Dr. Ori Allon Boosts TAU Entrepreneurship Center
High-tech entrepreneur Dr. Ori Allon donated 2 million NIS to Tel Aviv University's Entrepreneurship Center, it was announced Thursday. The generous gift ensures the expansion of the Entrepreneurship Center’s activity with an emphasis on its accessibility to students and researchers across all disciplines at TAU.
Allon’s donation will boost three new projects at the Entrepreneurship Center. A track of studies offering entrepreneurship courses across all disciplines, predominately to undergraduates. A competitive annual hackathon driving fast multidisciplinary solutions for various challenges—social, environmental and many more. The third project is the development of a new program for promoting women’s entrepreneurship at TAU, aiming to increase the percentage of female students pursuing degrees in the worlds of business and entrepreneurship.
Accelerating Student Success
“The future is reliant on forward-thinking, innovative leaders who will challenge norms, and bring impactful, new ideas to the world," said Allon. "It is programs such as these at TAU that will exponentially accelerate students' success and I am proud to be able to support that.”
As part of the new collaboration, a special committee will be established, comprising representatives from Allon’s office together with experts from all disciplines at TAU. This committee will support projects in the various tracks, fostering the next generation of Israeli entrepreneurs.
Dr. Ori Allon
Prof. Moshe Zviran, Chief Entrepreneurship and Innovation Officer at TAU, said that "Dr. Allon's generous donation will enable TAU to leverage the activities of its Entrepreneurship Center, originally established with funding from Israel's Council for Higher Education, and to expand its teaching activities which target all students and researchers at TAU, in order to enhance exposure to entrepreneurship and innovation all over the campus."
Originally from Israel, Dr. Allon has built a career creating software-driven businesses. He is the co-founder of Compass, a New York-based real estate technology company, and has had two successful exits: Julpan, acquired by Twitter, and Orion, acquired by Google. Allon earned his PhD in computer science at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Tel Aviv University is ranked 5th in the world for entrepreneurship by Startup Genome, and among the world's top 10 (the only one outside the US) in PitchBook’s university rankings of successful producers of entrepreneurs, based on the number of venture-capital founders among each institution's alumni.