KI Research Institute

KI Research Institute is a non-profit organization at the forefront
of computational health, engaging across the entire research
continuum, from data analysis to practical deployment.

Our Mission

As a non-profit organization, we are committed to transforming health data into viable and effective solutions that improve global health
outcomes. By fostering open collaborations and prioritizing the practical application of our research, we aim to create impactful health
solutions that enhance life quality and longevity, setting new standards in health research for the betterment of public health.

The Research Continuum

The research continuum at KI Institute bridges computational and translational research, guiding projects from
lab-based data collection through to real-life implementation. This process ensures that every phase, from initial
data analysis and decision-making to development and rigorous evaluation, is designed to result in practical,
deployable health solutions that are both effective and sustainable.

Our Pillars

Multidisciplinary
Expertise

Outcome-Driven
Approach

Non-Profit
Ethos

Pursuit of
Implementation

The Team

Pini Akiva, PhD

Pini heads the KI Research Institute where he is responsible for crafting, building, and translating the KI vision into reality.
Previously, he worked for about two decades in the biotech industry, mainly in R&D roles.
Prior to joining KI, Pini was a senior investigator and then chief data officer at Medial Research, a private company that applies machine learning methodologies on clinical data to produce insights and solutions for healthcare organizations. Pini has been part of the company since its establishment, and he took part in numerous research projects, including developing an innovative tool for early detection of colorectal cancer that has now been implemented in healthcare organizations around the world.
Prior to Medial, Pini was a member of the founding group of the Cancer Research Center Bioinformatics Unit at Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital. As a researcher at Compugen, he investigated how genetic variability influences drug response (pharmacogenomics). In addition, he characterized a novel phenomenon where neighboring human genes generate fused transcripts (intergenic-splicing), and worked on identifying new cancer biomarkers.
Pini holds a PhD in human genetics from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, an MSc in bioinformatics/biotechnology from Bar-Ilan University, and a BSc in molecular cellular and medical biology/computer science, also from Bar-Ilan.

Nir Kalkstein

Founder, Senior Researcher

Nir is a researcher and an algorithm developer, focusing on COVID-19 projects and developing tools to measure the effects of lifestyle habits on our health. He founded KI in 2019 as an independent, self-funded, non-profit organization. KI focuses on big data academic research in the field of computational health, mainly analyzing electronic health record (EHR) data.
Before founding KI Research Institute, Nir worked as a researcher and as an algorithm developer in diverse research industries and founded several companies. He founded the algo-trading company Final in 2001. Eight years later, he founded Medial Research, which performed medical research on large databases, leading to personalized medicine. In 2013, he founded Medial EarlySign where he developed machine learning-based decision support tools, exposing a hidden layer of information in standard medical data. These new insights enable personal and outcome-based interpretation of medical data, yielding individualized predictions and treatment options as well as early prediction of life-threatening conditions.
Nir received his BSc in electrical engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Keren Segev

Keren is KI’s office manager where she is responsible for all administrative activities and managing day-to-day operation.
Previously, she held several senior positions in logistics, project management, and process driving.
Keren received her BA in economics and business administration from the Open University in Israel.

Guy Amit, PhD

Senior Researcher

Guy is a computer scientist specializing in machine learning and deep learning techniques for biomedical data analysis (medical images, physiological signals, electronic health records). His research at KI focuses on data-driven questions in the domains of pregnancy, maternity, childbirth, and early childhood.
Previously, he worked for 25 years in R&D of innovative algorithms, software, systems, and technologies for various applications. Before joining KI, Guy was a research staff member at IBM’s Haifa Research Lab, where he led an AI research project in the breast imaging domain. Prior to that, he was a research associate in the Department of Radiation and Imaging Physics at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto. He was also the chief technologist of Biological Signal Processing, an Israeli start-up that developed innovative signal processing technologies for cardiovascular diagnostics.
Guy holds a PhD and MSc (cum laude) in computer science from Tel Aviv University and a BSc (cum laude) in computer science from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology.

