Technion — Israel Institute of Technology
Israel's oldest university and leading engineering and technology institution. Located in Haifa. Three Nobel laureates. The largest single feeder of founders into Israel's startup ecosystem.
The Technion — Israel Institute of Technology is Israel's oldest university and the country's preeminent engineering and applied sciences institution. Located in Haifa on the slopes of Mount Carmel, the Technion has produced a disproportionate share of the founders, engineers, and scientists behind Israel's technology economy.
Founding
The Technion was founded in 1912 — before the State of Israel existed — by the Ezra society and the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, with its cornerstone laid in Ottoman Palestine. It opened in 1924, initially teaching in Hebrew after a fierce public debate (the "Language War") over whether instruction should be in German or Hebrew. The choice to teach in Hebrew helped establish the language as the medium of modern scientific discourse in the Yishuv and later the state.
Academic Profile
The Technion offers degrees in engineering, computer science, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, architecture, and industrial management. It operates 18 academic faculties and employs approximately 700 faculty members. Three Technion professors have won Nobel Prizes in Chemistry — Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover (2004, for discovering ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation) and Dan Shechtman (2011, for the discovery of quasicrystals).
Startup Pipeline
The Technion is the single largest feeder institution for Israel's startup ecosystem. Alumni have founded or co-founded companies including Amdocs, Comverse, Given Imaging (PillCam), Mobileye, Waze (early engineering), RAD Group, NICE Systems, and hundreds of venture-backed startups. The university runs T3, its technology transfer company, and the Technion Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, which together have spun out more than 100 companies.
Global Network
The Technion operates the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island in New York City — a joint graduate campus focused on technology entrepreneurship. The American Technion Society, founded in 1940, is one of the largest university fundraising organizations in the United States and a major channel for diaspora capital into Israeli higher education.