OPINION: The Technion and Israel: 75 years of high-tech history

Falafel and hummus; drivers and road rage; chocolate milk and a bag. There are certain Israeli pairs as synonymous with the land of milk and honey as the colours blue and white. Yet none, perhaps, are as important as the relationship between the Holy Land and its oldest university.

It would be easy to focus solely on some of the greatest, life-changing inventions to have come out of the Israel Institute of Technology over the past 111 years, such as the Iron Dome – the mobile, all-weather air defence system that has intercepted thousands of rockets since 2015, or the PillCam – a tiny, wireless, capsule-encased camera the size of a jelly bean and small enough to be swallowed that hundreds of UK hospitals are using.

Of course, these are just two in an endless list of groundbreaking technologies to come out of the university – a list that shows no signs of slowing down in the 111 years (and counting) that the Technion has stood proudly in Haifa.

Yet if we look beyond these tangible inventions that continue to permeate the world, there’s even more to the significance of this institution – namely in the role it played in helping to create the state itself.

Set up by visionaries decades before the State of Israel was established – including Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann – they understood that if the country was to not only survive but thrive, it needed to invest in science and technology. A Jewish state alone would never be enough; it needed to benefit the entire world.

Thus, the Technion – Israel Institute of Science and Technology, home to four of Israel’s five academic Nobel prize winners and the powerhouse behind most of its high-tech society and status as the ‘Start-Up Nation’, was born.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable traits of the Technion is its flexible and fluidic ability to simultaneously transcend the past, present and future. While its present accolades – namely in the incredible inventions that continue to spill out from the institution in the guise of alums, professors and research departments – are self-explanatory, and its deserved place in the history of Israel is memorialised by Albert Einstein’s tree, planted in 1923, that continues to stand in front of the university’s original building, and the Churchill Auditorium, named for the British Prime Minister who maintained close ties with the institution throughout his life, the role it continues to play in the future is two-pronged.

Beyond the obvious work of today that promises a better tomorrow in the form of scientific and technological advancements across the fields of medicine, defence and sustainability, to name but a few, it is impossible to look at the diverse makeup of its student body – boasting a 20% contingent of Arabs – and not feel an overwhelming sense of hope for a future Israel that is, hopefully, not too far away; an Israel that will see Jews live alongside their neighbours in peace and harmony.

Given its track record, I’m rooting for the Technion’s success in this every step of the way.

• Alan Aziz is Technion UK CEO