Partners

The leading team of USI Ltd. experts represents all the relevant skills required for urban strategy making. In some cases USI Ltd. receives support from its sister company Czamanski Ben Shahar and Co. Ltd. 

Prof. Daniel Czamanski President and CEO	Ph.D. (economics)
	Daniel Czamanski is a professor of urban economics in the city and regional planning program and serves as the head of the economics of architecture and building specialization at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He is the director of the city complexity research lab. He was a faculty member at the Ohio State University. He has published a number of books and tens of academic papers. In the past, Czamanski served as advisor to three ministers of energy in Israel and was the head of a task force concerning the re-organization of Israel Electricity Corp. During 2003-2005 he was the senior vice president at the Canadian Energy Research Institute. Czamanski is chairman of Czamanski Ben Shahar and Co. ltd., the leading consulting firm in real-estate economics in Israel. For 10 years, Czamanski served as chairman of the Haifa Center for the Promotion of Entrepreneurship. He was member of the education committee of the Small Business Administration, of the board of Israel Junior Achievement and deputy chair of the Haifa-Boston Partnership. Czamanski served as chair of the economics subcommittees of Co-operation North, a cross-border economic development effort in Palestine and Israel, and of Border Regimes project. Currently, he serves as senior fellow at the Economic Cooperation Foundation.

Prof. Raphael Bar-El	Ph.D. (economics)
	Raphael Bar-El is a professor at the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Ben-Gurion University. Bar-El was Director of the Israel National Economic Planning Authority, at the Ministry of Economy and Planning. He served as member of the Joint (Jordan-Israel-U.S.A.) Steering Committee for the Integrated Development of the Jordan Rift Valley. He was in charge of the Economic Development Plan of the Long-term Master Plan for Israel. He was in charge of the economic master plans for a number of cities in Israel (including Rehovoth and Rishon leZion) and participated in the regional development plans in various countries such as Turkey, Argentina, Philippines, Paraguay, Brazil. In the last few years, he worked with the State Government of Ceara (Brazil) on policy measures for the achievement of an improved distribution of income through economic regional development. In the mid-1990s he was member of the Michael Porter project “Building Regional Competitive Advantage in the Middle East”. In the past he was a researcher and planner, Director of Research, and finally the Director General of the Development Study Center. He has accumulated an extensive experience in regional development research and planning in various countries. Bar-El is an expert in regional development, urban growth, economic cooperation in the Middle East, peripheral regions and the location of high-tech activities.

Prof. Itzhak Benenson	Ph.D. (mathematical biophysics)
	Itzhak Benenson is a professor at the Department of Geography and Human Environment and head of the Spatial Modeling and GIS laboratory at Tel-Aviv University. He is an author of 75 papers and book chapters, and 3 books. His latest book “Geosimulation: Automata-Based Modeling of Uban Phenomena,” was published by Wiley, 2004. His recent projects include a country-level GIS of streets and roads, analysis of residential distribution in Israeli cities based on individual-level population census, analysis of Israeli planning regulations in light of real urban dynamics and developing the OBEUS software for urban modeling and simulation. Applying the Geosimulation approach to the real-world problem, Prof Benenson develops spatially explicit high-resolution models that serve as tools for creation of planning scenarios and establishing development policy at local and regional levels. The recent Geosimulation applications include high-resolution model of driver’s parking behavior in the city, a model of residential behavior and a model of pedestrian behavior in the city. Benenson is an expert in urban modeling and simulation, spatial population dynamics, geographic information systems, applied statistics and geostatistics.

Prof. Gideon Fishman	Ph.D. (sociology)
	Gideon Fishman is a professor of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Haifa, Israel. His research is focused in the areas of criminal behavior and juvenile delinquency, violence, judicial decision making, immigration and acculturation. Fishman is the co-author of two books, and has published many scientific articles. Over the years he has been the chairman of the department of Sociology, the Dean of Social Science and the Dean of Graduate Studies and currently is heading the Center for the Study of Society. Currently he is collaborating with several European Universities in a study of absorption of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. In addition he has been a guest editor of several professional journals, a referee of research proposals for the Israeli Science Foundation and the Academy of Science as well as the Israeli police, and the U.S. Israel bi-national foundation. For many years he provided consulting services to the Israeli Army concerning mental health and draft policies of special populations. He headed a team of social science specialists planning “Kfar-Veradim” in the Galilee. In addition he has been for five years a consultant and evaluator of the VisionQuest program in the U.S. which is a private nation-wide organization that treats hard core juvenile delinquents. Currently he leads a national project for the Ministry of Science on Violence in Israel in order to detect patterns of victimization, fear of crime and means to respond to it. It is based on crime trends of the last 25 years and a survey of 2,500 households. Fishman is interested in social policy and evaluation of social projects. His main area of expertise is secondary data analysis, survey research and applied policy analysis.

Dr. Maria Marinov	Ph.D. (city and regional planning)
	Maria Marinov has an extensive experience in spatial analysis and economic aspects of city planning. Before joining USI Ltd., Marinov worked in a variety of consulting and research organizations. She was part of a team that mapped out the current and future infrastructure needs of Israel. Marinov is interested in the application of non-linear models to urban phenomena. She published a number of papers on the dynamics of urban morphology and the retail system.