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.
When I read that Hackney Council had voted to begin ending its twinning arrangement with Haifa, I couldn’t help wondering: why Haifa? Whatever your views on the wider Middle East conflict, Haifa has always felt different. It is probably Israel’s most multicultural city – a place where Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze and Baha’is live alongside one another. It’s a city where Hebrew and Arabic are heard every day, and where people from different communities don’t just coexist; they work, study and build lives together. It isn’t perfect, no city is. But if we’re looking for examples of what coexistence can…
Outside of Israel, headlines rarely portray the country in a positive light. Ambassador Reda Mansour — the Technion’s new senior director of global resource development and a decorated diplomat, poet, historian, and member of Israel’s Druze community — is committed to changing that narrative. Dr. Mansour has spent his career sharing positive stories about Israel, […]
Cornell Tech hosted the inaugural Disability and Access in Tech and AI Summit on Oct. 9-10 on its Roosevelt Island campus, bringing together researchers, technologists, and community advocates to explore how disability and accessibility intersect with innovation. The summit welcomed speakers, students, faculty, alumni, and community members from Cornell’s Ithaca campus, New York City, and around the United States. The event, designed to be a space for dialogue, lived experience, and cross-sector collaboration in addition to showcasing research, was co-organized by Omari W. Keeles, senior director for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and Thijs Roumen, assistant professor of information science…
Karwan Halabi, a 29-year-old from Usfiya, a Druze village in northern Israel, is a biomedical engineer working as a research and development support specialist at Ossio, a medical equipment company. She is also Israel’s champion in various long-distance running events, married, and a participant in the series “Diary of a Sportswoman” (directed by Suha Araf), which focuses on female athletes from the Arab sector. “A few weeks ago, while competing in a 2,000-meter steeplechase in Germany, I collided with a hurdle and fell hard on my head and side. I got up feeling a bit dizzy but continued running and…
Nearly three years ago, Ola Baker got a lifechanging call from Ahmad Sheikh Muhammad, head of the Galilee Society – the Arab National Society for Health Research and Services. The society, based in northern Israel, had won a tender from the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) to establish an accelerator for early-stage Arab startups in healthcare, biotech and environmental science. Would Baker want to be its CEO? “It was like a dream come true for me,” says Baker, an Israeli Arab with degrees in biology and business administration.
Arab Israeli social entrepreneur Imad Telhami has seen phenomenal success from the Babcom customer-service centers he and partner Dov Lautman established to employ Arab women and men in the north, south and Jerusalem. Babcom (“Your Door” in Arabic) now employs 5,000 people providing outsourced services, including call centers and software development, to Israeli companies. In 2018, Harvard Business School built a case study about Babcom into its curriculum. But Telhami was increasingly troubled to note that no Babcom client companies were owned or managed by Arabs.
A new program will help orthodox Jewish entrepreneurs to integrate into Israel’s hi-tech and technology industries. It is the first of its kind, and will provide them with mentoring, marketing and sales skills. It will also teach them how to raise funds and adapt their products, and connect with other groups within the population. The program was presented at the Israeli President’s residence by a group of representatives. It aligns with the Israeli President’s new “Exchange Word” initiative, which calls for a fruitful dialogue between the different parts of the nation. Intel Ignite, one of the founders of the program,…
The gender gap in Israel’s startups is slowly narrowing, with women now accounting for 35 percent of all jobs. A report published by Start-Up Nation Policy Institute to mark International Women’s Day shows the number of women in startups is increasing, albeit slowly, up from 33.4 percent in 2021. Still, women account for just 16 percent of senior (C-level or C-suite) positions, and just seven percent of CTO (chief technical officers) positions. They fare best in senior roles as CMOs – chief marketing officers – at 35 percent. The findings are based on a database of all LinkedIn employees in…
The group from the Technion (L-R): Dr. Laure Arsenieff, postdoctoral fellow (from France); Camelia Shopen-Gochev, Israeli doctoral student; Prof. Debbie Lindell; Dr. Sigitas Šulčius, research fellow/academic visitor (from Lithuania). A team of primarily women, including a group from the Technion led by Professor Debbie Lindell of the Faculty of Biology, embarked on a research trip in the Pacific Ocean from January 22 to February 18. Their objective was to study the biological mechanisms that dictate the structures of diverse biological populations at different latitudes and under various environmental conditions. The Technion team focused primarily on the role of viruses in…
Pictured Above / (L to R) Professor Alon Wolf, The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and President Uri Sivan H.H. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, visited the Technion on September 17 — the last stop on his journey in Israel to mark two years since the signing of the Abraham Accords. “The Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates are a window of opportunity for scientific and technological cooperation,” Technion President Professor Uri Sivan told Foreign Minister Bin Zayed…
Just months after a new cable car started running in Haifa, it brought a very distinguished visitor to the Technion — U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas R. Nides. The Ambassador came to campus August 22 as part of a day trip to Haifa, where he visited city landmarks, met Haifa Mayor Einat Kalisch Rotem, and engaged with local leaders in the fields of education and economy. “It’s a big honor to be here,” Ambassador Nides told President Sivan and other senior managing directors of the Technion, adding that the university’s reputation precedes it. “I first heard about the Technion when…
As an ultra-Orthodox young girl, Bareqet Hadad never dreamed of studying at the Technion. But life is full of surprises. In July 2022, the mother of three – who already holds her second job in industry – became a graduate of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management. Hadad married at the age of 18, and after giving birth to her first child, the next step seemed clear: she’d study at a religious college to become an English teacher. She grew up in the ultra-Orthodox community of Elad, graduated high school, and discovered that she was good in English. One…