Press Release From 2019

New attempt to cope with the shortage of technology workers 5,800 employees Shortage of employees in the field of data science according to the Neaman Institute 1,800 Experts Shortage of employees in experts in the data sciences by the Innovation Authority

The key to explaining the fluctuations in ultra-Orthodox society is the realization that for the ultra-Orthodox, the principle of carrot and stick works mainly on the side of the carrot. The operation of a stick - economic decrees, a threat of non-recruitment sanctions, coercive university studies - does the opposite.

The writer, Dr. Reuven Gal, is a senior research fellow at the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion, a former chief psychologist in the IDF, Deputy Chief of the NSC and Head of the National Civic Service Administration.

On Monday, December 2^nd, 2019, the annual UN Climate Summit (COP25) opened in Madrid, to which major delegations from around the world flocked. The Paris Agreement and various layers of the environmental crisis and the need to produce economic and social solutions by states with global cooperation were discussed. Prof. Ayalon, as part of the Israeli Governmental delegation shared her insights from the COP.

The percentage of those fathers who take advantage of maternity leave in Israel is among the lowest in the OECD;  only 1% of fathers exercise their privilege.  According to Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg’s proposal, rather than extend maternity leave for mothers, men will be required to take at least two weeks of maternity leave, and the total number of weeks on paid leave for both sexes together will total 24 weeks rather than 15 weeks as is the case today.

     On the FM 103 radio program of Yinon Magal and Ben Caspit, Ron Leyzer, a Samuel Neaman Institute researcher on gender economics, was interviewed.  Leyzer explained the motivation behind this initiative:  “Today, women are compelled to take maternity leave”.  According to Leyzer, the Israeli model lags behind the rest of the world and works against the best interests of the infant, the parents and the economy.

   This research was done at the S. Neaman Institute.  The Israeli model in force today lags behind the rest of the world. It is narrow, inflexible and does not place the wellbeing of the infant or the economy at its core.  Expanding the various possibilities for the parents means that if the mother desires to remain at home for 15 weeks, she can do that even after the proposed reform.  The most important change proposed is to require fathers to take two weeks of leave.

“There are several reasons for this.  The idea is for the father’s maternity leave to occur right at the onset of the reform, in order to change the social norm of fathers and employers -- fathers may want to take maternity leave but face employers’ opposition.”

Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, Chair of the Committee that brought an end to the social protests eight years ago, is deeply worried.  Less about the budget deficit, than about the current process.  For the next government, when it is formed, he recommends abandoning the budgetary expenditure principle, in favor of a multi-year program; to raise the tax on value added, and mainly, to make strenuous efforts to restore public trust in government.

“Israel is in the midst of a time in which budgetary policy has been fixed, unchanged, and for years has been dogmatic and obsolete.  If the next government fails to change this policy, then we face a serious crisis.”    Thus, in sharp words that are in stark contrast to his normally sedate character, Prof. Trajtenberg warns of the coming storm.

Many economists have already called the government to amend the law to encourage capital investment, which primarily encourages industry and exports. The Bank of Israel is now proposing a reform that will replace export benefits with more balanced support for the economy.

The "third goal" of the Academy - the transfer of academic knowledge to industry and society.

Although there are successful and well-known cases such as those of Mobilai, whose activities evolved from image processing technology developed by Prof. Amnon Sheshua, one of the company's founders, in his academic research. Another example is Copaxone, a multiple sclerosis drug developed at the Weizmann Institute, which is responsible for a significant portion of Teva's revenue. Nevertheless, a report from the Samuel Neaman Institute published in the Globes suggested a policy change that defines the goals of the commercial departments - from financial goals to knowledge dissemination to society and industry.

Noam Salinger of S4 is leading the Northern Industrial Symbiosis program was hosted in a radio show. The Industrial Symbiosis Program is a program in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy, which builds collaborations between factories, businesses, industrial zones, agriculture, and organizations - when waste from one business becomes a profitable raw material for another business. Dr. Gilead Fortuna and Prof. Ofira Ayalon serve as professional consultants for the project.

link :Interviewlink

 In light of the growing awareness to the problem of plastics in the environment, the subject of alternatives to conventional plastic arise. "The intuition about the behavior of materials in a changing environment is irrelevant. The composition of the materials has to be very well understood, every material behaves differently," says Prof. Ofira Ayalon, head of environment cluster at the Samuel Neaman Institute and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental management at the University of Haifa.

Food waste has an enormous impact on the environment, mainly due to greenhouse gases emissions. Prof. Ofira Ayalon of the University of Haifa and the Samuel Neaman Institute, a senior researcher in the fields of environmental,

sustainability and economics, realized in her research that there is great uncertainty regarding the extent of household food waste due to the different measurement methods, and together with Efrat Elimelech, in her PhD thesis,  tried to conduct a waste survey among 200 families of the socio-economic strata 7-8 in Haifa. The results were published in 3 academic papers.

