Month: October 2019

Technion Academic Year Opens: More than 2,000 new students start their studies at Technion. More than 16,500 students will be at Technion in the 2019/20 academic year 

Some 2,060 new students began their studies at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology this morning. During the 2019/20 academic year, some 16,520 students will study at Technion – approximately 12,250 undergraduates and some 4,270 graduate students (master’s and doctorate). Additionally, 294 international graduate students will study at the Technion this year.*

This year, 172 students will study at the Technion International School. Technion International initially held courses in civil and environmental engineering, this year the school has added courses in mechanical engineering, chemical engineering and biotechnology and food engineering. Of the students who completed their bachelor’s degrees at Technion International last year – 22 out of 42 will continue on to pursue a master’s degree at Technion. The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion- Cornell Institute in New York will have 144 students enrolled and 727 students will study at the Guangdong-Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) in China.

In his remarks to the new students, Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan said: “Nearly a century has passed since studies began at Technion with a class of 17 students, 16 males, and one female. Since that humble beginning and with constant adherence to the vision of its founders, the Technion has provided over eighty thousand engineers, researchers, and doctors, whose tremendous contributions to the state and society can be found everywhere. Technion fosters co-existence within Israeli society, and the education our students receive enables them to improve society and the quality of life worldwide for present and future generations.”

The Technion is actively continuing on-campus development – with the building of new classrooms, additional dorms, sports facilities and other infrastructure for student welfare. At the same time, Technion is expanding its international research collaborations with more than 200 universities around the world. The Technion continues to lead in the annual survey on teaching quality by the National Student Association, placing it at the top of Israeli research universities.

This year, for the first time in Israel, the Technion will introduce a compulsory course on construction safety. The “Introduction to Management and Safety in Construction” course will be taught by Dr. Avi Griffel, one of the leading experts in the field of work safety.

* Data as per the date of this publication.

 

 

The Harvey Prize, the most prestigious award bestowed by Technion, will be given this year in two fields: to three scientists who led the development of CRISPR-Cas9 technology, a breakthrough in genetic modification: Profs. Emmanuelle Charpentier, Jennifer Doudna, and Feng Zhang; and to Prof. Christos H. Papadimitriou for his contribution to computer science.

PROF. EMMANUELLE CHARPENTIER is an expert in regulatory mechanisms that direct pathogenesis and defense of bacteria causing diseases in humans. Following a research career in France, the United States, Austria and Sweden, Charpentier was recruited in 2013 by the Helmholz Association in Germany. In 2015, she was appointed Director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin and in 2018, she founded an independent research institute, the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens. Since 2016, she has been an honorary professor at Humboldt University in Berlin.

PROF. JENNIFER DOUDNA is a professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley and is the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair. Doudna is also the Executive Director of the Innovative Genomics Institute, an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997, and a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes since 2018.

is a molecular biologist and bioengineer. Prof. Zhang is a core institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, as well as the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT. He is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Long before the breakthrough of CRISPR gene-editing, Profs. Charpentier and Doudna studied bacterial defense systems, each in her own lab. Prof.

Charpentier and Prof. Doudna met for the first time in March 2011, and shortly after they published their landmark article in Science, describing how the bacterial protein Cas9 can identify targets in the DNA, and demonstrating how it can be easily programmed to edit a broad range of DNA targets (Jinek et al., Science, 2012). Independently and in parallel, Prof. Zhang first learned about the CRISPR-Cas9 system as an RNA-guided DNA scissors in bacteria in February, 2011. In January 2013, Prof. Zhang and his team published a landmark paper in Science (Cong et al., Science 2013) describing the successful engineering of CRISPR-Cas9 as a genome editing technology in higher organisms and for harnessing the CRISPR-Cas9 system as an RNA-programmable system for use in eukaryotic cells.

These groundbreaking findings revolutionized the field of life sciences, allowing us to edit, correct and rewrite DNA. In the future, the CRISPR breakthrough is expected to lead to the development of innovative treatments for disease and aging.

