The event in Paris marked the 85th year of the Technion with a colloquium on challenges and innovation in academia and business, and then a gala fundraising dinner with long-winded, highly intelligent speeches, preceded by fabulous foie gras and sushi hors d’oeuvres…bien sur!!.

The most dashing figure was firebrand Muriel Touaty, who has organized this event for years. When she managed to stop running around taking care of details for a few minutes, Muriel addressed the gathering, reminding people that 80% of Israel’s engineers still come from the Technion.

Among technology and engineering schools worldwide, the Technion was ranked 29th in 2008, and 31st for natural sciences. In overall rankings, the Technion took 39th place, a spectacular gain of 122 places over 2007.

Muriel knows all the speakers and guests on a first name basis, from visiting Technion researchers, to longtime French corporate Technion associates, from Veolia, for example, to Paris City Hall officials and French ministers, and Technion President Peretz Lavie. He took office on October 1st of this year, after serving as vice-president of resource development and external relations.

In Paris, he presented a “Doctor Honoris Causa” Technion diploma to Jean-Marie Lehn, from the College de France, a 1987 Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry.

Lavie, a renowned authority on the psychophysiology of sleep and sleeping disorders, gave one of the best talks during the afternoon about the differences and links between research and business development, what he called the “clash of cultures.” Needless to say, the author of a book called “The Enchanted World of Sleep” had everyone wide awake. In the opinion of the only Anglophone journalist present, Lavie should have given the same talk at the night-time gala dinner.

As one example of that “clash”, he cited the “publish or perish” standard in academia. “You must play up your work in academia, but in the business world, when you are developing a patent, the last thing you do is publish anything about it,” he explained. “For the patent to remain yours, nobody must know what you are doing.”

For a man with such a distinguished academic and business career, Lavie began at a modest institution, known for alligators, getting a PhD at the University of Florida at Gainsville. But already, the patent system was in effect there.

“That university has one patent that has brought it hundreds of millions of dollars, for the drink Gatoraid, drunk by athletes worldwide,” he noted.

Talk about patents and the Israeli incubator system, in which the Technion plays a major role, dominated the round table discussions. In fact, France, which has excellent state-run university-level scientific learning centers, has little interaction between academia and the business and industrial worlds.

“This is changing, but there are still few start-ups in France feeding state-of-the-art technology and services into the major groups,” noted Daniel Rouach, a business management professor who divides his time between Paris and Israel. “This provides an opportunity for Israeli start-ups to come do business in Paris, and many of the start-up founders come from the Technion, in fact.”

“I believe in forging personal relationships and have always worked with the Technion,” commented Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, a 1997 French Nobel Prize laureate in physics, born in Constantine, French Algeria. “The French have always been strong on research but are still very hesitant about putting together PPPs, public private partnerships, while other countries such as Germany are moving ahead, on the Israeli model.”

There was a visitor on hand from the United States who addressed the colloquium, Jean-Jacques Slotine, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT in Boston, originally from Paris. “Frankly, the top undergrads in France are better educated than in the United States,” he commented, “but then it’s like they’re all dressed up and have nowhere to go. They must get a PhD and do research in the States, and in some cases in Israel, why not at the Technion? The links with business and industry are tremendous.” Slotine has been at MIT for 25 years.

At the gala, Israeli ambassador Daniel Shek told one of two journalists present how he brought French research minister Valerie Pecresse to Israel for a first hand look at how the incubator system works. “She told me, we are miles behind you in France. I would like to do the same,” he said. “Frankly, I never understood why the French don’t do the same as we do. They see that it works. But here tonight, it is French Jews giving money to the Technion, and this is important.” He smiled.

Yet all is not roses in Israel. Peretz Lavie was adamant when he said, “The Israeli government is not doing its part for higher education and research. The Technion faculty has gone from 640 to 580 members in the past ten years because of government cuts. I think it is amazing that we get so much from so little funding.

“We rely on friends such as the Americans and the French. I think the Technion is an education and research model for the whole world, and we bring results, but it must be a partnership.”

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 17, 2009

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2009