FIU, Tel Aviv University announce partnership on researching child anxiety disorders
During Gov. Ron DeSantis’ historic and controversial junket to Israel, Florida International University and Tel Aviv University announced a partnership to research anxiety disorders in children, thanks to a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
FIU, Tel Aviv University and Yale University will partner for a $5.2 million grant to test a new treatment by developing new computer-based interventions for clinical trials, according to a press release. They hope to help children who suffer from excessive fear and anxiety in social situations.
FIU President Mark Rosenberg, who was among the 90 or so people who accompanied DeSantis, said in a statement that Israel is “entrepreneurial and ripe for this kind of collaboration.”
“This trip to Israel headed by Governor Ron DeSantis is key in helping us at FIU create and deepen important partnerships in a number of strategic areas,” Rosenberg said. “At FIU, we look for partners interested in leveraging our respective strengths to break new scientific ground and bring economic activity to Florida and Miami-Dade County.”
In a statement, DeSantis praised the collaboration between the two universities.
“A major goal of this business development mission is to bring academic institutions together to find innovative solutions to issues facing both Florida and Israel,” DeSantis said. “This partnership will hopefully lead to the development of additional treatment options for our children.”
FIU submitted its application for the grant in June 2018, long before the governor’s planned trip, wrote psychology department chair Jeremy Pettit in an email. A portion of the grant will go to Yale, but Tel Aviv University will collaborate with both sites.
Pettit said Tel Aviv University was actively involved in the grant application process, as Dr. Yair Bar-Haim, a professor of psychology and neuroscience in Tel Aviv, developed the computer-based treatment being tested in the project.
“We are excited about this project because it brings together our expertise in clinical trials for child anxiety at FIU and Yale with Dr. Bar-Haim’s expertise in computer-based attention training programs,” Pettit wrote. “Combining our expertise, we expect to demonstrate this new treatment approach will be effective for children who suffer from excessive fear and anxiety in social situations.”
In a statement, the board of Students for Justice in Palestine at FIU said the group rejects working with all organizations “that seek to normalize and sanitize Zionist apartheid.”
“For FIU to work alongside a university in Israel, when it continues to dispossess, oppress, and occupy the Palestinian people, is to minimize the crimes of colonization and ethnic cleansing,” the statement said.
This story was originally published May 31, 2019 at 3:30 PM.