Events

The students met with Itzik Fried, managing partner of Takwin Labs, a fund that invests in companies belonging to Arab hi-tech entrepreneurs. The fund was founded by industrialist and entrepreneur Imad Talhami, in partnership with Hemi Peres (Pitango Fund) and Erel Margalit (JVP). Prior to joining Takwin, Itzik was CEO of Playscape, a partner in Argoquest Holdings, VP Business Affairs of AOL, and a senior advisor to the finance minister.

The students from the Lapidim program were hosted at Check Point's offices in Tel Aviv. The students met with Gil Shwed, an Israeli high-tech entrepreneur, founder, chairman and CEO of Check Point. The students were exposed and learned first-hand about entrepreneurship, managing a global company and the vision of Israeli high-tech. In addition, the students met with Nissan Chesler, who is responsible for technologies at Check Point.

 

Our LAPIDIM students took first, second and third place in Microsoft’s Hawking Competition, part of the Microsoft Breeze program, a summer program run by Microsoft and open to outstanding students. This year’s program focused on the worlds of cyber and included lectures, practical workshops and a series of technological competitions and challenges.

On September 13th, Google hosted a special VR event for the LAPIDIM program students at the Google Haifa office. During the event, students met up with a technical program manager, Adva Glasner, which explained about the work Google is doing in the VR field, including fun demos. Rom Herskovitz, LAPIDIM Alumni and a Google engineer, presented a VR project he did as part of his degree. Before having a delicious lunch and ending the day, we had a panel for the students and explained more about life at Google.

The LAPIDIM students were guests of the Microsoft Research and Development Center in Herzliya. During their visit, students listened to lectures about innovation and chatbots, toured Microsoft’s accelerator, participated in a drone workshop, and explored Microsoft’s garage. Using a special machine for cutting laser, the students tried their hands at preparing key rings with their names on them and then took them home as souvenirs.

Meeting with Boaz Palgi and Erez Webman—serial entrepreneurs (ScalelO, Topio)—about storage and myth breaking in entrepreneurship. Boaz Palgi and Erez Webman, serial entrepreneurs (ExtremIO, ScalelO, Topio), in their most recent executive positions served as CEO and CTO, respectively of ScaleIO. The company, founded in 2011, specialized in the field of data storage. In 2013, it was acquired by EMC (the purchase price was estimated at around 200-300 million dollars).

Students from LAPIDIM excellence program in a meeting with Yuval Hofshy, CTO at startup company Interlude, talking about entrepreneurship, media and music.

Following the end of their exams, students in the LAPIDIM program visited Google Haifa. They heard about the technologies being developed in Israel and were entertained together with Google’s engineers by Google’s new card game, “Launch & Iterate”, which simulates the process of launching a new Google product.

Gil Goren, Vice President, Global  New Business Development at EMC visited the Technion and gave an inspiring talk for LAPIDIM students on January 18th.