Helmsley Trust Awards $18 Million for Israeli Research Tower
The New York City-based Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust has announced an $18 million grant to three Israeli medical research institutions to establish a research building in Haifa.
The grant to the University of Haifa, Rambam Health Care Campus, and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology will support construction of the Helmsley Health Discovery Tower, a research hub focused on novel approaches to the transformation of health care at the local, national, and global levels. The funding also will be used to foster collaboration among the three institutions and support strategic partnerships with the medical device, pharmaceutical, and information technology industries.
The twenty-story tower will support several Haifa-based initiatives and organizations, including Clinical Institutes of Rambam Health Care Campus in Ophthalmology and Gastroenterology and the School of Graduate Dentistry; the Clinical Research Institute at Rambam, which will house research clusters in the fields of brain and neuroscience, cancer, cardiology, diabetes, nephrology, human genomic medicine, medical devices, and minimally invasive surgical advances; the University of Haifa's Center for Translational Research in Health Sciences and Public Health, the Center for Evidence-Based Nursing Research, and the Research Center for Health Sciences and Life Sciences; the Innovation Partnership Center; and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which will have facilities for medical engineering activities as well as a new exhibition center.
"The Helmsley Health Discovery Tower is an important addition to the Rambam campus and the larger Haifa community," said Helmsley Charitable Trust trustee Sandor Frankel. "It will improve access to health care in the northern periphery of Israel, strengthen the region, and support greater collaboration among Rambam, [the] University of Haifa, and the Technion — three of Israel’s great institutions — as well as with the medical and biotech industry."