Steering Committee

Amnon Shashua

President & CEO of Mobileye and Senior Vice President, Intel Corporation

Prof. Amnon Shashua holds the Sachs chair in computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His field of expertise is computer vision and machine learning. Amnon has founded three startups in the computer vision and machine learning fields. In 1995 he founded CogniTens that specializes in the area of industrial metrology and is today a division of the Swedish Corporation Hexagon. In 1999 he cofounded Mobileye with his partner Ziv Aviram. Mobileye develops system-on-chips and computer vision algorithms for driving assistance systems and is developing a platform for autonomous driving to be launched in 2021. In August 2014, Mobileye claimed the title for largest Israeli IPO ever, by raising $1B at a market cap of $5.3B. In August 2017, Mobileye became an Intel company. Today, Prof. Shashua is the CEO and CTO of Mobileye and a Senior Vice President of Intel Corporation. In 2010 Amnon co-founded OrCam which harnesses computer vision and artificial intelligence to assist people who are visually impaired or blind.

Rammy Bahalul

Director, Industry Business Development for Autonomous Machines and Vehicles, NVIDIA

Rammy is heading NVIDIA Automotive Ecosystem development is Israel, focusing on supporting smart mobility startups and local OEMs through AI and Deep Learning education. Rammy has more than 20 years of experience holding executive roles in business development, product management and R&D in the Semiconductor industry.

Prior to NVIDIA Rammy was VP Sales and Business development for VocalZoom leading key engagements with Automotive OEMs and Tier1 globally. Prior to VocalZoom Rammy held multiple executive roles with Israeli startups and US Corporates like, PMC -Sierra, Conexant, Mindspeed and Orckit, while residing in the states for 20 years.

Rammy received an MBA from Recanati Business School at Tel Aviv University. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UB University in Connecticut, USA.

Erez Dagan

Mobileye

Gadi Hornstein

Israel Innovation Authority

With more than 15 years of expertise in marketing and R&D roles, Gadi Hornstein leads the IoT and Automotive sector in the Israel Innovation Authority thorough all its verticals, making sure it enables the growth of the local startups that invents future’s technology.

Prior to The Israel Innovation Authority, Gadi was acting as the director of marketing and business development in several automotive startups. Prior to that, he was acting as the product manager of better place EV’s navigation system, venture-backed international company that developed and sold battery-charging and switching infrastructure and services for electric cars. Before better place Gadi also worked for Intel Haifa Israel Development Center and IAI in various technical and managerial roles.

Gadi holds an MBA from Ruppin Academic Center and BSc. in software engineering from Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering.

Gabby Sarusi

Electrooptics and Photonics Engineering, Ben-Gurion University

Prof. Gabby Sarusi is a faculty member of the Photonics and electrooptic department in faculty of engineering and member the nano-science institute at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev since 2012. His main areas of researches are quantum structure infrared photodetectors, nano-materials for photonics applications, band-gap engineering, thermal energy harvesting and very high sensitivity biosensors. He is currently leading a program aiming to develop low cost SWIR detector for automotive LIDAR and for night vision device based on nano-photonics technologies. In addition, He is co-founder of several startup companies, among them are Imagine-mobile augmented reality and TechSee. Prior to his academic and entrepreneurship carrier, Prof. Sarusi hold several executive positions at Elbit System – Electrooptic (ElOp), where he was: V.P., Head of the Space and Air Imagery Intelligence Division, V.P. - Chief Scientist and Head of Thermal Vision System Development. Prof. Sarusi holds double B.Sc. with honor in Nuclear Engineering and in Material Science, M.Sc. with honor and Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University in Physical-Electronics Engineering. He did his post doctorate at AT&T Bell Labs. Murray-Hill N.J. and in NASA-JPL, Pasadena CA on quantum structure photonic devices.

David Abraham

Head, Regional Technology Office, Robert Bosch GmbH

David Abraham is heading Bosch new Regional Technology Office in Israel, focusing on technology scouting for the Corporate Research unit after serving as an Investment Principal with the venture arm of Bosch Group in its Tel Aviv office.

David has more than 20 years of experience in business strategy, communications systems R&D, and strong academic background in research and teaching in electrical engineering.

In his previous positions, David led the Corporate Strategy unit of ECI telecom. Prior to ECI Telecom David held key positions with several acquired startups: he served as the CTO of MEMSCAP Optical Components Business Unit (formerly GalayOr, a $20m exit), and as a system architect with Lucent Technologies (formerly Chromatis Networks, a $4.8Bn exit).

David holds a B.Sc. (summa cum laude), M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.

