Technion Welcomes 29 New Faculty Members

Welcome!

29 new faculty members joined the Technion family

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie: “You are joining a ‘new Technion,’ half of whose academic faculty arrived in the last decade”

In 2017, 19 new faculty members joined the Technion, along with 10 physicians who joined the academic faculty of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine (hospital staff). The new faculty members specialize in a variety of research areas, including virtual currency security, artificial intelligence, artificial neural networks, two-dimensional materials, quantum computing, proton-proton collisions at the LHC particle collider in Switzerland, training math educators, the effect of the microbiome (gut bacteria) on the immune system, hereditary skin diseases, and mother and fetus medicine.

At the orientation day for the new faculty, Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said that: “For us, this is a festive day that illustrates the Technion’s ongoing renewal process in recent years. More than half of the Technion’s academic faculty members joined us in the last decade. Indeed, one can say that you are joining a ‘new Technion.’”

Prof. Lavie pointed out that “with one-sixth of the budget of large universities such as MIT, we are excelling and leading thanks to our uncompromising excellence and sense of mission. This year, we inaugurates our two international branches–the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute in New York and the-Guangdong-Technion Israel Institute of Technology in China. The Americans and the Chinese chose the Technion not only because of its excellence but also because of its values: its success in ‘transforming Jaffa oranges into semiconductors’ and in leading the development of Israel.”

Mr. Matanyahu Englman, Executive Vice President and Director General of the Technion, cited the ongoing effort to increase the number of students pursuing advanced degrees, the number of post-docs, and of course, the number of faculty members at the Technion. “Our goal is to recruit approximately 30 new faculty members every year, which requires an enormous investment. Every year, we invest around 60 million shekels just to build new labs for the new faculty members who join us.”

Prof. Hagit Attiya, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, said that the Technion selects its new faculty members meticulously, as evidenced by the numerous scholarships and prizes won by faculty members in the recent years. These prizes include the Alon Fellowship, Azrieli Fellowship, Krill Prize, Bruno Prize, Blavatnik Award and membership in the Israel Young Academy. Prof. Attiya told the new faculty members that, “the Technion’s promotion track will evaluate you according to your research but also according to your teaching, since the Technion is a research university that is also responsible for training engineers, scientists, physicians and architects. Your mission is to establish an independence research program, that is, a unique research identity, while at the same time striving to make a significant impact on the world.”

The new faculty members are:

Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering – Dr. Ittay Eyal, Dr. Ilya Goykhman and Dr. Daniel Soudry

Schulich Faculty of Chemistry – Dr. Graham De Ruiter

Faculty of Physics – Dr. Shay Hacohen-Gourgy and Dr. Enrique Kajomovitz

Faculty of Mathematics – Dr. Tali Pinsky

Faculty of Computer Science – Dr. Shachar Itzhaky

Faculty of Aerospace Engineering – Dr. Joseph Lefkowitz and Dr. Oksana Stalnov

Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management – Dr. Dan Garber, Dr. Itzik Cohen, Dr. Ofra Amir and Dr. Uri Shalit

Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering – Dr. Omer Yehezkeli

Department of Materials Science and Engineering – Dr. Elad Koren

Faculty of Education in Science and Technology – Dr. Zehavit Kohen

Rappaport Faculty of Medicine – Dr. Naama Geva-Zatorsky (academic faculty), Assoc. Prof. Nitza Goldenberg-Cohen (hospital faculty – regular track), Dr. Yonatan Butbul, Dr. Rinat Gabbay , Dr. Zvi Gutmacher, Dr. Roni Dodiuk Gad , Dr. Etty Daniel-Spiegel, Dr. Riad Haddad, Dr. Iyad Khamaysi, Dr. Alona Paz, Dr. Michal Stein and Dr. Ran Steinberg (hospital faculty – clinical track).