Chen Yanover, PhD

Senior Researcher

Chen applies causal inference and machine learning tools to healthcare data. He is also a member of the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) community, making use of and contributing to its developed methodologies.
Previously, Chen was a research staff member in the Health Informatics Department at IBM’s Haifa Research Lab. There, his work focused on applying machine learning algorithms to various types of healthcare data, studying the dynamics of microbial communities, and estimating the efficacy of medications from observational healthcare data using causal inference tools.
As a postdoctoral research associate at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, Chen studied macromolecular interactions at the atomic level; and, in the Department of Computer Science at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel, he devised methods to account for entity non-uniform representation in structural repositories. Much earlier, he was an algorithm developer and software engineer at two small biomed companies.
Chen received a PhD in computer science and structural biology, an MSc (cum laude) in computer science, and a BSc (cum laude) in computer science and life science, all from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Maytal Bivas-Benita, PhD

Senior Researcher

Maytal is a research scientist applying biological, pharmaceutical, and clinical perspectives to projects’ initiation, design and analysis. At KI she leads the institute’s impact strategy and translational efforts.
Previously, Maytal was a research scientist at several academic institutions and digital health start-ups. Before joining KI, Maytal was a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of DataClue, where she built a clinical data exchange platform for academic investigators and pharmaceutical companies to leverage underutilized clinical trials data and deliver new biological insights. She was the director of clinical research informatics at Belong.life, where she led research projects and derived insights from real-world data, including patient-generated data in oncology. Maytal also founded Trialuminate, a platform designed to match oncology patients with personalized experimental treatments. In her academic career she designed delivery systems for mucosal DNA and protein vaccine delivery against infectious diseases (e.g. HIV, TB and Flu) and performed pre-clinical immunological research and development.
Maytal completed her postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard Medical School in Boston and later worked at Harvard as a staff scientist. She holds a PhD (cum laude) in bio-pharmaceutical sciences from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Maytal obtained her BSc Pharm from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Irena Girshovitz, MSc

As a researcher at KI research institute, Irena is involved primarily in projects related to complications in pregnancy and childbirth; however, she also works on knowledge management.
Previously, Irena was a clinical researcher on an epileptic seizure prediction project at Medial Research, a private company that applies machine learning methodologies on clinical data. Before Medial, she was a system engineer at Opticul Diagnostics, an in-vitro diagnostics device company targeting easy and low-cost microorganism identification based on absorption spectroscopy (without the use of reagents).
Irena received her MSc and BSc in biomedical engineering from the Faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University.

Yonatan Bilu, PhD

Senior Researcher

Yonatan is using Natural Language Processing to augment and complement the analysis of structured medical records at KI.
Previously, Yonatan was a research staff member in Project Debater at IBM’s Haifa Research Lab. The project developed a system that can coherently and effectively debate with humans, and culminated in an open event in 2019, with the system honorably losing to a former debating champion. Prior to working at IBM, Yonatan was the chief scientist at sight diagnostics, where he led the development of a low-cost machine the can quickly and reliably detect the malaria parasite in blood samples. Before that, he was a team leader and project manager at Mobileye, where he worked on machine vision solutions in the automotive setting. As a postdoctoral researcher in the Barkai Lab in the Weizmann Institute he studied the evolution of transcription and metabolic regulation. He was part of the FP6 UniNet effort which aimed to develop a holistic inter-disciplinary view of network analysis and applications.
Yonatan holds a PhD (magna cum laude) in computer science and a BSc (cum laude) in computer science and mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Barak Mizrahi, MSc

