Batsheva de Rothschild Symposium “Mathematics of the Skeleton: Post-Genome analysis for bone biology”

The Batsheva de Rothschild Symposium “Mathematics of the Skeleton: Post-Genome analysis for bone biology” took place on Oct.12-13, 2021 at the Faculty.

Given the success of the previous (virtual) meeting held in December  2020, this hybrid symposium included live as well as online presentations, discussions and innovative approaches, opportunities, and challenges from experts in the field of musculoskeletal (MSK) disease, to be addressed by Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and deep/machine learning.  

This workshop was held to provide a blueprint for the MSK research with an aim of translating discoveries from human studies into new diagnostic tools and therapies for patients with MSK diseases. Mathematicians, statisticians, and Big Data experts were brought together with clinically oriented researchers and skeletal biologists to discuss foundations and applications of experimental models in the MSK health and disease.  

Distinguished guest speakers included Dr. Solomon Owumi, Ibadan, Nigeria; Prof. David Rowe (Connecticut, USA); Prof. Kent Søe (Odense, Denmark), Kathleen Curran (Dublin, Ireland), and Dr. HW Deng’s associates from the Tulane University, USA.

Israeli speakers included Prof. Yankel Gabet and Prof. Tamir Tuller, from Tel Aviv University; Gil Goobes and Prof. Aharon Gedanken of Bar-Ilan University; Prof. Avi Schroeder, Technion; Ari Elson, Weizmann Institute of Science, and Prof. Noam Levaot (Ben Gurion U.).

The audience was truly international, with a preponderance of the European, Israeli, UK, Turkey and Azerbaijan, equally represented by the trainees, advanced scientists, and students, overwhelmingly from the academia.  

This symposium ran in parallel with the European COST Action workshop “ Histomorphometry and MicroCT standard analyses in fish and rodents,” thus cross-fertilizing among the AI and bone communities.

It was organized by Dr. Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern and Prof. David Karasik and funded by the Batsheva de Rothschild Foundation and the Dangoor Institute for Personalized Medicine. Special thanks to Dr. Gideon Baum and Violetta Belotzerkovsky (from the Frenkel-Morgenstern lab) and Mr. Dan Hinenzon (Azrieli IT manager) for their assistance in organizing and smoothly running the workshop virtually online.