Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
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The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (Hebrew: הטכניון – מכון טכנולוגי לישראל; commonly abbreviated as Technion IIT) is a university in Haifa, Israel, founded 1924. The Technion was instituted with a focus on physical sciences, engineering, and architecture, but has also become one of the top medical schools in the world - boasting more current Nobel Laureates on faculty than any other medical school in the world [1].
The Technion offers both undergraduate and graduate studies in a wide range of fields, including:
- Electrical engineering
- Civil and environmental engineering
- Mechanical engineering
- Biomedical engineering
- Chemical engineering
- Food engineering and biotechnology
- Agricultural engineering
- Aerospace engineering
- Industrial engineering and management
- Computer science
- Mathematics
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Biology
- Architecture and urban planning
- Science education and technology education
- Medicine
- Materials science
Currently the Technion teaches around 13,000 students, about 10,000 of whom are undergraduates.
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[edit] Early history
The Technion was conceived in the early 1900s by the German-Jewish fund Ezrah, as a school of engineering and sciences, and the only higher learning institution, in then Ottoman Palestine. The cornerstone was laid in 1912, but studies began only 12 years later, following an intense debate over the language of instruction. Ezrah deemed the then-developing Modern Hebrew inappropriate for scientific instruction, and demanded that German be used instead. However, in the aftermath of World War I and the decline of Germany's influence as a European superpower, Hebrew was adopted.
The Technion was opened in 1924, although the official opening ceremony took place in 1925.
The first class amounted to 16 students, majoring in civil engineering and architecture.
During the 1930s, the Technion absorbed many Jewish scientists fleeing Nazi Germany and its neighboring countries.
Until the opening of the school of engineering in the Ben Gurion University in the early 1970s, the Technion was the only institution in the country offering engineering degrees.
[edit] Faculty of Medicine
The Bruce and Ruth Rappaport Faculty of Medicine is one of three state sponsored medical schools in Israel. It was founded in 1969 and is active in basic science research and preclinical medical training in anatomy, biochemistry, biophysics, immunology, microbiology, physiology, pharmacology. Other facilities on the Faculty of Medicine campus include teaching laboraories, an exhaustive medical library, lecture halls and seminar rooms. Academic programs are offered at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine leading to the Master of Science (M.S.), Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), and Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degrees.
They have developed collaborative research and medical education programs with the world's leading institutions in medicine and bio-medical engineering including Johns Hopkins University and Mayo Medical College. Similarly, the Technion American Medical Students (TEAMS) program [[2]] at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine offers an American-styled, four-year, graduate medical training program geared towared American & Canadian students that wish to take advantage of the academic resources of the Technion, but plan to return to North America to practice medicine. The instruction and testing of TEAMS program is entirely in English. The graduates of the TEAMS program have the highest pass rate (100%) on the United States Medical Licensure Exam USMLE of any medical school in the world [[3]].
[edit] Distinguished faculty
- Computer Science Professor Emeritus Abraham Lempel and Electrical Engineering Professor Emeritus Yaacov Ziv, developers of the widely-used Lempel-Ziv (LZW) compression algorithm.
- Professor Avram Hershko and Professor Aaron Ciechanover, recipients of the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.
- Professor Nathan Rosen (d. December 18, 1995), co-author (with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky) of a famous 1935 physics paper about the EPR paradox in quantum mechanics.
- Professor Dan Shechtman, first observer of quasicrystals.
- Professor Asher Peres, co-discoverer of the phenomenon of quantum teleportation and distinguished researcher in quantum information theory. He was awarded the 2004 Rothschild Prize in Physics.
- Professor (emeritus) Jacob Bear, world-renown teacher, researcher, and author in the field of mathematical hydrogeology.
[edit] Famous graduates
(in alphabetical order by last name)
- Shai Agassi - Executive Board member of SAP AG
- Itzhak Bentov - inventor and author
- Andrei Broder - captcha developer, prominent search engine Vice President at Yahoo, formerly vice president at AltaVista
- Yaron Brook - president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute
- Yuval Neeman- Israeli physicist. One of his greatest achievements in physics was his discovery of the quark model
- Uzia Galil - founding father of the Israeli science-based industries
- Andi Gutmans - Developer of PHP and Co-founder of Zend Technologies
- Uzi Landau - Israeli politician
- Daniel Lewin - co-founder and CTO of Akamai, holder of two Technion degrees, speculated to have been killed while resisting AA Flight 11 hijackers according to the 9-11 Commission Report
- Udi Manber - BS 1975, MS 1978, prominent search engine developer and vice-president at Google, formerly vice-president at Amazon.com
- Zeev Suraski - Developer of PHP and Co-founder of Zend Technologies
- Yossi Vardi, civil servant, entrepreneur
- Avraham Yaski - Winner of the 1982 Israel Prize for Architecture.
- Zohar Zisapel - BSEE 1970, founder of the RAD corporations
[edit] Miscellaneous facts
- The Technion is often compared to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and has contributed to a large number of successful Israeli technical exports and businesses.
- A group of Technion graduates have created PHP (versions 3 through 5,) a web programming language that is installed on more than 80% of the web servers worldwide.
- Beside academic studies and research, the Technion offers many after-school and summer enrichment courses for interested youth. These courses range from introductory electronics and computer programming to aerospace, architecture, biology, chemistry and physics.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
