The Technion’s story has been intertwined with Israel’s for more than a century, from laying the foundations for a new nation to shaping its future.
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Prof. Kaplan focuses his research on the structure, chemistry, and energy of interfaces: primarily between metals and ceramics. Applications include the development of ultra high temperature ceramics for use in aerospace applications, metal-ceramic composites for the development of jet engines and automobile brake pads, as well as flash memory devices, and in defense applications. His research in materials science makes use of the Technion’s high resolution transmission electron microscope, housed in the Electron Microscopy Center, to understand how the type and position of atoms at metal-ceramic interfaces influence properties of materials.
Prof. Kaplan earned his bachelor’s degree in 1989 in mechanical engineering at the Technion. He earned his master’s degree in 1991 and his doctorate in 1994 in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Technion. He then spent a year as a Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany before joining the Technion faculty in 1995. He became a full professor in 2009.
Alongside his teaching responsibilities, Prof. Kaplan served as dean of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering from 2010–2014, and then served as executive vice president for research and as CEO of the Technion Research and Development Foundation, Ltd., from 2014–2019. He also was the pro vice chancellor for academic affairs at the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) in China, from 2021–2022. More recently, he served as vice president for external relations and resource development from October 2022–February 2025.
Outside of the Technion, Prof. Kaplan served as chair of the Basic Science Division of the American Ceramic Society and chair of the Israel Society for Microscopy. He has been active on the editorial boards of several scientific journals. He has won numerous awards, including the 2020 Robert B. Sosman Award of the American Ceramic Society and the 2013 Chief of Staff Excellence Award for Reservists.
Prof. Kaplan was born in Miami, Florida, but spent most of his childhood in Wisconsin. In 1984, he immigrated to Israel (his family still resides in the U.S.) and met his wife Marielle at the Technion. Marielle Kaplan earned her bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. at the Technion and is the director of the Clinical Laboratory Division of Rambam Hospital. They have two sons.
