At the annual meeting of the Board of Governors: The Technion Awards “Honorary Doctorates” and Launches the Book on the Institute’s Contribution to the State of Israel

The Technion awarded yesterday eight honorary doctorates and has launched today Profs. Shlomo Maital and Amnon Frenkel’s book on the Institute’s contribution to the State of Israel. Their research shows that the investment in the creation of human capital in the Technion produces an annual return of at least 76-197 percent, or, in absolute terms, a return of 35-60 billion dollars over the 50 years of a graduate class.

The total annual product of engineers who are Technion graduates in the high-tech, computer services, communications and research and development industries is estimated at a minimum of 21 billion dollars; the median income of Technion graduates is the salary group of NIS 20-25 thousand gross per month, which is significantly higher than both the average salary in the Israeli economy and the salary of employees with 16+ years of education. Moreover, the investment in the creation of human capital in the Technion, and specifically the training of engineering and science students, is entirely risk-free. These engineers also contribute to the creation of 78,000 high-tech, high-wage supporting jobs in the economy. The Technion graduates’ contribution is also expressed in the annual taxation income they generate for the government, estimated at about NIS 16.6 billion, or about 13% of the total income of the State from direct and indirect taxes.

Processing of Dun & Bradstreet data shows that from among the 125 leading business leaders in Israel, 41 (about one-third) are Technion graduates. 28 of them have established firms that are traded on the stock exchange, and 13 have established private companies.

Technion graduates lead the 11 largest Israeli companies in terms of export volumes, which employ about 80,000 workers and export about 19.5 billion dollars out of a total of 45 billion dollars.

121 Israel companies are traded on the NASDAQ, and represent 41% of a total of 298 foreign companies traded on NASDAQ. About half of these (59 companies) are led or were established by Technion graduates. The market value of these companies is estimated at about 28 billion dollars (as of November 2010).

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said in the festive ceremony held at the Technion’s historic building at Hadar HaCarmel (today the Madatech Museum, the Israel National Museum of Science) that “nowadays we would have thought of the founders of the Technion as brave entrepreneurs who established a start-up company” and that it is unlikely that when they laid its cornerstone one hundred years ago, they imagined that the day will come when it would become a leading science and technology university worldwide.

The recipients of the honorary doctorates yesterday are: Prof. Srulik Cederbaum, Prof. Francois Diederich, Gary Goldberg, Itzhak Nissan, Dr. Eli Opper, Joan Seidel, Prof. Gunter Spur and Moshe Yanai.

Above: Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie (on the right) with one of the recipients – Moshe Yanai, pioneer of the computerized storage systems revolution. Photo: Moshe Shoham, Technion Spokesman