For their roles in the discovery and the development of CRISPR-Cas9 as a “molecular scissors”, Drs. Charpentier, Doudna, and Zhang have shared a number of awards including the prestigious Canada Gairdner International Award (2016), the Tang Prize (2016), and the Albany Medical Center Prize (2017). In addition, Drs. Charpentier and Doudna were awarded the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2015).

PROF. CHRISTOS H. PAPADIMITRIOU is considered the father of algorithmic game theory. He has taught at Harvard, MIT, the National Technical University of Athens, Stanford, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley and is currently the Donovan Family Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. He is one of the leading scientists in the

theory of computer science, and is best known for his work in computational complexity. In this context he defined levels of complexity that characterize important computational phenomena and paradigmatic problems in a variety of fields.

He has also contributed significantly to what he calls an “algorithmic lens” that is relevant to many fields, including biology and evolution, economics and game theory, artificial intelligence, robotics, networks and the Internet. Prof. Papadimitriou is a Gödel Prize winner (2012).

 

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The Harvey Prize, established in 1971 by Leo M. Harvey of Los Angeles, is awarded annually at Technion for exceptional achievements in science, technology, and human health, and for outstanding contributions to peace in the Middle East, to society and to the economy.

Leo M. Harvey (1887-1973) was an industrialist and inventor. He was an ardent friend and supporter of Technion and the State of Israel.

Over the years, more than a quarter of Harvey laureates have subsequently won the Nobel Prize.

The award ceremony will take place in November 2019 at Technion.

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[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5ogh6MeHs” width=”700″ height=”200″ controls=”no” autohide=”yes” autoplay=”yes” rel=”no” fs=”no” theme=”light” https=”yes”]Transcript

My parents immigrated to Palestine from Poland in 1936. They were both 18 and met on the train to Constanta where they took a boat to Haifa. A few years earlier, the Nazis had come to power in Germany, winds of war blew through the continent and universities all over Europe were closing their gates to Jews. Coming from Zionist families, they chose Technion, a young technical school that opened its gates right here with 16 students only 12 years earlier.

Led by a handful of visionaries at the turn of the 20th century, the Technion has turned into a world-class research university. Few institutions, if any, have played such a pivotal role in the fate of a nation. From building roads and bridges, aircrafts and satellites to new technologies for healthcare, computers, security, and energy; wherever you look you can find a Technion fingerprint.

Today, the Technion is uniquely positioned to face the tremendous challenges lying ahead. The grand challenges of the 21st century – human health, energy, sustainability, advanced manufacturing and education require a multifaceted approach. We will restructure the Technion and expand our network of multidisciplinary research centers, to address these global challenges.

Education is undergoing a revolution and the Technion is reinventing itself in a world where there is an exponential growth of data and free access to knowledge. We will develop new teaching methodologies to train the scientific and technological leaders of the 21st century, and we will provide them with life-long education for a dynamic world. We will equip our students with leadership skills in entrepreneurship, ethics, and multi-culturalism.

Global industry is changing rapidly as it increasingly invests in its own advanced research programs. Universities are losing their traditional monopoly over basic research and simultaneously, society expects them to address real-life challenges. We will recruit many more affiliated faculty and mentors from industry, while streamlining technology transfer from Technion to society. We will create a new academia-industry eco-system.

These are all substantial challenges, but the role of academia goes beyond that. Technion will continue to serve as a beacon for pluralism, freedom of speech, integrity, social justice, and environmental consciousness – values that are constantly challenged across the globe. These values and the pursuit of truth are the breath of academic life and must be safeguarded.

I am deeply honored to serve today as the Technion’s 17th President. I humbly acknowledge the gravity of the mission lying ahead. I promise to do the utmost to lead this remarkable institution and take it to even greater heights as we approach the centennial since it opened its gates. As you may imagine, this is the closure of a personal journey for me; a journey that started 83 years ago with a girl and a boy aboard a ship approaching the port of Haifa.