Several programs implemented in recent years have tried to bring back the fleeing minds to Israel. Aside from the tax relief provided by returning residents, there have also been attempts to change the budget of the universities so that young researchers can be employed.

"There is one very significant statistic: the senior faculty at universities," says Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg of Tel Aviv University and the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion, who served as chair of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education until 2014.

"In 2000-2009, there was a significant decline in senior faculty members, And since 2010 the trend is reversed and an increase in numbers has begun again. "

The employment rate of women in Israel is among the highest in the Western world, as is the birth rate.

These two reinforce the need for a different preparation. Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg recently published a policy document for the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion offering comprehensive reform in early childhood care.

Among other things, it suggests introducing more flexibility into the "first parenting" period. It is preferable that in the first half of the year parents be the ones to care for the child, but at the same time he offers to set up early childhood campuses with support services, guidance and professional guidance.

The Technion is home to the greatest proportion (28 percent) of the 270 researchers in the fields of AI, data science, and smart robotics working across Israel’s universities and colleges, according to a recent report compiled by the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research at the request of the Israeli Ministry of Science’s National Council for Research and Development.

The report found that the top three interests of the Israeli researchers are machine learning, AI, autonomous systems, and smart robotics, with their other interests spanning human-computer interaction, natural language processing, computer vision, data mining, distributed systems/computing, big data, multi-agent systems, neural networks, and reinforcement learning.

If this is indeed such an effective tool to reduce the amount of waste produced and encourage recycling, why is it not implemented in Israel? "This is an economic mechanism that works with a rationale behind it, there is a direct link between the amount that is thrown out and the payment that is being paid, but the mechanism is not flawed," says Prof. Ofira Ayalon, Head of Environmental cluster at the Samuel Neaman Institute of the Technion and Department of Natural Resources and Environmental management at the University of Haifa. "For example, in this method recycling does not cost the resident money, so there may be a situation where people place non-recyclable products in the recycling bins in order to pay less, which damages the efficiency of the method," adds Ayalon.

The government should recognize that we have exhausted the decline in social services spending, and formulate a new policy that will strive to increase the budget for health, transportation, education, and housing by about 25 billion NIS per year, and at the same time raise taxes so as to maintain the debt-to-GDP ratio at 60%, "

writes Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg , Former chairman of the National Economic Council, in a new policy document prepared by the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion.

Dr. Reuven Gal, who served in the past as head of the National Civil Service Administration and is currently a senior fellow at the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion, explains that the civic and national service constitute a leverage for the integration of the Haredi population into the Israeli labor market.

Another controversial study was published two years ago by the Samuel Neaman Institute. According to this study, there is no shortage of engineers in Israel. Their argument refuted the industry's claims of a severe shortage of workers, which also led to a sharp increase in programmers' wages.

According to researchers Dan Peled and Benjamin Bental, there is no gap between the number of engineers qualified each year and the need for the market.

):   Unbalanced consumerism, from food to clothing, imposes an environmental burden both by over use of environmental resources and by waste production. Once we buy something, we need to remember that cheap products are environmentally expensive.

Charging stations in parking lots, electric shared cars and the prohibition of entry of polluting vehicles

• The Tel Aviv Municipality begins to "electrify" the vehicles in the city, in a process that will last until 2025.

• The project has not yet been budgeted, and it also depends on cooperation with the government

The government is working without a vision in the energy sector, and a master plan for the sector is needed by 2050, according to the energy forum at the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion. In March, in a forum attended by representatives from the private sector and the electricity company, the need arose to establish a longer-term strategic plan than the one set by the government for 2030.

The Israeli energy market has unique characteristics. One of the main problems is that the state is isolated from its neighbors in terms of energy supply and export, as an "energy island."

In 2018, while Israel is drowning in garbage, the Ministry of Environmental Protection dedicated only 100 million NIS to waste management.

The biggest absurdity is that the money was taken from a 4 billion NIS fund that has been accumulating funds for about 35 years and intended to treat waste and the environment.

The Energy Ministry's total budget for subsidizing charging stations in Israel for electric cars is NIS 30 million.

The demand for electric charging will be mainly in metropolitan centers, not in the outlying areas, according to a preparatory guide for the local authorities commissioned by the Ministry of National Infrastructure, Energy, and Water Resources and published by the Samuel Neaman Institute.

"At the moment there are about one million children in some educational institution, And most of them are not appropriate”, said the economist Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, a faculty member of Tel Aviv University and a colleague of the Samuel Neaman Institute, in a panel that dealt with the question of whether the Early Childhood Council would succeed in narrowing the gaps in the Z generation.

