Dr. Irwin Jacobs, founder and chairman of "Qualcomm", donated 30 million dollars to the school for qualified studies. The donation brings fundraising for the Technion to an all-time high - $250 million this year
Dr. Irwin Jacobs, former professor at MIT and the University of California at San Diego, and founder and chairman of the wireless technology giant Qualcomm, donated $30 million to the Technion's graduate school, which will now be named after him and his wife. 'Van.
The Jacobs couple announced their donation last Friday, during the annual meeting of the board of directors of the ATS - the organization of the Friends of the Technion in the USA - held in Boston. "We are proud that our main heritage is at the Technion," said Irwin Jacobs, whose companies he founded employed and employ hundreds of Technion graduates, in Israel and abroad. "In the past, we established the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Communication and Information Technologies at the Technion, and our satisfaction with the research and teaching done there is enormous. The graduate students at the Technion are the next generation - literally - of leaders in science and knowledge-intensive industries, in Israel and in the world, on which the economic strength of the State of Israel is built. Therefore, the need to support and expand the studies of the qualified is clear."
The Jacobs couple's contribution will be reflected in the increase of scholarships - both in number and size - for graduate students at the Technion. The donation will also help to establish unique interdisciplinary research programs, including the "Jacobs-Qualcomm work program," in the framework of which every year ten graduate students will conduct joint research with "Qualcomm" scientists. Other programs are designed to help identify and nurture talented candidates, especially for doctoral studies.
Irwin Jacobs' involvement at the Technion includes a long-standing relationship with Professor Jacob Ziv from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, who developed with Professor Avraham Lampel the Lampel-Ziv algorithm for data compression. This formula became a basis for maximizing the compression and transfer of information between computers, and contributed greatly to the transformation of the Internet into a global communication medium. Dr. Jacobs also has a close relationship with Professor Israel Bar David from the Technion, who contributed greatly to the success of Linkabit, the first company that Irwin Jacobs participated in founding in San Diego, California.
"This generous donation, coming from a person with an exceptional academic-engineering background like Irwin Jacobs, is a clear recognition of the Technion being a leading technological university in the world and its importance to the State of Israel," said the Technion's president, Professor Yitzhak Apluig. "This donation will allow us to significantly increase the number of our graduate students, will raise and advance the Technion's status as a leading research university."
"Over the past few months, the Technion has raised 250 million dollars, from its friends around the world, and especially in North America," said the Vice President for Foreign Relations and Resource Development, Professor Peretz Lavi. "These are unprecedented contributions in the history of the Technion in particular and the Israeli academy in general, which proves that the friends of the Technion understand its great importance to the existence, economic prosperity and security of the State of Israel."
"We are grateful to Joan and Irwin Jacobs for their investment in the Technion," said the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, Professor Moshe Spitalani. "Our graduate students are the engine for the research carried out here - they develop ideas, perform experiments, collect information, check data and train the next generation of Israeli scientists and engineers."
"Qualcomm" is a pioneer and world leader in CDMA cellular technology, and a world leader in the development and production of products and services in the field of digital wireless communication, based on CDMA and other advanced technologies. The company is ranked in the American S&P500 index and is one of the top 500 companies included in the lists of the prestigious FORTUNE magazine.
Among Dr. Jacobs' other titles - appointment to the American National Academy of Engineering, the National Medal of Technology (received from President Bill Clinton), the Alexander Graham Bell Medal from the IEEE, the Dorothy Haight Chair Award from the Leadership Council for Human Rights, and an Enterprise Award Chaim on behalf of the Financial Times. Dr. Jacobs is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and IEEE. He received four honorary doctorate degrees, including one from the Technion (in 2000).
Joan and Irwin Jacobs are known for their philanthropic activities. Besides the Technion, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra benefits from their generosity; University of California, San Diego; La Hoya Theater; San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts; the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego; San Diego Food Bank; services for the Jewish family; Children's Museum of San Diego; and the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Campus at the Lawrence Jewish Community Center. Business Week magazine ranked the Jacobs in 2nd place on the list of the most generous philanthropists in 2004.
