FORMER HEADS OF PROGRAM

Prof. Alfred M. Bruckstein, Head of the Excellence Program:

The Technion's Excellence Program was established 17 years ago, through an endowment by the Chais Family Foundation. Its goal is to discover people with outstanding capabilities and "let them loose to roam the academic fields of the Technion" by allowing them the flexibility to design individualized programs of study that facilitate the realization of their full academic potential.

The process of selecting students for this program puts an emphasis on originality, intellectual curiosity and keen interest in science and technology. Those offered to join the program are judged by a panel of examiners, to see that they have the rare combination of outstanding capabilities and talents with the drive, maturity and interest in some specific scientific or technological field, and hence are suited to optimally exploit the academic freedom granted by this program.

Hundreds of members of Technion's faculties collaborate with the Excellence Program by volunteering to help in selecting the students accepted to the program and to mentor, advise and instruct them in designing an optimal program of study towards a first degree in their fields of interest and, as early as possible, towards research projects that will lead them to graduate school or toward significant scientific and technological added values to their studies. From the perspective of 17 years of this program at the Technion, one can say with confidence that it has yielded wonderful results. Many of the program's former participants have completed or are pursuing graduate degrees in Israel or abroad, with outstanding scientific achievements and many of them are leaders in innovative hi-tech companies. The graduates testify that the Excellence Program had a significant contribution to their scientific and technological development and in exploiting their potential to the fullest extent. And, most importantly, over the years the program participants have became role models in their professional environment, both at the Technion and outside.

We at the Technion are very very proud of the special and truly outstanding students we have in this program and see in them the initiators, forerunners and leaders of the scientific and technological revolutions ahead of us.

Prof. Nimrod Moiseyev: Founder and Head of the Excellence Program 1992- 2006:

There is no doubt that the best students should be encouraged to move forward and should be allowed to advance in their studies at an accelerated rate, so that they will be able to realize the full potential inherent in them.

The Motto 'to learn differently' and the slogan 'the only rule is that there are no rules', derives from acknowledging the importance of breaking the normative frames in order to promote the development of profoundness and creativity in various interdisciplinary domains.