The Office for Academic Staff handles the appointment, tenure and promotion of faculty and teaching adjuncts, sabbaticals and vacations, trips abroad, the appointment of postdocs and academic visitors, scholarships, and prizes. Major facts and initiatives are described below.
New faculty recruitment
As of March 2021, the Technion recruited 44 new faculty members, of which 13 are women. These numbers include three Technion faculty that are based in the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. Five more faculty will join the Technion in the year 2023. Note that three of the faculty who joined the Haifa campus are non-Israelis, perhaps indicating a welcome trend. Currently, we are deep in the process of recruitment for the next academic year (starting October 2022). The number of faculty members at the Technion has been climbing at a healthy slow rate (October 2019: 563, October 2020: 576, October 2021: 579); with the proportion of women faculty remaining at around 20%.
We are also happy to welcome the first Arab-Israeli female faculty member out of approximately 600 Technion faculty members, and are working diligently to change this sad proportion.
I would like to thank the Deans, the Senate committee members, the Departmental Administrations, and the Faculty Office, who swiftly and efficiently adapted to the new work culture brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Research fellows track
Over the past year we launched a new Research Fellows Track, which developed surprisingly fast. The purpose of this track is to enable part-time involvement of experts from the industry in research and education at the Technion. In a short period, we successfully recruited fourteen fellows, and many more are expected to join us over the coming years.
Postdoctoral fellows
In the 2020-21 academic year, there were 418 postdocs, 262 from overseas (compared to around 368 in the previous year, of which 229 were from overseas). This is a surprisingly good number given the COVID-19 pandemic. We are very flexible adapting to the circumstances in all aspects related to recruitment and instantiation of postdoc procedures, from obtaining special visas for them to enter Israel, to approval of working remotely. Moreover, we were attentive to the needs of graduates trained in other Israeli research institutes, many of whom could not travel overseas due to the pandemic, hence we invited them to join Technion research groups.
Representation of women in major promotion committees
In addition to the regular workload, we promoted several initiatives described in the previous report. Most importantly, we continue in our efforts to increase the representation of women in major academic committees. This has not been an easy task, as there are only 34 females (out of 216) at the rank of full professor Technion-wide, with a full load of responsibilities. I am happy to report that to date, women professors occupy seven (of 18) chairs in the two major senate committees that handle hiring, tenure, and promotion of senior Technion faculty.
Refugees
We’re sad to witness the war in Ukraine and offer our support by hosting researchers who seek an academic home for a short term; Ukrainian refugees, as well as Russian dissidents who voice their opposition and seek a safe academic shelter for a while.