Choose New Jersey, a nonprofit organization advocating for business investments in the Garden State, included an NJIT representative in its delegation visit to Israel this month.
The organization sent 16 representatives from academia, business and government to meet their peers and pitch New Jersey as a good choice for U.S. operations, particularly for high-technology companies and startups. They also visited in October 2018, but this year was the first time an NJIT representative went along.
NJIT is represented on the Choose New Jersey board of directors by President Joel Bloom and sent New Jersey Innovation Institute President Donald Sebastian on the trip. Officials from Rowan University, Rutgers University and Princeton University also attended.
The mission included several meetings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the latter known as Israel’s high-tech hub.
“In each of the venues we met with Israeli startups and related economic development agencies. Each meeting had a different tech-sector focus [such as] cybersecurity, digital health, unmanned aerial vehicles and biotechnology,” Sebastian said.
“The greatest opportunity for NJIT is to attract these companies to establish U.S. operations in New Jersey, and in NJIT’s VentureLink in particular,” he added. “Once here, they can draw on the resources of our university — employ students, partner with faculty researchers, or subscribe to services from the makerspace, Microfabrication Innovation Center, or York Center Material Characterization Lab — to grow their U.S.-based operations.”
“As they outgrow incubator space, those relationships will persist with NJIT, while the success of the model will attract a new cycle of innovators.”
Choose New Jersey has also sent delegations to Germany, India and Ireland.
