History of IBM research in Israel

The staff at the IBM Haifa Research Lab works on projects connected to the topics of healthcare, cloud computing, formal and image and video analytics among others.

At the IBM Haifa Research Lab, 25% of the technical staff have doctoral degrees in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, or related fields.

In 1971–73, Dr Alfred Inselberg (AI) from the IBM Los Angeles Scientific Center was on sabbatical leave at the Technion's new department of Applied Mathematics.

These centers described themselves as non-profit organizations whose goals were to promote the development of computer science and utilize advanced technology to solve problems critical to the local community.

At the time, beyond the military industry, the field of hi-tech seemed to be almost non-existent in Israel, and computing appeared to be just starting to gain momentum in academic institutions.

In 1972, the IBM Israel Scientific Center opened its doors in the Computer Science Building of the Technion, with a handful of employees: Raviv as manager, three researchers, and one programmer.

The research team implemented algorithms on this machine and carried it from one kibbutz (collective farm) to another, to solve their individual irrigation problems.

An important project was the development of an ultrasound system for the early detection of liver cancer, in conjunction with IBM Austria and Israel's Sheba Hospital.

[citation needed] Although today ultrasound equipment is routinely used in a wide range of medical applications, at the time it was a relatively new technology.

[citation needed] As he searched for new avenues for cooperation, he hit on the idea of subcontracting to the IBM Research labs in the United States.

[citation needed] This new activity began with only two projects—vendor chip testing and DAIOS (DASD I/O simulations)—and grew at an unprecedented rate.

Its major research and development projects in the 1980s included Hebrew computational linguistics (including text-to-speech synthesis for the blind), optimization of water distribution systems, computer-based education technology, portrait compression, signal processing for the hearing impaired, document recognition and processing, hand-written and printed text recognition, data compression and parsing techniques, and VLSI design verification, and testing tools.

In 1999, on his 65th birthday, Raviv retired as director of HRL and began to pursue the establishment of an IBM development center in Israel.

[citation needed] The development center planned by Raviv eventually became the Israel Systems and Technology Group (STG) Lab.

[citation needed] From its vantage point on the Carmel mountain range, the building has views of the Mediterranean Sea and the city of Haifa.

the IBM Haifa Research Lab describes itself as having the highest number of employees in Israel's hi-tech industry who hold doctorate degrees in science, electrical engineering, mathematics, or related fields.