The Institute for Applied AI Research at Ben-Gurion University advances cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence, with a mission to translate scientific breakthroughs into deployable solutions that create measurable impact. At the Applied AI Institute, our goal is to leverage cutting-edge artificial intelligence to address real-world challenges and foster innovation across a range of fields; from healthcare to finance, we are committed to creating solutions that have a tangible impact on society. The institute explores core challenges in AI and Machine Learning and includes 20 scientists with diverse expertise spanning modern ML and deep learning (optimization, representation learning, self-supervision), natural language processing (multilingual NLP, information extraction, text generation, clinical/legal NLP), computer vision and multimodal learning, recommender systems and information retrieval, trustworthy and explainable AI (fairness, privacy, robustness, auditability), sequential decision-making and reinforcement learning, time-series modeling and forecasting, graph and causal learning, and data-centric AI/MLOps. We cultivate deep, long-term partnerships with industry through joint research programs and co-led projects, including shared testbeds and datasets, co-authored publications, and ongoing mentorship and internships that keep our collaborations scientifically rigorous and practically relevant.