the brain control behavior, but much less is known about how experience shapes the function of these neurons,” Duboué said. “ This binational award will provide a unique opportunity for our group to work with the Gothilf lab, a world-renowned zebrafish laboratory in Israel, and we hope our joint expertise will allow us to understand better how stress impacts feeding.”

Additionally, the US-Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (BARD) is underwriting a workshop on the development of Florida-Israel collaboration in smart agriculture. Recipients of this award are Jason Hallstrom, Ph.D., professor and director of I-SENSE (Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering) and Anton Post, Ph.D., associate vice president for corporate and international relations, with co-PIs Tarin Paz-Kagan, Ph.D., and Victor Alchanatis, D.Sc., of Israel’s Volcani Center.

Post recently accepted a position to lead the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation as its executive director.