BOOTING UP IN ROMANIA

Five students from the Technology Management M.Sc Program participate in unique summer camp at Cluj Napoca University. 

Victoria Govnov, Michael Sokolinski, Yotam Ze'ev Shuval, Ilya Dikman, and Omri Simchi are five Master's degree students from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Technology Management who took part in an international business strategy course led by lecturer Aaron Ratner. They did not expect it to take them to a unique hackathon in Romania.

The relationship between both academic institutions started about three years ago, with a visit of a large delegation from Cluj Napoca University to HIT. They were impressed by the Institute's activities and set out to establish a wide-ranging cooperative relationship.  As a result of this visit, Prof. Anca Constantinescu, a researcher of Industrial Marketing at the Technological University of Cluj-Napoca, contacted Aharon Ratner and asked to create an interface between their respective courses.

Ilya Dikman, an Information Systems Engineer at Alta who is earning his master’s degree in Systems Engineering at HIT’s Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Technology Management: "As part of Aaron Ratner's course, we were presented with a case study that we had to solve and present to our class together- a team of five students from Israel and four students from Romania. The case given to us was a simulation of 'marketing penetration' of a French product into the Israeli and Romanian markets," Dikman says. "We worked together and presented a detailed plan for a fictitious product which was gift boxes for holidays and other occasions full of French premium products such as creams and perfumes."

The presentation by Dickman and his fellow students was so impressive that Professor Constantinescu decided to invite the five, along with their lecturers, Aharon Ratner and Prof. Arik Sade, to attend a special summer boot camp offered under the auspices of the EUT+ organization (an umbrella organization of 8 leading campuses in the fields of technology in Europe). The HIT group were the only Israeli representatives at this gathering.

"After our successful partnership in a joint study with students from Romania and Israel, we were happy to invite these students from HIT to work with us to solve issues in industry through sustainable development and digitalization," said Prof. Constantinescu. 

As part of the boot camp, the Israeli students connected with students from various European universities such as Poland, Cyprus, Spain, France, and more. Prof. Arik Sade lectured on "Optimization of Product Replacement," and Aharon Ratner gave a talk on "How Israel Became a Startup Nation."

"It was apparent that the HIT students were very prominent and successful at the conference and evoked a great deal of interest. It was also evident that HIT is gaining an excellent reputation throughout Europe, and while at the camp, several lecturers from European institutions asked us to establish similar collaboration with them," said Ratner.

The collaboration with the University of Cluj-Napoca was made possible with the assistance of the International Office at HIT, which encourages the establishment of academic partnerships with institutions abroad. Among other things, the International Office promotes the participation of students in programs and short workshops, as well as conferences abroad, by assisting in financing the trip and representing the Institute.

HIT- Holon Institute of Technology has extensive activities abroad with several international collaboration programs, including student exchange programs, with approximately 130 academic institutions from more than 35 countries.