For the Next Hundred Years

At the beginning of June, a time capsule was sealed at the Technion containing items that reflect campus life and the spirit of innovation, research, and learning that have characterized the institution over its first century. The festive event was held during the Technion Board of Governors meeting, in the presence of Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan, Chair of the Board of Governors Scott Leemaster, and Chair of the Executive Council Gideon Frank. Children from the Technion’s day-care centers also took part in the ceremony.

“Close your eyes and imagine what the Technion campuses will look like in a hundred years,” said Technion President Sivan during the ceremony. “What role will they play? How will people learn and teach there? Maybe they won’t even exist in physical form anymore? What will the frontiers of science, engineering, and medicine look like? Who could have imagined in 1901, the year when the vision of a technological university to support the founding of a Jewish state was first conceived, that 124 years later we would be flying in airplanes? And who could have predicted in 1924, when the Technion’s first class was held, that we would navigate using satellites and carry a tiny device connecting us instantly to everyone on Earth and to all of human knowledge, in the palm of our hands?

“It’s hard to predict – especially the future,” as Niels Bohr, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, used to say. “But, as every historian knows, predicting the past is not easy either. So, in the Technion’s centennial year, we’ve decided to send a time capsule to our successors, to be opened in a hundred years, in the year of the Technion’s bicentennial.”

The time capsule preserves symbolic items collected by the Technion community – items that serve as institutional memory and as a means of passing on the Technion’s spirit to future generations. These were gathered by all faculties, students, and management. Each faculty selected a unique item representing its field, along with contributions from students, a letter from the Technion administration to future generations, and copies of the Nobel Prize certificates and medals awarded to the Technion’s laureates: Distinguished Prof. Avram Hershko, Distinguished Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, and Distinguished Prof. Dan Shechtman.

Some of the items sealed in the capsule include:

• The Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science preserved the names of all its graduates using advanced technology – encoding and storing the information in synthetic DNA, an extremely small yet durable molecule capable of preserving precise data for a long time in minimal space. The information is stored in a test tube placed in the capsule. This breakthrough technology is expected to revolutionize how humanity preserves knowledge – sustainably, compactly, and securely – bridging past, present, and future
• The Schulich Faculty of Chemistry contributed an innovative molecule for future pharmaceuticals
• The Faculty of Biomedical Engineering included a 3D-printed scaffold designed for growing tissues for transplantation
• The Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering contributed transparent concrete, a new construction material that combines the structural strength of concrete with the aesthetic and functional qualities of transparency. It is produced by embedding optical fibers (typically made of glass or plastic) into the concrete mixture and is expected to replace traditional building materials in the future
• The Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning contributed a 3D-printed coral reef, a technology that could assist in restoring and preserving coral reefs worldwide
• The Faculty of Physics contributed a control board developed at the Technion for the ATLAS detector, which played a key role in the discovery of the Higgs boson and in advancing particle physics

The capsule also contains a copy of the Nano Bible developed at the Technion – a silicon chip coated with a thin 20-nanometer gold layer, the size of a grain of sugar (0.25 square millimeters), onto which 1.2 million letters of the Hebrew Bible were etched using a focused ion beam.

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan, Chair of the Board of Governors Scott Leemaster, and Chair of the Executive Council Gideon Frank included a letter to future generations, printed using a cutting-edge technology that ensures its preservation for at least a century: “In the Hebrew year 5785 (2025) – 100 years since the Technion first opened its gates and 113 years since the cornerstone was laid for its first building on the historic Hadar HaCarmel campus – we seal this time capsule and send it to you, the children of future generations, so that in 100 years you will know of the Technion’s work during the first century of its existence – a period in which it laid the foundation for the establishment of the State of Israel and contributed an unparalleled role to the building of its economy and security, strengthening its social resilience, and enhancing human welfare throughout the world.

The people of the Technion have been working for a hundred years to train future generations of the State of Israel in engineering, science, medicine, architecture, and education. This letter is passed as a torch from us to you. We entrust it to your hands so that you will know that we have invested our hearts and all our resources in educating generations of students in the spirit of science and technology, for the glory of scientific and technological research in Israel and the betterment of humanity.”

The capsule will be opened in 2124.

A video of the ceremony: