Zev Zelig, CEO of Genzyme Israel and the company's European Vice President, mainly refers to the cooperation between the government, companies, academia and investors and the experience gained at the ILSI Biomed conference
Undoubtedly, the experience gained at the ILSI biomed conference and the close relationship in Israel between the Office of the Chief Scientist, the investors, the start-up companies, the universities and the large pharmaceutical companies in Israel is a model that can be exported to other countries of our size that do not benefit from natural resources and rely mainly on their excellent human capital. Says Zev Zelig - CEO of Genzyme Israel and vice president of Europe for the company for about twenty years. Zelig said these things in an interview with the science website as part of the Life Sciences Baltics conference, which he was one of the organizers of.
Zelig previously served as the chairman of the umbrella organization of the pharmaceutical companies in Israel - Pharma Israel, a member of the Mirage Foundation for the development of young managers and among the founders of the ILSI organization - the umbrella organization of life sciences in Israel.
"About two years ago at the Biomed ILSI conference, I was asked to accompany DAINIUS KREIVYS, the Minister of Economy of Lithuania, during his visit to the conference. After about an hour and a half of an intensive tour with the delegation, the minister expressed his wish that a similar conference be held in Lithuania, and then intuitively I answered him, why don't you hold such a conference in Lithuania, and he asked if I was organizing such a conference, would you join in helping to organize the conference, I told him absolutely yes. After about two months I received an invitation to come to Lithuania as a guest of the government and was asked by the minister to join the team organizing the first conference of the Baltic states in Vilnius."
"In collaboration with Paulius Lukauskas (PAULIUS LUKAUSKAS) from the director of Enterprise Lithuania; The National Authority for Economic Cooperation and Investments in Lithuania We started by building a conference steering committee of 12 members (in which I was the only representative from outside Lithuania). The committee began intensive work in organizing the conference when two main recommendations recommended to the Lithuanian government were perfectly accepted - the first is that incentives will be given to the participants, both the lecturers and the companies, such as a free flight to Lithuania, free exhibition space for companies and more. And the second recommendation was that the government harness the entire local life sciences industry for the benefit of the conference, and so it was."
"The conference was a great success. The conference has over 700 participants, including about 110 Israelis who arrived in Lithuania on a special chartered flight financed by the Lithuanian government. The main lecturer at the opening of the conference was Nobel laureate Prof. Ada Yonat, who most of all reflected Israeli innovation along with great openness to collaboration with researchers in other countries."
"The complete mobilization of the Lithuanian government in favor of the conference is reflected in the fact that seven ministers of the Lithuanian government participated during the conference, as well as a number of deputy ministers and senior government officials. The participation of senior officials and ministers reflects the deep commitment of the Lithuanian government to the issue of life sciences and the seriousness with which they view cooperation with the State of Israel."
There is no doubt that as ambassadors of goodwill we brought to Lithuania the Israeli ingenuity, the extraordinary ability to see the needs of another country and to share the experience accumulated over years in Israel.
"The conference will be held once every two years, and at the next conference that will be held in 2014, I was asked to be a member of the organizing committee and I gladly accepted. All representatives of the Lithuanian government appealed to the Israeli companies to join the local companies in entrepreneurial projects for the development of technologies in the field of life sciences and there is no doubt that such cooperation will strengthen the relationship between Israel and Lithuania in the years to come."
It should be noted that the Israeli part was also significant in the scientific aspect, when the Bioforum company that was responsible for building the content and international marketing managed to bring distinguished lecturers from Israel and the rest of the world, and also to organize a group of 110 senior participants from the Israeli biomedical industry.
