University of Haifa Unveils its New City Campus in Downtown Haifa

University of Haifa unveiled its new Lorry I. Lokey City Campus on Wednesday night, which will comprise at least four buildings located throughout the Port of Haifa and the city’s downtown area. The opening of the campus, which will also house Israel’s first school of data sciences, sees the University drastically expand its educational reach and become one of the key drivers of regional development in the process, bringing in more people, jobs, stability and security to Boston's sister city of Haifa and the entire north of Israel.

An opening ceremony took place at the University’s newly acquired, Dylan Tauber Educational Complex and showcased the University’s vision of becoming an urban university with campuses located throughout Haifa and northern Israel. The building’s facade is comprised of digitally printed glass depicting Israeli cultural heroes, underscoring the facility’s role as an educational hub. The Dylan Tauber Educational Complex, along with the Palmer Street (#4) building—allocated to the University by Haifa City Council—will house the new University of Haifa School for Data Science, Israel’s first of its kind. The country’s first school of data sciences will consist of three departments spread out across the University’s new city campus: Computer Science, Information Systems and Statistics.

“We are committed to increasing our involvement in the urban fabric of Haifa and with the opening of our new campus in the city’s downtown area, we are making significant strides in the right direction,” said Prof. Ron Robin, President of the University of Haifa. “Our campus will attract thousands of students who will be an integral part of the unique climate of downtown Haifa, which merges academia and research, biomedical hi-tech and a vibrant nightlife. The University’s vision is officially launched today and there is no better place to lay down roots than in the heart of the city of Haifa. At the end of this process, we will be a better research university, one that gives its graduates far more opportunities than any other university in Israel. We will be integral to the urban fabric of Haifa and the entire North.”

The city campus will also be home to the Tauber Bioinformations Research Center. Leveraging a donation by the Laszlo N. Tauber Family Foundation, the Tauber Center will develop scalable high-performance computing hardware and software solutions for existing and future challenges of “big data” in biomedicine and agrobiology.

The new city campus, funded by a $10 million gift from well-known American philanthropist and Business Wire founder Lorry I. Lokey, is a key manifestation of University of Haifa’s unique “multiversity" model: a multi-campus institution with locations around Haifa and throughout northern Israel, easing access for students and adding vitality to its city and region, while allowing a wide range of ideas and activities to flourish in a diverse community.