Which is it, science or science fiction: microscopic robots that swim in the blood, clean plaque and deliver medicine; devices buried under highways that can turn the vibrations of ground-level traffic into electricity; a battery made from lithium and air that can last up to 100 years.
Peretz Lavie
Pretty “out there” stuff – sort of what you’d expect in the latest Star Trek movie. But, unlike the fantasy world of the Hollywood magic factory, these are real world ideas that are the creations of the brainiacs from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
The Technion is a world leader in all kinds of scientific and engineering applications – everything from medicine to robotics, said Peretz Lavie, president of the institution. Lavie was in Toronto last week to address a gathering of the Economic Club of Canada and answer questions from close to 300 young adults who are being recruited as supporters of the institution by Canadian businessman and philanthropist Seymour Schulich.
Lavie’s pitch is simple: Start-up Nation, the name given the State of Israel by authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer relies to a great extent on the ingenuity, ideas, skills and risk-taking of Technion grads. The Technion trains Israel’s “creme de la creme” in the sciences, medicine and engineering and these people go on to create start-up companies, or work for established firms where they develop technologies and innovations that are marketable and which change people’s lives around the world.
The highway vibration technology, for one, is currently being field tested and has great potential, he said.
And take a look at aerospace, Lavie offers. Every other country that launches a rocket does so in an easterly direction. Easterly launches take advantage of the earth’s rotation and make liftoffs easier.
To avoid the possibility of a rocket coming down on one of its eastern neighbours, Israel has been forced to launch its rockets to the west. To compensate for the difficulty in doing so, Israel developed micro-payloads, satellites as small as 150 kilograms, in the process becoming a world leader in that area, Lavie said.
And who are the engineers behind that effort? Technion people, of course.
Many technological innovations that are now taken for granted were developed by Technion graduates, Lavie said. Jpegs, the compressed photo format familiar to anyone who uses a computer, are based on an algorithm developed at the Technion in the 1980s; instant messaging, evolved from ICQ, which again can be traced back to former Technion students; computer memory keys (think F1, F2, etc.), also developed by Technion grads; Intel’s processing chips were developed in Haifa by Technion graduates; and so on.
“Israel is like another Silicon Valley and what is developed in Israel affects everybody in the world,” Lavie said.
The Technion’s economic contribution to Israel is immense, he continued. Israel today boasts 4,000 startups, more than the entire European Union, and “75 per cent…were founded by our graduates.”
There are 121 Israeli companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange, behind only American companies and far eclipsing Canada’s 43. Of the 121, 49 were either founded or run by Technion people, Lavie said.
So what makes the Technion such an effective incubator of marketable technological innovation?
“In order to be innovative, you need to be motivated by a need to change the world,” Lavie said. “It’s kind of a Jewish tradition that you’d like to do something meaningful.
“In Israel, the chutzpah is working for you in challenging ways of doing things. You do everything to go to the crux of matters. So, Israelis take risks, they dare, they [may] fail, but they go on.”
Military service plays an important role, he continued. It “prepares you for a life of risk-taking” and confers significant responsibility of young people.
Other factors contribute to the country’s excellence in scientific achievement, Lavie continued. “Israel has been immensely helped by the Russian immigration. Many of them are highly talented and educated. They joined the labour force and now Israel has the highest rate of engineers and technicians in the world.”
What’s more, Israel proves the old aphorism of necessity being the mother of invention. Lavie said the Technion established its micro-electronic research institute in 1969 only after then French President Charles de Gaulle decided to embargo high-tech Mirage jets and infrared sensors that Israel had purchased. “That became the cornerstone of the entire high-tech industry,” he said.
But all is not rosy in the Jewish state when it comes to preparing young people for the brave new world of high-tech and innovation.
“Israel has a crisis in K-12 [education],” Lavie said. “The Technion gets the creme de la creme, seven or eight per cent of high school graduates.” But few Israeli students value the sciences and Israeli kids perform poorly internationally in science and math tests.
Lavie raised a lot of eyebrows when he went public with his contention that the situation is a crisis at least as grave as the country’s security concerns.
The education system needs to be addressed, he said. Teachers are poorly paid and young people have too many course options – a mind-boggling 115 to choose from.
The result is lack of attention on “core courses.”
Lavie believes high schools have to get back to focusing on the sciences, humanities and social studies.
“I believe we have to go back to the basics. People are starting to realize it,” he said.
In addition , the “social stigma” against blue collar technical schools has to be addressed.
The Technion is doing its part. “We are now involving Technion grads to be teachers. We’re appealing to their Zionistic motives.”
On the Canadian front, the Technion is likewise planning for the future. Last week’s event, sponsored by Schulich, was aimed at attracting young supporters for the institute. The Technion, like other organizations that rely on contributors from the Jewish community, has depended on the backing of people who witnessed the birth of the State of Israel and experienced the Holocaust.
Younger people, those 22-45, did not share those experiences and don’t feel as close to Israel.
The image of Israel as the David fending off Goliath is long gone. “There’s a constant barrage of anti-Israel, mixed with antisemitic propaganda. On many U.S. campuses, the pro-Palestinian campaign is so vicious and intense, it affects the young generation,” Lavie said.
Where the Technion steps in is to present the institution as “a noble idea” and “to remind them it is an institution worth supporting, not only because it is Israeli, but because it is a world class university that helps people around the world.”