Israeli Sarit Sivan talks biomedical engineering, Braude College, life as a mother
Sivan will be in Pittsburgh May 28 to June 2
For anyone questioning the value of biomedical engineering, Sarit Sivan offers a persuasive answer.
Sivan is the president of the Braude College of Engineering in Karmiel, Israel. A native Israeli, Sivan attended Techicon-Israel Institute of Technology, where she earned her doctorate. In 2006, she was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship and conducted postdoctoral research at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford.
While there, she helped develop material for herniated discs. She worked on other projects as well, bridging the gap between medicine and engineering, including projects to help those who have suffered aneurisms.
Sivan will be in Pittsburgh May 28 to June 2 to discuss her background, life as a Jewish mother with three sons in the IDF and the expansion of Braude College of Engineering, which will include a new 25-acre campus and a new biotechnology engineering building. The $100 million expansion is located in Karmiel. The college already has secured $80 million for the project through Israeli sources.
The expansion, which will increase Braude’s capacity by approximately 50% and further strengthen the Galilee as a center for innovation and economic growth, is of interest to the Pittsburgh Jewish community because of the city’s partnership with the Karmiel-Misgav region, through the Jewish Agency’s Partnership2Gether initiative.
Sivan said that the relationship between the two communities has included a student exchange program between Braude and the University of Pittsburgh.
“We’ve had about 35 students exchanged from both sides and we have a very, very warm relationship,” she said.
Students who took part in the program now work in Israel’s high-tech sector, including biotechnology and mechanical engineering, as well as the food tech industry, Sivan said.
And while the program’s effects can be felt in various fields in both America and Israel, it has also impacted at least one couple’s personal lives, as well.
The program played shadchanit for a pair of students, one of whom — a female student — Sivan was the supervisor for while she did her internship in Pittsburgh.
“When she finished, she met her future husband there while doing her PhD. And now, she’s going to give birth to her second child,” Sivan said.
That marriage might be unique, she said, but the intercontinental connection isn’t.
“Engineering is an international profession. So, we open our students to the world,” she said. “We have entrepreneurs working worldwide.”
Part of the college’s expansion is a planned entrepreneur and innovation center, something Sivan hopes will connect Braude and Pittsburgh in larger ways.
Professional life aside, Sivan is also a mother whose children started serving in the IDF nearly a decade ago. She wrote about her experience as a mother with children serving on the Gaza and Lebanon borders earlier this year in a blog post on The Times of Israel.
“I can not express the fear that a mother has and the strength a mother needs to overcome that fear, wake up in the morning, put on nice clothes, go to work and act as if nothing has happened,” she said.
Work, she said, is the island that helps maintain normality.
And that work at the college, she said, is vital to Israel.
“It’s important to the Galilee, to the north, the resilience of the north, she said.
In some ways, Braude is a microcosm of Israel. Jews, Muslims, Druze and Christians are all enrolled in the school. More than 11,000 alumni have graduated from the college.
The model she said may point the way forward.
“We are very hopeful,” she said. “We are seeking peace. We are coming with the hope everyday that we can make good change, make life better, and that we can live together and be better people,” she said. PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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