History of IBM Research in Israel

Established in 1972 as the IBM Israel Scientific Center, the IBM Haifa Research Lab has grown from three researchers to over five hundred employees, including regular staff members and many students. The IBM Haifa Research Lab is located in a custom-built complex on the University of Haifa campus, with branches in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Current projects include healthcare, cloud computing, formal and simulation-based verification technologies, programming environments, chip design, storage systems, information retrieval, collaboration, and much more.

At the IBM Haifa Research Lab, 25% of the technical staff have doctoral degrees in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, or related fields. Employees are actively involved in teaching at Israeli higher education institutions such as the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) and supervising post-graduate theses. Many employees have received IBM awards for achievements and excellence.

Over the years, the IBM Haifa Research Lab in Israel described itself as attempting to strike a delicate balance between applied (relatively short-term) and long-term industrial research. While contributing to product development on many levels, the Lab also maintains close ties to the academic world. The Lab aims to simultaneously meet the needs of the present day while helping shape the future of information technology.

Since its establishment in 1972, the IBM Haifa Research Lab described itself as trying to be responsive to both the research goals of IBM and the specific needs of Israeli industry – from medical non-invasive diagnosis projects, to computer-controlled irrigation, scheduling El Al flight crews, and Hebrew voice recognition. Today, its contributions play a role in emerging technologies such as IBM’s eLiza project for self-managing computer systems, iSCSI for the IBM TotalStorage IP Storage 200i, the InfiniBand high bandwidth network protocol, Enterprise Storage Systems, and information retrieval engines. In addition, verification tools developed in Haifa are used throughout IBM labs to verify and test software and hardware.

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. In 1972, Shimon Yagil contacted AI explaining that IBM Israel was looking for ways to increase IBM's presence in Israel. He asked AI to make presentations on IBM's Scientific Centers and write a proposal for such a Scientific Center in Israel. David Cohen, general manager of IBM Israel, and others attended the presentations and enthusiastically endorsed the proposal which eventually IBM World Trade accepted. This was the genesis of the idea. Prof. Phillip Rabinowich lobbied for IBM's center to be at the Weizmann Institute. However, the Scientific center was established at the Technion, as promoted by Shimon and AI, so that the undergraduate and graduate students there will learn about IBM's scientific activities.

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