German and Israeli researchers have teamed up to launch a new high-tech accelerator focusing on cybersecurity innovation.

The Hessian Israeli Partnership Accelerator for Cybersecurity (HIPA) was launched the first week of November in Jerusalem. It brings together top students in cybersecurity from both countries to work on projects in the areas of network technologies, Internet infrastructure and software security.

The two-and-a-half-month program kicks off with a week of entrepreneurship training in Jerusalem, and concludes with a review of each cyber team’s results in Damstadt, Germany’s cybersecurity hub. The final results will be presented at a cybersecurity conference in Berlin, January 2-8, 2018. The bulk of the program consists of two months of virtual incubation and remote coaching.

The two institutions behind HIPA are the Cyber Security Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s School of Computer Science and Engineering, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT in Darmstadt, Germany.

Haya Shulman, Division Director at Fraunhofer SIT, is managing director of the accelerator.

Hebrew University is at the forefront of cybersecurity research, said Prof. Danny Dolev, head of the Cybersecurity Center. “We are researching many aspects of cyber protection, including protection of Internet data routing, cloud computing, Bitcoin, the smart grid, and more. Our collaboration with Fraunhofer deepens the research into these issues and will enable researchers from both countries to collaborate on the creation new tools for dealing with cyber-attacks.”

In 2015, Hebrew University and Fraunhofer jointly created Fraunhofer Project Center for Cybersecurity in Jerusalem.