New Collaboration: Technion Researchers & the Israel Innovation Institute’s PLANETech Community

The Israel Innovation Institute’s PLANETech community has embarked on a unique collaboration with the Technion, whereby researchers from different academic departments whose studies relate to FoodTech, water, energy and materials, meet with entrepreneurs and investors interested in Climate Tech. The two groups will conduct a series of meetings during which they will tackle an important, high-impact challenge: how to accelerate the translation of scientific breakthroughs into applications that will help fight the climate crisis.

Prof. Avner Rothschild

The opening session at the Technion was led by Noam Sonennberg of PLANETech; Prof. Avner Rothschild, Deputy Senior VP for Sustainability at the Technion; Rona Samler, Chief Business Officer at Technion R&D Foundation Ltd.; and Orly Mulla, Director of the Sustainability Center at the Technion. Twenty Technion researchers whose fields of expertise cover water, energy and food took part, as well as around 20 entrepreneurs. The purpose was to form “business matches.”

After the various research projects were presented, scientists and entrepreneurs discussed topics including renewable energy technologies, moderated by Uri Sadot and Itay Diamant from the company SolarEdge; food technologies, led by Ari Ben Dror of the Good Food Institute Israel; water technologies, with Ravid Levy of WaterEdge.IL; and materials, headed by Zvi Cohen of Criaterra Innovations.

Noam Sonennberg, Director of PLANETech, said that “the key to successfully fighting climate change is deep technological developments and their rapid, extensive assimilation. Important scientific breakthroughs in this field already exist and are waiting to emerge from the walls of academia and become tech companies. Many times, the problem lies in bringing together the science and technology people and the entrepreneurs. Together, they can build amazing companies that can help us solve the largest challenge of our generation.”

Prof. Avner Rothschild, Deputy Senior VP for Sustainability at the Technion, added that, “this initiative connects between entrepreneurs on the one hand, researchers and groundbreaking research projects on the other, with the aim of sprouting companies that will develop new tech solutions for overcoming the environmental and climate crises. This is the first step of the Technion’s Sustainability Frontier, which was recently established with a view to harness the Technion’s vast knowledge and experience in a wide variety of fields. The Sustainability Frontier aims to develop sustainable solutions for the environmental and climate challenges, engage the Technion community and create partnerships with other communities in order to work together to achieve a viable future for the next generations.”