Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon spent time at the Israel Institute of Technology on an official visit to Israel
The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology was delighted to welcome the Minister of State for the Middle East to its campus this week.
Lord Tariq Ahmad – a British Muslim politician – was impressed with the proportion of Arab students on campus. 30% of this years new students are from the Arab Community and benefit from the Technion Empowerment Programme which gives them individual attention, supervision and monitoring, particularly in their learning of Hebrew which is one of the biggest challenges for Arab students.
This educational model has since been copied by other institutions throughout Israel, enabling a growth in Arab university students in Israel of 78% over seven years, according to research by Israel’s Council for Higher Education.
Lord Ahmad – along with representatives from the British Embassy and the British Council – were welcomed to the campus by the President of the Technion, Uri Sivan, along with several members of the senior team. They learned that 5,000 out of 20,000 students live on campus – the highest number in Israel.
He asked about all the impressive high-tech companies he had driven past on his way to the campus, such as Google and Intel, and learned that they have all come to Haifa because of the Technion and to recruit graduates from the University.
He was also interested to learn that nearly 70% of the founders and CEOs of Israeli start-up companies are Technion graduates and that there are two campuses abroad – one in China and one in New York.
Taking to Twitter following his visit, he wrote: “Fantastic to visit Technion – Israel Institute of Technology University and learn more about the vibrant Israeli innovation scene. I met Professor Uri Sivan and with Professor Hossam Hayek, a BIRAX recipient who created the groundbreaking ‘Alzheimer’s breath test’.”
This invention. which is also used to detect cancer in a matter of seconds was shown to King Charles when he last visited Israel a few years ago. He said that this is a remarkable technological development and an ingenious invention.