Panel at the Meeting of the Technion’s Board of Governors: Investment in Technion Research Produces an Annual Return for the State of More than 60%

20“The governments of Israel believe that the country’s universities are “an expense” and do not understand that they are a risk-free investment that produces a return of more than 60%,” said Prof. Shlomo Meital of the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion, who participated in a panel of experts at the opening of the meeting of the Technion’s Board of Governors. Technion President, Prof. Peretz Lavie, who opened the discussion, said that the central theme of this year’s meeting is “How do we do this,” and indeed – this is a question that gets asked by many people – how is it that despite its abundance of problems, the state of Israel has become a successful technological superpower?

Inbal Kreis, the head of the Arrow 3 development project at Israel Aircraft Industries, said that the innovative missile will be ready “as soon as possible,” and described it as a “bullet meant to hit a bullet.”

Dr. Ed Mlavkay, founding partner of Gemini Israel Funds, who also served as Executive Director of the Israel-US Bi-national Industrial Research & Development Foundation (BIRD) for 13 years, said that BIRD began operations out of the understanding that Israel does not have any neighbors to whom it can sell its hi-tech products, and therefore, the target audience that it must cultivate is the American market. The fund encourages Israeli and American companies to collaborate, and between the years 1979 and 2007, $255 million were invested in more than 776 projects, which produced direct sales of $4.5 billion. “This activity in reality opened up Israel to the U.S.,” he stressed. “Among the implications of this process – the purchase of Israeli companies by American companies and their development in Israel as divisions of American companies.”

Prof. Meital presented research examining the Technion’s contribution to the Israeli economy. “The governments relate to the Technion as a place that burns money,” he said. “This is a mistake – the investment in Technion research produces a guaranteed annual return of 60%, and more.”

According to the research that was conducted by Prof. Meital together with Amnon Frankel of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion, in 2010 about 2,500 undergraduate students received degrees from the Technion. “The state invested a cumulative sum of about a billion dollars in these graduates. The return for the state for this investment, according to the contribution of these graduates to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) relative to the average citizen, is $1.759 billion – a return of 76%.”

Prof. Meital noted the contribution of Technion graduates to both the Israeli and global economies. “59 out of 121 of the companies traded on NASDAQ are managed or were founded by Technion graduates,” he said. “And despite all this, the Technion even today continues to struggle for its budgets, as it struggled in the 1930s, 1950s and the 1970s.”

Prof. Marcel Machluf of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering of the Technion chaired the discussion.

Above (Right to left):  Prof. Marcel Machluf, Dr. Ed Mlavsky, Prof. Peretz Lavie, Inbal Kreis, and Prof. Shlomo Meital. Photo by: Yoav Bechar, Technion Spokesman