The annual mission of Technion France that took place from the 30th of May to the 2nd of June, on the thematic of the Big Data, capture, storage, sharing, analysis and data visualization and 3D in multidisciplinary areas such as Health, Energy, Water, and ICT was a real success.
The 50 participants from France, Monaco or Belgium who came to Israel – some of them for the first time – were lucky to discover a little part of the country and, almost all, of its prestigious university: The Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
They were all pleased to attend to exceptional conferences, led by the most renowned professors and researchers of the Technion, in different fields. Some of them already started to talk in concrete terms about bilateral cooperations between the two countries, cooperations of different types: industrial, start-up, academics, or institutional.
From the Faculty of Medicine to the different laboratory in different fields of Electric Engineering or Computer Science, to only quote them, the participants – from numerous fields and renowned enterprises but also from press and television – discovered in a private way the laboratories and persons working days and nights on projects that will build the world of tomorrow.
Sunday, after a lunch with the participation of members of the Technion such as Mr. Alex Gordon, Liaison Office to the European Community, and the Professor Avigdor Gal, Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, the participants were split in 4 different groups according to their fields of interest: Applications, Machine Learning, Technology, and Technology Transfert.
For those who choose “Technology Transfert”, Mr. Benny Soffer, Director of T3 Technion Technology Transfert sharpened their curiosity about the research commercialization process.
After an intervention, on Monday, of the Professor Shai Shen Orr, Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, the delegation was break up into several groups to visit the laboratories : Laboratory of Cardiac Electrophysiology and Regenerative Medicine, Spatial Memory Laboratory, Emerging Parasites Research Laboratory, Cancer Research Laboratory, escorted by some French or Belgium students of The Technion.
They also were lucky to discover the city of Jerusalem, cradle of civilizations, since they arrived on Friday, and to diner with the most prestigious members of the Technion, Pr. Peretz Lavie, President of The Technion, and the Professors Boaz Golany and Oded Shmueli, respectively Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development, and Executive Vice President for Research, but also with members of the French Embassy in Israel and the Israeli Hitech Industry : Dr. Yoelle Maarek (Yahoo), Mr. Alain Azagury (IBM), or Mr. Yossi Mattias (Google), and others.
This mission ended with the visit of Yahoo and Microsoft, two companies set up in Matam, Haifa’s Technology and Science Park.
An extremely strategic mission that already led to new agreement between enterprises, start-up, French schools or universities with the Technion, and that open the way for the annual symposium of Technion France on the 15th December 2014, “Making Sense of Big Data” that will be led in Paris, and that will deal with Big Data, under the High Patronage of the French President.