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The physicist Israel Bar-Joseph specializes in nanophysics. He is one the various researchers that form the Israeli high-tech production critical mass. His workplace, the Weizmann Institute of Science, is amongst the most prestigious. Besides working as a researcher and professor, he is also the institute’s vice president of resource development and institutional issues.
“We are not a traditional university but a research center that also offers graduate courses,” he explains. “We established a multidisciplinary model that breaks the classical idea of departments and compartmentalization of the areas of knowledge. All sciences are integrated into research groups focused on specific projects.”
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
Approximately three thousand people work at the Weizmann Institute of Science, one of the most prestigious in Israel
Created in 1939 by the first President of Israel, chemist Chaim Weizmann, it was called the Daniel Sieff Institute until 1949, in honor of the son of its main financier, an English millionaire. Since then, it’s become a public, non-state entity which currently has a government grant for 30% of its expenses, according to Professor Bar-Joseph.
The rest of its funding comes from projects for which the university gets research contracts, particularly with the European Union countries, and royalties for licensing products for companies, in addition to charitable donations. “We do not accept purchase orders from private corporations or the government,” he says. “This kind of practice would be contrary to scientific freedom. But our findings are available to the market, which might decide and pay for its use.”
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The institute owns a company called Yeda, whose objective is to seek customers who are willing to buy, for a limited period of time, the right to use any of the inventions emerging from Rehovot. Its directors have detailed information on the country's productive map and usually know on which doors to knock.
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
Bar-Joseph, specialist in nanophysics: “there is another most important force for developing human capital”
Approximately three thousand people work at the Weizmann, but they can hardly be spotted walking down the streets that connect the seven centers of the scientific research cluster. There isn´t a university scenario, with people rushing from class to class or enjoying their free time in groups. Both student and teaching bodies are spread through hundreds of laboratories in small teams focused on some specific goal.
The thousand students enrolled live a curious situation. They pay nothing for the course, and in the bargain, get generous grants so that they can fully dedicate themselves to the institution, without worrying about having another source of income. “We are the largest producer of scientists in the country,” says Bar-Joseph. “Our activity is strategic; there is no other force more important for the development of human capital.”
Focus on technology
The Weizmann, alongside the Technion, in the city of Haifa, form the fundamental duet of the educational and scientific structure in Israel, from where the four natural sciences Nobel prizes came. They hunt the best talents in other universities and even in high school, they don´t possess humanities departments and they are present in country’s main technological improvements.
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
Anna, a student of modern European history: “it is very hard to get a job when your diploma is not connected to technology
“We can’t attribute the great leaps of success over the last twenty years only to these education and research tools,” says Professor Bar-Joseph. “Our collaboration was important, but it should be noted that other structures, such as the military, also form scientific boards, which then are aggregated to companies or the academic life. Another key factor was the Russian immigration in the 90’s, which incorporated a lot of quality to Israeli science.”
This formula, however, suffers critique from some social and intellectual sectors. The biggest constraint: the university is being molded through the institutes of technology, which are excessively draining resources, emptying general education and weakening humanities courses.
Aviad Oren, 35, a student at the University of Tel Aviv, who is doing her doctorate on environmental sciences, is one of those who disapproves of the this recipe. “The education used to be very good, but it’s deteriorating”, he says. “Besides the budget cuts, important studies which can´t be transformed in productive forces are being lost.”
Student Anna Sergeyenkova, born 28 years ago in Russia, who is doing a master’s course on European history, also disagrees with the steps that are being taken. “It is very hard to get a job when your diploma is not connected to technology”, she says. “Schools and universities, because of the budget cuts, are reducing teachers’ positions and funding for research. There is a cultural shift, typical of ultra-capitalism.”
Translation: Kelly Cristina Spinelli