Located in Israel’s cultural, financial and industrial heartland, Tel Aviv University (TAU) is the largest university in Israel and the biggest Jewish university in the world. It is a major center of teaching and research, comprising nine faculties, 106 departments, and ninety research institutes. Its origins go back to 1956, when three small education units - The Tel Aviv School of Law and Economics, an Institute of Natural Sciences, and an Institute of Jewish Studies - joined together to form the University of Tel Aviv.
At first attached to the Tel Aviv municipality, the University was granted autonomy in 1963, and its campus in the residential section of Ramat Aviv was established the same year.
Tel Aviv University offers an extensive range of study programs in the arts and sciences, within its Faculties of Engineering, Exact Sciences, Life Sciences, Medicine, Humanities, Law, Social Sciences, Arts and Management. The University also maintains academic supervision over the Center for Technological Design in Holon, the New Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo, and the Tel Aviv Engineering College.
In addition to its basic functions of research and teaching, Tel Aviv University contributes its expertise to the welfare of society at large; plays a part in all aspects of national life; and addresses regional and international issues. Faculty members serve in the Knesset and the Cabinet, in government agencies, and in professional organizations and public bodies. Students are encouraged to tutor disadvantaged children, volunteer services to the elderly, and aid the community through a broad range of social involvement programs, such as TAU’s wide-scale Price-Brodie Initiative in Jaffa.
TAU’s campus is regarded as a beacon of innovation and creative design. The Cymbalista Synagogue and Jewish Heritage Center is particularly striking, as is the George S. Wise Senate Building, a prime example of the Neo-Modernist synthesis of classical and contemporary stylistic elements.