In Israel, a significant climate change program has recently been presented, focusing on coping with its results: Israel's national plan for climate change, approved by the government after nine years of research and writing. The program, written by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, in consultation with government ministries, bodies and experts from various fields, represents an important step in the process of preparing for climate change, whose destructive impact on Israel and the world is expected to only increase in the coming years. Prof. Ayalon, former head of ICCIC, says that in order to execute the plan it must be funded.

The initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture to reduce food loss by packing fruits and vegetables in plastic may be a good intention, but it may create a new and unnecessary problem that will overshadow the problem of lost food.
Prof. Ofira Ayalon is not convinced that this is such a bad solution. "The goal of the move is to reduce the depreciation of vegetables and fruits, but scientifically, there is no answer at the moment what is preferable".

Being an engineer in the 21st century is much more than planning, doing calculations and writing code. Today's engineer is required to be able to work in a team, independent learning throughout life and to be able to deal with solving complex problems in situations of uncertainty. These are the demands of advanced industry in Israel and around the world.

The Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research at the Technion recently published a report entitled "Educating Engineers in the 21st Century", which reinforces the view that advocates the need to expand the education of the Israeli engineer in the early stages of his training, And to withstand global competition.

According to the forecast, by 2030, about 125 million electric vehicles will travel on the roads of the world.

Although in Israel the field is still in its infancy, according to a forecast by the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research, by 2025, the number of electric vehicles in Israel is expected to reach about 200,000 vehicles.

The establishment of Intel's new plant in Kiryat Gat will have a positive impact on local high-tech and increase the variety of jobs in it. However, the reliance of the Israeli high-tech and economy on Intel only grew as the company is currently in a critical period, preparing for years of intensifying competition in the industry and profound technological changes that could threaten its status. Israel and the local high-tech should hope that Intel will emerge from these challenges strengthened. According to data published yesterday by Intel, the company has 11,700 employees in Israel. According to a report by Samuel Neaman, she is indirectly responsible for the employment of 52,000 people in Israel.

The state of plastic waste management in Israel is very bleak: the pollution is increasing, the research is lagging, the policy of dealing with the crisis is unclear, and the last recycling plant is closing its doors - perhaps the hope will come from Italy, where scientists have developed an innovative facility that promises to recycle all plastics.

With the growth of Benny Gantz in the polls, the question arises: Does the military record prove itself in the political test?

Dr. Reuven Gal, senior research fellow at the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Studies at the Technion, appointed three factors that are needed to enter politics, for leadership: The first is leadership and ability to influence and lead. Obviously, senior military leaders obtain this.  Secondly, they must have a clear agenda, a genuine ideology. History shows that this is not always the case with military leaders. The third requirement is total commitment.  While military officers had obviously demonstrated during their service full commitment, even willingness for self-sacrifice – the commitment in politics is quite different.

A new study that maps Israeli academia's activities in the field of artificial intelligence reveals: Israelis are strong in encryption but weak in robotics, publish many journals but do not close the gap with Singapore and Switzerland; And which institutions have the highest concentration of researchers in the field.

A comprehensive report by the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion maps the activity in the areas of artificial intelligence, data science and smart robotics in academia and in the local industry, and examines the strengths and weaknesses of Israel The report, published last month, It was commissioned and funded by the National Council for Research and Development (R & D) to formulate a national strategic plan to promote these areas.

The rate of road construction in Israel is calculated according to population expansion, and not according to the increase in the number of vehicles. When you add the failing public transport, the result is catastrophic.
In September 2018, the Samuel Neaman Institute published an outline for a change in the patterns of travel formulated by Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg. At the center of the outline is a comprehensive reform of vehicle taxation: a gradual elimination of the taxes currently imposed, and in place of payment according to distance, which varies according to the location, time and number of passengers in the vehicle.

A commercial venture called LOOP seeks to revolutionize the way we consume many products. This is a new venture based on an old tradition: reuse of containers and packaging of products, as we used to do with the neighborhood milkman. The declared aim of the project is to reduce as much as possible the ecological footprint of the products we consume. "The move to multi-use packaging is a very important step on the way to the great goal of reducing the amount of waste, but we must stop and look at the full picture," says Prof. Ofira Ayalon.

16.5% of the Israeli population live in the Northern District, but only 14.7% of the employed.

The rate of participation in the labor force is relatively low and stands at only 58%, according to a report by the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion.16.5% of the Israeli population live in the Northern District, but only 14.7% of the employed. The rate of participation in the labor force is relatively low and stands at only 58%, according to a report by the Samuel Neaman Institute at the Technion.

According to the report, the average compensation per job in the manufacturing industry in the Northern District is about 80 percent of the average national job compensation - the lowest of all the districts except Judea and Samaria.