Time： 14:00—15:30, October 24th, 2013
Venue： Conference Room on the second floor, UCAS Auditorium
Topic：Scientific excellence, innovation and commercialization: Can it work together?
Abstract：Scientific research and innovation have become a major engine of financial growth, and the major question asked today is how to create and sustain a culture of scientific excellence, especially in basic science, and use it as a platform for innovation and commercialization. Is scientific excellence, safeguarded by academic freedom, enough for creating a culture of innovation which ultimately lead to commercialization and benefits the industry goals, and modern society needs?
Resume of President Daniel Zajfman
Born in Belgium in 1959, Zajfman moved to Israel at the age of 20. In 1989 he received his PhD in atomic physics from the Technion, then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. When he returned to Israel in 1991, he joined Weizmann's department of particle physics as a senior scientist. Since 2001 he has been an external member of the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, where he was appointed a director in 2005. In December 2006, Zajfman became the tenth president of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, as the youngest president in Weizmann's 60-year history.
The Weizmann Institute of Science is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel. It differs from other Israeli universities in that it offers only graduate and post-graduate studies in the sciences. It is a multidisciplinary research center, with around 2,500 scientists, postdoctoral fellows, Ph.D. and M.Sc. students, and scientific, technical, and administrative staff working at the Institute. In 2011, the magazine The Scientist rated the Weizmann Institute as the best place in the world to work in academia among non-US institutions.
