Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is Israel's first university and its flagship science and engineering institution. The idea for its founding emerged at the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901, the cornerstone was laid in 1912 in central Haifa, and the first classes were held in December 1924. Since then, it has grown into a comprehensive research university with 19 academic departments, 60 research centers, and 12 affiliated teaching hospitals, awarding more than 123,000 degrees to date. The Technion enrolls approximately 15,000 students (around 10,200 undergraduates and 4,400 graduate students) and employs roughly 600 faculty members, including three Nobel Laureates in chemistry. Its graduates are credited with founding more than 50 percent of Israeli tech startups and supplying more than half of the nation's engineers. In artificial intelligence, the Technion ranks first in Israel, second in Europe, and approximately 21st globally on CSRankings, with more than 150 AI researchers spread across multiple faculties. The institution's Tech.AI hub coordinates interdisciplinary AI work spanning machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, robotics, and formal methods. Of particular relevance to AI safety, Technion researchers have published foundational work on formal verification and robustness certification of neural networks, including the AI2 system for sound and scalable safety analysis using abstract interpretation. Professor Yonatan Belinkov (Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science) received an approximately $1 million grant from Open Philanthropy in 2023 for an initiative on interpretable control of AI, aimed at tracing and controlling world knowledge inside large language models to address alignment challenges such as misinformation, bias, and privacy. The Technion also conducts research on robust reinforcement learning and planning under uncertainty. The institution is supported by a global alumni network exceeding 100,000 members and receives philanthropic support through affiliated organizations such as the American Technion Society.