Dr. Ami Appelbaum will be the next chief scientist at the Ministry of Economics and Industry and chairman of the Israel Innovation Authority. Sources inform "Globes" that Minister of Economics and Industry Eli Cohen today accepted the recommendation of the appointments committee, which selected Appelbaum. The other shortlisted candidates for the post were Ran Achituv and Dr. Ehud Geller.
Other names proposed for the position included former Intel executives Maxine Fassberg, David Perlmutter, and Shmuel Eden.
Appelbaum is president of KLA Tencor Israel, the Israeli subsidiary of a company headquartered in Silicon Valley that develops and produces systems for controlling semiconductor production processes. The company's annual sales are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. KLA Tencor Israel has hundreds of employees in its plant in Migdal HaEmek.
Appelbaum's previous position was acting general manager of automation and robotics at KLA Tencor Israel's parent company. He managed the company's operational system for eight years while living in California.
In addition to his position at KLA Tencor Israel, Appelbaum is a director and a member of the management committee at ORT Braude College in Karmiel, and a member of the professional advisory committee of Kinneret Academic College in the Jordan Valley, located at Tzemah.
Appelbaum was awarded a PhD in 1983 by the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa for his research on semiconductors in the university's materials engineering department.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on September 11, 2017
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