Assaf’s position as CTIO of Israel’s largest aviation group’s main goals are the search for and introduction of innovative, market-disruptive technologies into the company’s line of products, supporting the ongoing processes of business core definitions ,as well as facilitating organization-wide change towards future challenges.
Concurrently, as chairman of Hangar Labs, Assaf is leading the creation and evolvement of Israel’s first Commercial Aviation MRO Innovation Hub, fusing the global aviation business world with the start-up nations’ plethora of ideas and technologies.
In addition, Assaf is orchestrating a few corporate-level, multi-million strategic innovative initiatives, combining the efforts of several in-house resources in areas such as critical infrastructure, big-data analytics, mobility and the likes.
Assaf is fluent in disruptive technology injections, laughs in the face of pivoting large-scale projects, and embraces visionary-grade decision making processes – to name a few.
For the last 12 years Assaf played a critical role in numerous large-scale, technologically advanced R&D and production initiatives – involving robotics, automation and autonomy, control systems, user interfaces development for mobile applications, sensor integration within hybrid eco-systems – spanning land, sea and air platforms.
Building corporate innovation from the ground up, Assaf has an extensive engaging experience starting with assembly-floor bluecoats, through research scientists in the metallurgic lab, drinking coffee on project breaks with R&D engineers and planning roadshow trips with Biz-dev professionals.
As an integral part of introducing that specific strain of innovation into large corporations, Assaf has effectively produced, coordinated and hosted both internal and external events – ranging from in-house workshops for selected employees, through large-scale, hangar-sized mega-events – to public meetups in hip downtown Tel-Aviv venues.
Some of Assaf’s academic collaborative efforts include the development of an innovative methodology with the Technion, DARPA’s robotic challenge ROBIL team and an apprenticeship program spanning industry and the academia.
Several international patents are a direct derivative of these activities.
Assaf holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from HIT, supplemental studies in human factors engineering and corporate-level financing & economy studies.
