Koby Rubinstein

Professor Jacob (Koby) Rubinstein is the Executive Vice President for Research at the Technion and serves as CEO of the Technion R&D Foundation (TRDF), a subsidiary that serves as the administrative and financial framework for research activities, scientific experiments, and technical analyses. He is also the Minnie and Ruben Finkelstein Academic Chair.

In his position with TRDF, Prof. Rubinstein is responsible for academic issues related to research at the Technion, including the coordination and development of research contracts with funding agencies and industry, new collaborative research agreements, research prizes, and ethics in research. The Technion’s tech transfer commercialization office, T3, also falls under the auspices of TRDF. Unrelated to his role in research and commercialization, in early 2021 he was charged with leading the “Creating and Open and Safe Campus” initiative, to provide rapid, non-invasive testing and COVID tracking for students.

As a mathematician, Prof. Rubinstein focuses on applied math, spanning several disciplines including partial differential equations, asymptotic analysis, hydrodynamics, superconductivity, optics, medicine, and more. He has published more than 120 papers and holds nine international patents. He also co-founded the startup Inray, which developed software for the optometry market and was sold in 2012 to Shamir Optical.

Prof. Rubinstein earned his bachelor’s degree at Tel Aviv University, his master’s degree at the Technion in 1982, and his Ph.D. at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University in 1985. He conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University and joined the Technion in 1988, where he chaired the Applied Mathematics Program for three terms between 1995 and 2010, and chaired the Faculty of Mathematics from 2009 to 2012. He has also been president of the Israel Mathematical Union, and currently serves as an adjunct professor in the Mathematics Department at Indiana University, a position he has held since 2007.

Prof. Rubinstein has received a number of awards including the Landau Prize in Exact Science, the New England and the Seiden Awards for scientific excellence, the H. Rich Award for Innovation, the S. Kaplan Award for creative management, and the Member for Life Award from the Technion Students Association. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, now called AAAS.