Anat Lea Bonshtien

Chairman and Director, Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Initiative Prime Minister's Office

Dr. Anat Lea Bonshtien serves as the Chairman and Director of the Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Initiative as of January 2017. Prior to this, she served as the Technology and Regulation Manager of the Initiative. In addition, Dr. Bonshtien serves in the Board of Directors of the Capsula Israeli Smart Transportation Center. She is also a member of the National Science Committee for Energy under the Ministry of Science and Technology. Dr. Bonshtien is a former Mimshak Fellow, a science and policy fellowship program which integrates scientific knowledge with decision making. Dr. Bonshtien holds a MSc and a PhD in Biochemistry from Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

Ran Gazit

Group Manager, Smart Sensing & Vision Systems Group, General Motors Advanced Technical Center - Israel

Ran is currently leading the Smart Sensing & Vision Systems group at General Motors Advanced Technical Center - Israel.

Ran received his B.Sc and M.Sc. degrees (Cum Laude) from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in 1986 and 1990, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree in Aeronautics and in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, CA, in 1996.

Ran worked with RAFAEL, Israel on research and development of advanced guidance and control algorithms. As a research associate at Stanford University, Ran developed algorithms for a distributed Air Traffic Control concept based on GPS. He then switched from satellite navigation to speech processing, and went to lead the Speaker Identification team at Comverse Technology. Since 1998 Ran was the CTO and chief scientist of Persay, a Comverse Technology spin-off developing voice biometrics solutions for remote services. Ran joined GM Israel center in 2008, and is currently leading the Smart Sensing & Vision Systems group at this center.

Chen Sagiv

Co-Founder & Co CEO, SagivTech Ltd

Chen has over 20 years of experience in the image processing industry both in Israel and the Netherlands. In addition to her activities with the company, she also collaborates with academic partners in Israel and Europe. Chen holds a PhD from Tel Aviv University in Applied Mathematics, with specializations in texture analysis, filter banks and optimization problems.

Micha Risling

Sr. Vice President, Marketing & Business Development and Head of the Automotive Business Unit, Valens

With more than 20 years of expertise in marketing and R&D executive roles, Micha leads Valens’ marketing and business development activities in several verticals and heads the company’s automotive business unit. Over his tenure at Valens, Micha had a major role in establishing the company’s reputation as a leader in the digital connectivity space. Micha heads Valens’ global automotive operations, from concept to execution.

Prior to Valens, Micha was director of marketing and strategy at Saifun Semiconductor, Israel (acquired by Spansion), a leading provider of intellectual property (IP) solutions for the non-volatile memory (NVM) market. Prior to that, he was director of the mobile division product strategy at M-Systems, Israel (acquired by SanDisk), a world leader in flash memory addressing the mobile, portable and embedded markets. Micha also served as director of technical customer integration at M-Systems. Prior to that, he was a senior VLSI engineer at semiconductor companies OptiX Networks, Conexant and LSI Logic.

Micha received an executive MBA from the Kellogg School of Business through Northwestern University in Chicago and the Recanati Business School at Tel Aviv University. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tel Aviv University.

Rutie Adar

Head of Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center

Rutie Adar has been heading Samsung’s Strategy and Innovation Center, Israel, after she joined Samsung in 2010. Within this center Samsung Electronics collaborates and invests in startups focused on core technologies to fuel innovative platforms in growth domains including smart machines and automotive, digital health, internet of things, and artificial intelligence.

Rutie has been working in the Semiconductors industry during the past 25 years, at both startup and multinational companies. She started her career developing image processing and parallel processing algorithms. In the past 20 years Rutie held various managerial positions in marketing , strategy, planning and business development. She has BSc and MSc in mathematics and computer science from the Hebrew University Jerusalem and MBA from Tel Aviv University.

Koby Cohen

Over 22 years of experience in developing multidisciplinary systemsת with hands on development of advanced computer vision and machine learning algorithms in leading companies.

Michael J. Granoff

Founder, Maniv Mobility

Michael Granoff is founder of Maniv Mobility, which became the first Israel-based venture capital firm exclusively focused on the new mobility future with its $42 million close in 2017. The Maniv portfolio of startups, most out of Israel, includes companies developing sensors, software, data monetization, autonomous systems, over-the-air updates, virtualization, localization, automotive cyber-security and more.

Aside from several startup boards, Mr. Granoff serves on the board of Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), a Washington, DC-based policy and advocacy organization he helped establish in 2004. Past board roles included that of electric car network developer Better Place. He has been involved in three US Presidential campaigns and in 2010 received Brandeis University’s Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship.

Mr. Granoff holds a B.A. from Tufts University, an MBA and JD from Kellogg, Northwestern University, is a veteran marathon runner and father of four.

Nizan Sagiv