Meet Prof. Gonen Singer

Side by side with his academic career, Prof. Singer co-founded CB4, which analyzes product sales behavior patterns and offers natural language recommendations and insights. The company’s products are based on technologies and patents from the realm of business intelligence, statistics, and information compression. During its first years, Prof. Singer acted as the company’s CTO. After a successful round of funding from Sequoia Capital and other investment funds, thanks to which the company established centers in England and the United States, he took on the role of Head of Activities in Israel. “The company has enabled me to realize one of my greatest professional aspirations: turning academic research into an applied tool that can be used by customers worldwide, on a daily basis,” says Singer.

The company has expanded to include three centers (Herzliya, London, and New York) servicing clients across the globe such as Levi’s in the U.S. and China, Media Market in Germany, and Shufersal and Superpharm in Israel. In 2021, CB4 was acquired by American fashion giant, GAP, and has since been its technology representative in Israel.

Prof. Singer (46), married+3, started out in the academic reserve program. He completed his BSc and MSc prior to his mandatory service in the Air Force, and then went on to study at Tel-Aviv University’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, where he acquired his PhD while in active duty. His PhD thesis focused on developing methods for optimal control in dynamic and stochastic environments.

Prof. Singer’s research interests focus on real-world, mathematically complex yet data rich problems that often cannot be solved using classic models. “One of my recent studies, for example, deals with assigning different roles in organizations to potential candidates. Mathematically speaking, we can develop a model that finds an optimal solution for this kind of assignment, according to organizational demands. In addition, the organization has employee data such as years of formal education, time spent in prior roles, location, etc., as well as an indication of their level of success in their roles. The first stage of my research combined interpretable Machine Learning models, meant to study a candidate’s chances of succeeding at a certain role, while identifying the reasons for it. At the second stage, we incorporated the insights gained from Machine Learning algorithms as input for the performance analysis model, in an attempt to assign and allocate candidates while minimizing their dropout rates, and meeting the requirements of their role as defined by the organization.”

Since his arrival at Bar-Ilan four years ago, Prof. Singer published some 30- papers in journals and conferences, won five competitive research grants from prestigious institutions such as the Ministry of Science and Technology and American business software company Intuit Inc., and participated in the organization and management of panels in conferences on operations research, industrial engineering, and information systems. In 2024 he was appointed head of Bar-Ilan’s Industrial Engineering and Information Systems program.