Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's Degree Program in Brain and Data Science

BIU partners with five European universities to bring together brilliant minds from across the world

Bar-Ilan University welcomes 16 students from around the world who are currently studying in the NeuroData – Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's Degree Program in Brain and Data Science. The new students hail from Russia, the United States, the Philippines, Poland, Nigeria, China, Mexico, Spain, Nepal and Ethiopia.   

Bar-Ilan University's Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center was awarded a €3.6 million Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s (EMJM) grant for the groundbreaking Brain and Data Science graduate program, the first time an Israeli university won this prestigious grant.

The Gonda Center, under the direction of Prof. Korngreen, led a consortium of five top-ranked European universities that submitted a funding proposal to the EU to establish this unique program to attract graduate students from around the world.

The first year of the Erasmus program is spent at Bar-Ilan University. Students from multidisciplinary backgrounds receive essential training in neuroscience and data science tailored to their undergraduate studies and designed to bring all students to the same level in both subjects. During this year, students are integrated into the vibrant teaching and research environment of Bar-Ilan's Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center.

This is followed by two compulsory weeks at the University of Zagreb for a summer school program tailor-made for the NeuroData degree. The aim of the summer school is to expose students to advanced neuroscience and data science topics, enable them to present their progress and finalize a thesis mentor, meet professors and mentors from the partner universities, and to socialize with one another.

Students spend the second year at one of the four partner institutions studying their sub-specialty-of-choice and working on a research thesis. Partner institutions are the University of Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Técnico (Technical Institute), Portugal; University of Padua, Italy; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Free University of Amsterdam), Netherlands; University of Jyväskylä, Finland; and University of Zagreb, Croatia.