Senior Researcher

Barak is a researcher in computational health specializing in predictive modeling, machine learning, causal inference, and data analysis. At KI, he is working on bringing new insights from big data to the fields of Alzheimer’s, drug repurposing, IBD, influenza, and COVID-19.
Previously, Barak worked for a decade as an algorithm developer in R&D at Medial EarlySign where he was part of the group that successfully developed the ColonFlag algorithm (to identify pre-symptomatic patients that are high risk for colon cancer). The algorithm was successfully implemented at several medical centers worldwide. He also developed predictive models for heart disease, diabetes, and renal failure. Prior to his work at Medial, Barak specialized in building data warehouses and developing predictive models in the telecommunications, banking, insurance, and Internet industries.
Barak received his MSc in physics from Tel Aviv University and his BSc (cum laude) in information systems engineering from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Tal El-Hay, PhD

Senior Researcher

Tal develops and applies methods for building robust data driven models adapted to the high variety of conditions in healthcare settings.
Before joining KI, Tal was a research staff member at IBM’s Haifa Research Lab where he developed machine learning applications for healthcare using different clinical data sources and led several applied studies in collaboration with industry and academia. Prior to that, Tal headed the speech technologies team in Advanced Recognition Technologies (ART inc.), a startup that developed efficient speech recognition engines for mobile devices.
Tal holds a PhD and MSc in computer science and a BSc (cum laude) in computer science and mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Inbal Goldshtein, PhD

Senior Researcher

Inbal applies tools of data engineering, epidemiology and biostatistics to clinical data.
Before joining KI, Inbal worked for 12 years as a senior investigator in Maccabi healthcare services research and innovation institute. She authored and co-authored 40 peer-reviewed articles focused mainly on real world database studies on epidemiology of chronic diseases, as well as effectiveness and safety of chronic medications and vaccines. She led the establishment of a large osteoporosis registry, serving as basis for various pharmacoepidemiology research and outcomes studies, as well as development of fully-operational decision support tools for primary physicians. Inbal teaches courses in advanced biostatistics as well as scientific writing in the School of Public Health, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University.
Inbal’s academic training includes a PhD in management of healthcare systems from Tel Aviv University, an MSc in biostatistics from Tel Aviv University, and a BSc in Industrial Engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Naama Parush
Shear Yashuv, PhD

Senior Researcher

Naama is a senior researcher studying healthcare related issues at KI institute.
Before joining KI, Naama was a principal data scientist at Vianai Systems and spent a decade as a research staff member in the Health Informatics Department at IBM’s Haifa Research Lab. In her work she led and contributed to machine learning, causal inference, deep learning and data analytics projects. Her work focused on multiple domains including various healthcare fields and other industries. She conducted extensive research, executed experiments, and developed data driven solutions.
Naama holds a PhD in Neural Computation where she developed machine learning models and tools to study the Basal Ganglia and Parkinson’s disease, and a BSc in physics and computer science both from the Hebrew University.

Dalit Landesman-Milo, PhD

Project Manager

Dalit is a project manager, scientist, and impact creator at KI. She is dedicated to managing various research projects, including those focused on women’s healthcare, lifestyle, and children's development.
Dalit has over a decade of experience in the specialized field of lipid nanoparticle delivery systems for RNA therapeutics. Previously, she served as Chief Operating Officer at NeoVac Ltd in Oxford, UK, where she successfully brought an mRNA vaccine from the bench to the clinic. She also initiated and directed Tel Aviv University’s SPARK translational medicine program and managed the Precision Nanomedicine Laboratory there, working at the intersection of materials science, chemistry, molecular biology, and immunology. Dalit co-founded Biopmedical Ltd, which developed advanced medical device for women healthcare, and BioArt Ltd, which produced recombinant proteins for pre-clinical and clinical trials. Before that she worked as a Senior Scientist in the Bio-efficacy team at Compugen Ltd, a therapeutic discovery and development company.
Dalit holds a Ph.D. in Human Genetics, an M.Sc. in Biochemistry, and a B.Sc. in Biology, all from Tel Aviv University.

Reuben (Ruby) Shamir, PhD

Senior Researcher

Ruby is developing clinical-decision support methods and producing significant medical insights by investigating diverse big-data and by incorporating methods of machine learning, computer vision, digital-signal processing, and data analysis.

