News & Views item - March 2010

 

 

Israeli Cabinet Approves NIS 1.3b (A$382m) Plan to Reverse Israeli Brain Drain. (March 16, 2010)

Haaretz reports that this past Sunday the Israeli cabinet has approved a five-year program to create 30 centres of academic excellence in order to attract Israel's leading scientific Diaspora at an estimated cost of NIS 1.3 billion (A$382 million) one-third of which is to be contributed by the government, with the remainder being sought from academic institutions and private donations outside Israel.

 

An initial group of five centres of excellence is planned for the next academic year and would focus on economics and computer science, two areas in which Israeli scientists are considered to have made important contributions at international levels. The areas of research that are to be addressed by the remaining 25 centres will be the subject of consultation with the nation's universities

 

According to Haaretz: "The choice of which universities will host the centres will be based on criteria including research capabilities in the fields in question, as well their ability to devote resources to the centres and to operate international advanced-degree programs taught in English."

 

Profesor Manuel Trajtenberg, chairman of the Council for Higher Education's Planning and Budget Committee, is credited with devising the program. He said: "We didn't want to just stem a leak, but to propose a plan that could raise the bar of scientific research and at the same time bring back Israeli scientists - not individually but collectively - to be integrated at these centres and consequently the universities. If we can bring 300 Israeli scientists to the centres, this will be considered a great success."

 

Professor Trajtenberg estimates that currently 1,000 - 3,000 Israeli researchers live and work abroad.

 

Following up the Haaretz report ScienceInsider spoke with MIT's representative of BioAbroad:

 

"It's certainly a step in the right direction," Eytan Abraham, an Israeli research fellow at the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Biomedical Engineering Center, tells ScienceInsider. Abraham is MIT's representative of BioAbroad, a group that tries to facilitate the return of biomedical scientists, entrepreneurs, and physicians to Israel, for instance, by bringing them into contact with companies there and funding travel for job interviews.

 

Many Israeli expat scientist want to go back, Abraham says; to wit, more than 100 showed up in Boston for a 2 January meeting about the topic with Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz. The small number of scientific positions available in Israeli academia is a major obstacle, Abraham says. But he cautions that it remains to be seen whether academic institutions and private donors will come through with their share of the money. He also notes that the program is for academic posts only; a similar initiative should aim to open up jobs in Israel's industry, says Abraham.