While there are countless scientific breakthroughs that could help fight the world’s bourgeoning climate woes, “the problem lies in bringing together the science and technology people and the entrepreneurs” to make these innovations effective, said Noam Sonnenberg, director of the Israel Innovation Institute’s PLANETech community.

In the interest of tackling this important, high impact challenge the Technion and the PLANETech community recently began a unique collaboration that will bring together researchers from different academic departments with entrepreneurs and investors interested in ClimaTech. The two groups recently conducted the first of a series of meetings that will explore research in foodtech, water, energy, and materials and see how it can be brought into industry.

The inaugural gathering, held at the Technion, was aimed at forming businesses matches and was led by representatives from PLANETech and the Technion. Participants included 20 Technion researchers whose fields of expertise cover water, energy, and food, and around 20 entrepreneurs, who presented various research projects and then listened to scientists and business executives discuss topics including renewable energy technologies. These discussions were moderated by executives from SolarEdge, the Good Food Institute Israel, WaterEdge.IL, Criaterra Innovations, and other various sustainability-focused companies.

“This initiative connects between entrepreneurs on the one hand, researchers and groundbreaking research projects on the other, with the aim of sprouting companies that will develop new tech solutions for overcoming the environmental and climate crises,” said Professor Avner Rothschild, deputy senior vice president for Sustainability at the Technion. “This is the first step of the Technion’s Sustainability Frontier, which was recently established with a view to harness the Technion’s vast knowledge and experience in a wide variety of fields. The Sustainability Frontier aims to develop sustainable solutions for the environmental and climate challenges, engage the Technion community and create partnerships with other communities in order to work together to achieve a viable future for the next generations.”