Israel Steps Up Efforts to Bring Back Expat Scientists

The Israeli government has adopted a $350 million plan to lure back its scientists working abroad, Israeli media reported yesterday. According to Haaretz, the scheme will create 30 academic excellence centers to attract leading scientists currently working abroad. The government will provide one third of the money; the remainder has to come from academic institutions and philanthropies. Universities will compete to host the centers.

Says the paper:

A pilot program of five excellence centers will begin during the upcoming academic year. Sources close to the Council for Higher Education said the first centers to open would focus on economics and computer science, two areas in which Israeli scientists have made particularly important contributions to international research.

"It's certainly a step in the right direction," Eytan Abraham, an Israeli research fellow at the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Biomedical Engineering Center, tells ScienceInsider. Abraham is MIT's representative of BioAbroad, a group that tries to facilitate the return of biomedical scientists, entrepreneurs, and physicians to Israel, for instance, by bringing them into contact with companies there and funding travel for job interviews.

Many Israeli expat scientist want to go back, Abraham says; to wit, more than 100 showed up in Boston for a 2 January meeting about the topic with Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz. The small number of scientific positions available in Israeli academia is a major obstacle, Abraham says. But he cautions that it remains to be seen whether academic institutions and private donors will come through with their share of the money. He also notes that the program is for academic posts only; a similar initiative should aim to open up jobs in Israel's industry, says Abraham.

Source: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/03/israel-steps-up-efforts-to-bring.html?rss=1

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