Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) and Tel Aviv University are setting up a joint information security research institute at the Department of Computer Sciences. A joint company-university board will manage the new institute and it will be jointly financed by both entities. The set-up investment is estimated at several million shekels.
Prof. Ran Canetti will run the institute. He is currently a researcher at IBM Laboratories and a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Check Point and Tel Aviv University signed the agreement to establish the institute last week. Most of the institute's financing will fund research grants for graduate and doctoral students and for the establishment of research laboratories. The institute will finance research into various aspects of information security and will sponsor academic conventions on the subject.
Check Point VP products Dorit Dor said, "Israel has an extensive information security industry, whose strength is also reflected in academe. The purpose of the research institute is to promote academic, professional, and applied information security research in Israel and to encourage students to learn in this exciting, innovative, and dynamic field."
Tel Aviv University President Prof. Zvi Galil said that the establishment of the institute by Check Point would enable the training of a new generation in information security. He noted that the institute was being set up at a time of "ever-growing budget crisis in the higher education system and when university faculty was in steady decline."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 14, 2008
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