Variants, Boosters and Big Data

Researchers are uncovering new insights about COVID-19 seemingly every day — but what does that mean for us, our loved ones, and our communities as we enter the third year of this pandemic?

Join Associate Professor Yair Goldberg and Assistant Professor Dvir Aran, for this fascinating briefing on where things stand with the novel coronavirus, virus variants like Delta and Omicron, and the efficacy of booster shots. Panelists will also share updates from COVID-19 research they are currently conducting, and what it might mean for future detection, treatment, and prevention efforts.

Opening comments and moderation by Dr. Ruth Ratner, GP, Technion Australia’s President.

Yair Goldberg is an associate professor of statistics in the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion and the Vice Dean for Graduate Studies. His lab uses statistical and machine learning tools to address theoretical questions and real-world problems. Recent papers have focused on both the protection against COVID-19 provided by the Pfizer vaccine and its waning immunity in Israel. In the past two years, he has been part of a research team advising Israel’s Ministry of Health on COVID-19 policymaking. Prof. Goldberg earned his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Department of Biostatistics and was a statistical consultant for The Translational and Clinical Science Institute — both at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and then a faculty member at the University of Haifa, before joining the Technion faculty in 2018.

Dvir Aran is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Biology and the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion. His research field is computational biology, using data science and AI to advance biological and medical research. He develops computational tools and applies them to integrate and analyze big data from multiple sources, including genomic and epigenetic data and electronic medical records. His research aims to advance the understanding of the tumor microenvironment, as well as the immune system, and their relationship with potential treatments. Prof. Aran has gained international recognition for his contributions to the understanding of the tumor microenvironment and other diseases. Since the COVID-19 outbreak began, Prof. Aran has been conducting modeling and analyses of real-world publicly-available COVID-19 data to understand early indications of vaccine effectiveness and waning. He was one of the first to publish research on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in Israel.