Connecting University Of Pittsburgh Graduate Students With Israeli Innovation

I am currently in Israel with the University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business Israel Global Research Practicum, which I am co-teaching with Professor Paul Harper, PhD. We are joined by Jacqueline Saslawski, Esq., PMIA, managing director of the Katz International Business Center. Fifteen graduate students are taking part in the practicum, including students from the Katz MBA program, the School of Law and the School of Engineering.

In this course, we are focusing on Israel as a center of global innovation. We combine the academic study of entrepreneurship and the study of the factors that have helped Israel become a leading center for technology innovation. In addition to the study of entrepreneurship, we are looking at industries where recent innovation is playing a significant role in both Pittsburgh and Israel, namely energy. We believe that the development of the Marcellus Shale in Southwestern Pennsylvania and the offshore gas reserves in the Mediterranean provide overlapping fields of entrepreneurship and innovation that connect Israel and Pittsburgh.

After landing in Tel Aviv Saturday afternoon, we kicked off the visit with a festive welcome dinner featuring Katz alumna, Shahar Caro Herling, Adv., LLM, who is in the legal department of Afcon Holdings, and Ilan Cohn, senior partner at the Reinhold Cohn Group, Israel's leading intellectual property firm.

Today was the first day of our one-week visit to Israel during which our students have a full schedule of meetings with Israeli innovators, investors, and leading academic institutions. Today's meetings ranged from IBR – Israeli Biotechnology Research Ltd., a small privately held company that develops, produces and...