Kfir Shtokhamer, from Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem, worked under the mentorship of Associate Professor Martin Pilát at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University. During his internship, Kfir focused on the issue of adversarial patterns in machine learning, specifically within image recognition models. “You can imagine a picture of a cat to which we add specially created noise, i.e. a hostile pattern. To the human eye, the image remains the same, but the model might interpret it as something entirely different, such as a bus," explains Martin Pilát.
The goal of Kfir's internship was to enhance the resilience of these models against adversarial patterns. He succeeded in improving this resistance by a few percentage points, which suggests that his research could further advance the field of machine learning.
Nitay Yehezkely, also from Hadassah Academic College, dedicated his internship to deciphering Hebrew inscriptions on Jewish tombstones in Prague and the surrounding areas using artificial intelligence. "Czech Jewish cemeteries are an important database of historical data about the Jewish population. However, over time, some inscriptions have become unreadable to the human eye," explains Nitay. "The goal of my project was to facilitate research on Jewish monuments and contribute to the preservation of Jewish cultural heritage by enabling the interpretation of illegible inscriptions."
The Neuron & IOCB Tech Internships in Israel program was launched three years ago by Prof. Martin Fusek from IOCB Tech, and for the past two years, it has been funded by our foundation. "Our goal is to allow students from Czech universities to experience the Israeli academic environment, which actively supports the transfer of scientific knowledge and technology into practice. This successful Israeli approach can be a great inspiration for us, making the support of closer contacts and the exchange of experience so important," says Dr. Barbara Eignerová, chairwoman of the foundation's board.
The program is organized by the Neuron Foundation. However, due to the ongoing conflict and security situation in Israel, it underwent a significant change this year: "We changed the internship program and for the first time Israeli students got to know the Czech environment and could enrich students in Czechia," says Monika Vondráková, director and co-founder of the Neuron Foundation.
About the Neuron Foundation
The Neuron Foundation supports the Czech scientific environment, honors excellent scientists with Neuron Awards, searches for new scientific talents, implements student internships at prestigious foreign universities and finances field research within the Expedic Neuron. All funds for the operation of the Neuron Foundation come from private patrons and important partners. Thanks to them, Neuron has spent 140 million crowns on the support and popularization of Czech science, awarded 120 Neuron Prizes and supported 11 scientific expeditions.
Captions:
Photo 1: Kfir Shtokhamer from Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem with his mentor at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Martin Pilát.
Photo 2: Kfir Shtokhamer and Nitay Yehezkely (holding certificates) from Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem.