Technion

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
הטכניון – מכון טכנולוגי לישראל
Established	1912
Type	Public
President	Peretz Lavie
Academic staff	622
Admin. staff	870
Students	12,849
Undergraduates	9564
Postgraduates	2351
Doctoral students	934
Location	Haifa, Israel
Campus	Urban 1,325 dunams (327 acres)
Website	www.technion.ac.il

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (Hebrew: הטכניון – מכון טכנולוגי לישראל‎) is a public research university in Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1912, Technion is the oldest university in Israel. The university offers degrees in science and engineering, and related fields such as architecture, medicine, industrial management and education. The university's principal language of instruction is Hebrew. There are three Nobel Laureates affiliated with the university.

History

Main article: History of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Albert Einstein at Technion; ca. 1925

The Technion was conceived in the early 1900s by the German-Jewish fund Ezrah, as a school of engineering and sciences. It was to be the only institution of higher learning in then-Ottoman Palestine — other than the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (founded in 1907). Its cornerstone was laid in 1912, and studies began 12 years later in 1924. The Technion witnessed Israel's "battle of the languages": an intense debate over the language of instruction.

In 1923, Albert Einstein visited the Technion. During his visit, he planted a now-famous first palm tree, as an initiative of Nobel tradition. The first palm tree still stands today in front of the old Technion building in Hadar. Einstein founded the first Technion Society, and served as its President upon his return to Germany after his visit to the Technion campus.

On December 19, 2011, a bid by a consortium of Cornell University and Technion won a competition for rights to claim free city land in New York City, as well as $100 million in subsidies to build an engineering campus in the city. The competition was established by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in order to increase entrepreneurship and job growth in the city's technology sector. The winning bid consisted of a 2.1 million square feet state-of-the-art tech campus being built on Roosevelt Island, which will have its first phase completed by 2017, with a temporary off-site campus opening in 2012.

As the institute celebrates its Cornerstone Centennial in 2012, international commentators are increasingly crediting Technion's History as a driving force behind the creation, success and prosperity of the Modern State of Israel.

Organization and administration

Faculty of Industrial Engineering & Management

Computer Science Faculty Building

Technion is divided into six Centers of Excellence, or departments. The The William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering & Management at the Technion (IE&M) is the oldest such department in Israel. IE&M was launched as a Technion academic Department in 1958. The Department grew under the leadership of Pinchas Naor, who served as its founding Dean. Naor's vision was to combine Industrial engineering with Management by creating a large, inherently multidisciplinary unit covering a wide spectrum of activities, from applied engineering to mathematical modeling; from economics and behavioral sciences to operations research and statistics.

The Technion International School of Engineering (ISE) is an undergraduate program at the Technion, taught entirely in English. The ISE began its first year in 2009, and now offers a full BSc. program in Civil Engineering as well as various study abroad options, all taught in English. The students arrive from all over the globe – Asia, Africa, North and South America, Europe and Israel. The students live on campus and enjoy trips around Israel and activities throughout the year.

The Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) was established in January 2005 as a joint endeavour of the Russell Berrie Foundation, the government of Israel, and the Technion. It is one of the largest academic programs in Israel, and is among the largest nanotechnology centers in Europe and the US. RBNI has over 110 faculty members, and approximately 300 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows under its auspices at Technion. Its multidisciplinary activities span 14 different faculties.

The GTEP Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program is a multidisciplinary center of excellence bringing together Technion's top researchers in energy science and technology from over nine different faculties. Founded in 2010, GTEP's 4-point strategy targets research and development of alternative fuels; renewable energy sources; energy storage and conversion; and energy conservation. The GTEP is presently the only center in Israel offering graduate studies in energy science and technology.

The Bruce and Ruth Rappaport Faculty of Medicine is one of four state-sponsored medical schools in Israel. It was founded in 1969, and is active in basic science research and pre-clinical medical training in anatomy, biochemistry, biophysics, immunology, microbiology, physiology, and pharmacology. Other facilities on the Faculty of Medicine campus include teaching laboratories, a medical library, lecture halls, and seminar rooms. Academic programs are offered at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine leading to Master of Science (M.S.), Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), and Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degrees. The medical campus is located in the neighborhood of Bat Galim, adjacent to Rambam Hospital, the largest medical center in Northern Israel. It has developed collaborative research and medical education programs with various institutions in medicine and bio-medical engineering including Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Toronto, and Mayo Medical School. The Bruce and Ruth Rappaport Faculty of Medicine offers medical training leading to a M.D. degree to qualified American and Canadian graduates of pre-med programs under the Technion American Medical Students Program (TeAM).

Techion offers degrees in architecture. A B.Arch is awarded after five years of study. Its graduate program in architecture accepts about 15 students each year, and it accepts about 4–5 doctoral students, focusing on subjects such as architectural theory and philosophy, bio-climate and energy conscious design, morphology, computer application, person-environment relations, housing, architectural history, and urban design.

Technion also offers many after-school and summer enrichment courses for young people on subjects ranging from introductory electronics and computer programming to aerospace, architecture, biology, chemistry and physics. Two examples are Scitech and the Math Summer Camp, devoted to number theory.

Academics

For national rankings in 2011, Technion was ranked the #2-4 university in Israel by ARWU. In global rankings for that year, Technion was ranked #102-150 by ARWU, #220 by QS, and #201-225 by Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Research

• In 1982, Dan Shechtman discovered a Quasicrystal structure. This is a structure with a Symmetry in the order of 5 – a phenomenon considered impossible until then by the then-current prevailing theories of Crystallography. In 2011 he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this discovery.

• In 2004, two Technion professors, Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover, won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the biological system responsible for disassembling protein in the cell.

• Shulamit Levenberg, 37, was chosen by Scientific American magazine as one of the leading scientists in 2006 for the discovery of a method to transplant skin in a way the body does not reject.

• In the 1970s, computer scientists Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv developed the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm for compression. In 2007 and 1995 respectively, they won a IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal for pioneering work in data compression and especially for developing the algorithm.

• Moussa Youdim developed Rasagiline, a drug used in early Parkinson's disease.

• In 1998, Technion successfully launched the "Gurwin TechSat II" microsatellite, making Technion one of five universities with a student program that designs, builds, and launches its own satellite. The satellite stayed in orbit until 2010

People

Dan Shechtman, who has taught at Technion since 1975, was awarded the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry for the discovery of quasicrystals.

Faculty

• Eli Biham, cryptanalyst and cryptographer
• David Bohm, theoretical physicist and philosopher of the mind
• Yaakov Dori, President
• Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover, recipients of the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation
• Amos Horev, former President, former Chairman of Rafael; member of the Israeli Turkel Commission of Inquiry into the Gaza flotilla raid
• Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv, developers of the Lempel-Ziv (LZW) compression algorithm
• Liviu Librescu, hero of the Virginia Tech massacre
• Marcelle Machluf, biotechnology and food engineering
• Shlomo Moran, computer scientist
• Asher Peres, co-discoverer of quantum teleportation, awarded the 2004 Rothschild Prize in Physics
• Nathan Rosen, co-author with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky of physics paper about the EPR paradox in quantum mechanics
• Rachel Shalon, first woman engineer in Israel
• Dan Shechtman, first observer of quasicrystals and winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry
• Shlomo Shamai, electrical information information theorist
• Shmuel Zaks, computer scientist and mathematician
• Moshe Arens, Professor for aeronautics from 1957 to 1962.

Alumni

Technion graduates constitute over 70 percent of the founders and managers of high-tech businesses in Israel. Eighty percent of Israeli NASDAQ companies are led by Technion graduates, and 74 percent of managers in Israel's electronic industries hold Technion degrees.

• Shai Agassi — IT entrepreneur, former Executive Board member of SAP AG and founder of Better Place
• Saul Amarel — pioneer in Artificial intelligence.
• Ron Arad (b. 1958) – Air Force weapon systems officer; classified as missing in action since 1986
• Itzhak Bentov — inventor and author
• Andrei Broder — captcha developer, Vice President of Yahoo, formerly vice president of AltaVista
• Yaron Brook — president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute
• Yossi Gross — Medical devices innovator and entrepreneur; founding partner of Rainbow Medical
• Andi Gutmans — developer of PHP and co-founder of Zend Technologies
• Ram Karmi (born 1931) – architect
• Uzi Landau — politician
• Daniel M. Lewin — co-founder and CTO of Akamai, holder of two Technion degrees, killed while resisting AA Flight 11 hijackers 9-11 Commission Report
• Udi Manber — search engine developer and vice president of Google, formerly vice president of Amazon.com
• Dov Moran — founder of M-Systems and InFone
• Yuval Neeman — physicist – discoverer of the quark model, brigadier-general of the IDF
• Amnon Niv – architect
• Abe Peled — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NDS Group plc, provider of technology solutions for the pay TV industry
• Avraham Shochat — politician
• Zeev Suraski — developer of PHP and co-founder of Zend Technologies
• Hanna Swaid – former mayor of Eilaboun, Knesset member
• Yossi Vardi — civil servant, entrepreneur
• Joseph Wang — electrochemist, world's most cited engineer and chemist, Professor at UC San Diego
• Avraham Yaski — architect, winner of 1982 Israel Prize for Architecture
• Zvi Zilker — former mayor of Ashdod
• Zohar Zisapel — founder of the Rad Group

See also

• List of universities in Israel
• Science and technology in Israel

External links

• Technion – Israel Institute Of Technology website