The need for the creation of a faculty start-up pre-accelerator emerged from the first lecture of Prof. Jeffrey Ullman of Stanford University, that he gave at BGU (when the Computer Science Department became independent, back in 2000). Prof. Ullman delivered his belief that research in computer science should lead to industrial realization, in particular as part of a start-up founded by faculty members.
Given the current establishment of the Hi-Tech park eco-system, with VC Jerusalem Venture Partners, Incubit Technology Venture, Innovation BaseCamp, arriving to support and finance start-ups, it seemed just the time to create a pre-seed accelerator for faculty members at the Benhamou Incubation Center situated in the Alon Hi-Tech building previously occupied by Deutsche Telekom and IBM.
The activity of the pre-seed accelerator will start with a selection of the most promising technologies and motivated faculty members, who will have access to the offices on the 5th floor with business/accounting/office/seminar/meeting-room for an extendable period of a few months and up to one year, enabling them to develop and improve their technologies and receive funding from VCs.
We are following the vision of the Council for Higher Education in Israel (MALAG) in their goal for creating industrial incubation centers in the Israeli universities.
BGU-NHSA One Pager.pdf