Before joining KI, Ruby led algorithm development teams in the healthcare industry in Israel (Novocure, Beyeonics) and in the USA (Surgical Information Sciences, MN). As a postdoctoral research fellow at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, Ruby developed methods to predict the motor outcomes of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson’s disease. In addition, Ruby developed electrophysiological biomarkers for accurate localization of DBS electrode throughout Parkinson DBS surgeries, during his postdoctoral fellowship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Ruby holds a PhD and MSc in computer science and a BSc in computer engineering from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Yoav Yehezkelli, MD, MHA

Medical consultant

Yoav is an internal medicine specialist and subspecialist in medical management, who consults KI about medical and clinical aspects of data science and research. He is focusing on identifying the needs of the healthcare system that KI can meet, in its research projects and protocols.
Previously, he served in the IDF as Battalion and brigade medical officer. Founder of the Israeli Epidemic management team and of national response plans until retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He was a senior physician in an internal medicine ward in Rabin medical center, before he was appointed as a deputy director of the hospital. Later on he was a district medical director, district director and director of the primary care medicine branch in two large HMO’s in Israel. He founded the research institute of Meuhedet sick fund. He is now an independent primary care physician in Maccabi healthcare services, and a lecturer in the international executive MPH program in emergency and disaster management in Tel Aviv university.
Yoav received his MD from the Hadassah Medical School in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holds an MSc in healthcare administration from Tel Aviv University.

Tal Helbitz, MD, MRCGP

Research Physician
and UK Advisor

Tal supports KI’s research by providing unique insights into the UK healthcare system and medical data and places it in the context of other healthcare systems.
As a qualified specialist family physician in both the UK and Israel, Tal has coordinated and led multi-disciplinary teams, diagnosing and treating a variety of medical conditions . Trained in Israel as a specialist in family medicine, he has spent the past 15 years in the UK, leading a team of primary care physicians in a 12,000 patient medical practice. Tal also served as a board member for the local health care board serving a population of 400k in North London where he also led a digital transformation of primary care, connecting community and hospital clinical records. He is an active member of the Balint Society which explores the doctor-patient relationship and is involved in the Q community, a UK initiative to foster continuous and sustainable improvement in health and care.
Tal received his MD from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University (Honor Award from the Sheba Medical Center) and qualified as a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Keren Mayer Lapidot, MA

Developmental Psychologist

Keren is a developmental psychologist working in the Negev Child Development Center of the Israel Ministry of Health in Beer Sheva. She is professionally active in a variety of fields: diagnostics, therapy, staff counseling in preschool educational centers; and serves as a touter for psychology students during their training. Additionally, Keren is involved in constructing tools for identifying and treating children with developmental delays.
In KI, Keren’s main focus is the clinical implementation of projects in the domains of child development.
Keren’s residency included work in several institutions in Haifa, Israel. At the Milman Center, she worked with children on the autism spectrum, providing specialized treatment and support to help them reach their full potential. in addition, she worked at the Clinic for Developmental Psychological Therapy and at the Child Developmental Center in Haifa, where she gained skills in diagnosing and treating a variety of developmental disorders. In recent years Keren has been working at the Azrieli National Autism Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental research.
Keren received her MA degree in developmental psychology from Haifa University.

Yair Sadaka, MD, PhD

Medical Consultant

Yair is the head of the Negev Child Development Center of the Israel Ministry of Health in Beer Sheva. He is a pediatrician and a pediatric neurologist and affiliated to Ben Gurion University of the Negev and Soroka Medical Center. Yair leads the clinical aspects of KI’s projects in the domains of child development.
Yair completed his pediatric residency at Soroka Medical Center and specialized in child development and pediatric neurology at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. In recent years, Yair has been focused on big data research as well as implementation of technology for advancing children’s health and development.
Yair received his MD degree and his PhD in Neurobiology and Neurosciences from Ben Gurion University of the Negev studying synaptic plasticity following sensory deprivation.