A massive shift is taking place in the world economy. Following the advent of economies based on products, then services, we are now entering an era of the economy of knowledge.  Companies like Google are providing knowledge, and they're making a lot of money while they're at it.

Everything is available on the net, but availability isn't enough to create a more knowledgeable culture. To acquire knowledge, people must take steps to read, understand & process the information; then take all of this one step further.

How did Israel move from exporting oranges to exporting intellectual property in 40yrs? Can any country do this, or is it specific to Israel?

There is definitely a cultural element. Israel is almost lucky to have no natural resources because this "necessity" has driven innovation. We say often that human beings are our greatest natural resource.

As the president of The Weizmann Institute of Science, my job is to promote a culture of innovation. We believe that if we work to ensure the foundations of today's age of knowledge, then the age of innovation will soon follow.

I started studying physics in the 70's under a teacher who had studied in the 50's.  If she had held the attitude that she "knew" physics when she completed her degree, she would have only been able to teach me physics that was 20yrs old.  This would not have sparked my curiosity, and even now in 2008, I would only be able to do physics from 50yrs ago.  

But my teacher didn't do that.  Instead, she taught me to love physics, and this has shaped my life.

How do we create a future of innovation?

How do you take brilliant ideas and make them a reality? Realising science is exciting, not so much because of the potential of commercialisation, but, because it really can improve the world.

Much research and development is a top-down process, beginning with questions like "how do you design an I-pod"? Our biggest challenge at The Weizmann Institute is figuring out how to obtain answers to the questions we don't even have the conceptual framework to ask yet.

For example, Wilhelm Konrad von Roentgen is famous for "accidentally" discovering x-rays. Roentgen had found something in nature which seemed useless, but which fascinated him. He devoted countless mind-numbing hours to studying how electrons move from 1 point to another within a gas. He did this because he had an amazing sense of curiosity that was driven by a need to understand nature.

X-rays weren't discovered by chance.  Chance is when something comes from nothing. His discovery was serendipitous perhaps, but it followed a lot of hard work. Today, a scientist would have to struggle to attract funding for this type of research, even though no one can deny the amazing impact it has had.

Roentgen's story is a classic example of a scientist who didn't begin with a well-defined question. So, how do we fund and support research that goes beyond the I-pod - and leads to discoveries that bring leaps of understanding?  

The first step is to not be driven by the subject, but rather to be impelled by the people. At the Weizmann Institute, we find the best scientists and ask them what they want to research.  We don't ask them what their research is for or how we might make money out of it. Then we bring all our scientists together and provide a great environment where they can collaborate.

We encourage our scientists to engage in multidisciplinary research across departments and faculties, as well as with researchers around the globe. There are few barriers between different scientific departments, and we keep administrative bureaucracy to a minimum. The student to professor ratio is 4:1. 

All students at The Weizmann Institute receive a fellowship. Every year we "hire" about 200 postgraduate students from about 2000 applications, (we have no undergraduate programs).

So how do we choose who gets a place?

We give them an exam...on something we are sure they have never studied before. If they respond by telling us they never learnt that, then they're obviously not curious enough; on the other hand, if they start trying to figure it out - we're interested.

Education systems the world over place too much emphasis on giving "correct" test answers.  Our goal is to distinguish between people who know a lot  and people who are likely to achieve a lot. A high IQ may indicate someone has lots of intelligence, but people with high IQs can be quite ignorant. We look for people have intelligence and know how to use it.

In his book The World is Flat, Thomas L Friedman uses the rather lovely term "Passion Quotient" to describe this ability.

But our approach, which we call "curiosity driven education", extends beyond our students - to the wider community.  We run a number of community based programs for middle and high school students - after all, they are our future Ph.D. students and scientists. 

Sometimes it's easy as noticing high school kids who are bright, adding curiosity and Bingo!

But we also support kids with problems:  Each year we take a group of 15 high school dropouts into a program designed specifically for them. After completing the program, they may still know very little about science, but they are changed citizens.

We run another scholarship program for university undergraduates, (again, hopefully future Weizmann students) in which we reduce their tuition fees in exchange for their tutoring a disadvantaged high school student.

Our unconventional methods get results: Many Institute discoveries have resulted in drugs and technologies that are used around the world, some of them spectacular successes. These include Copaxone®, widely used to treat multiple sclerosis, and RSA encryption technology.

On the rare occasion that a project is criticised for failing, I will still defend our policy of supporting the best science:  The failure was usually not a big loss; it just wasn't a big gain. Even the failures can be important opportunities to learn.

How do we decide which scientific research to support if we don't have an army of administrators to calculate costs and benefits? We discuss it - as scientists.  We don't consider which scientific field is most prominent at the moment; we talk about what science we find the most fascinating, and generally we agree.

Our policy is to fund only the best science: Excellent research will inevitably lead to high quality findings. We fight for this principle, making no exceptions to the rule.

Some people, who don't understand what it is we do, may claim we are "throwing money at nothing".  But we are investing in a very specific outcome - excellent research. 

Prof Daniel Zajfman  

Born in Belgium in 1959, Daniel Zajfman moved to Israel in 1979. He received a B.Sc. in 1983 and a Ph.D. in 1989 from the Technion, in atomic physics. In 1991 he joined the staff of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Particle Physics as a senior scientist. He was appointed associate professor in 1997 and full professor in 2003. Since March 2001, he has been an external member of the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, and in 2005, he was appointed Director in that institute. In November 2006, Prof. Zajfman was elected the tenth President of the Weizmann Institute. He assumed this position on December 1, becoming, at 47, the youngest president the Institute ever had.

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• www.weizmann.ac.il [1]
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• For enquiries about Weizmann Australia, please contact michal.shariv@weizmann.ac.il [3]