Oh, what a beautiful day

Let us open our eyes

To the sun in the sky

To the glorious sea

And the scent of the blossoming orchard

Bringing joy joy joy to my heart, joy joy joy

The Yarkon Trio

Dear Distinguished leaders of the Technion and GTIIT, Esteemed GT Faculty, teachers and members,  Guests, Proud Families, and above all, our Precious Graduates,

Today, we gather here in this grand hall with our hearts filled with joy, to celebrate a focal moment that marks both an end and a fresh beginning: The graduation of our 3^rd cohort, Class of 2023.

Cast your minds back to August 2019 when you started this life-changing journey. Just a few months into the academic year, the Covid-19 pandemic changed the world. The impact on your studies was huge – and you found yourselves in a “Home-stay University” that forced to move from traditional classrooms to an unfamiliar territory of remote education. Despite this sudden change and new way of learning, endless zoom classes and later hybrid teaching, you showed great strength and determination, adjusted quickly, and kept going. Today you can proudly say - “mission accomplished”.

My journey as a teacher in GTIIT began at around the same time as yours, and much like you, I faced the challenges of the pandemic.  When you traveled home during the spring festival on January  of 2020, I and your other teachers traveled to our homes, overseas.  You may not know, but when we came back, we spent three weeks of quarantine in government-assigned hotel rooms for every trip we made, and these moments of isolation amounted to months. So let me extend our sincere appreciation to your teachers, faculty, and staff, families and friends: your constant support has been priceless. Without you, this moment of success would not have been possible. “your mission is also accomplished”.

I would also like to acknowledge some of the impressive achievements of our graduating students.

20 students finish with a remarkable GPA of 90 and above!

Most students are ready to start further education in prestigious universities, with more than 150 of them admitted to Masters and PhDs in the top 100 universities in the world – The Technion, obviously, and also NYU, UCLA, Cornel, Berkeley, NUS, and more. Li Yitong, for example, our graduate representative from the Chemical Engineering program that will come to the stage in a few moments, is beginning a fully-funded PhD at Stanford University.

We see our alumni integrating into top industries as Intel and Huawei, Dow Chemicals and Exxon mobile, and others go on to pursue PhD degrees in leading universities, and so we look forward to seeing your achievements in the coming years. Keep us updated!!

As for GTIIT – we also continue to grow and develop: one of the latest news is that GTIIT become a Tier 1 university, and an immediate result of that is that we are expecting the largest cohort to start in just a few weeks. Aligned with that, the new cohort will live and study here, in our new south campus. 

As I conclude, our dear students, I want to entrust you in two important missions:

The first mission is about gender equality and equal opportunities for all. At GTIIT, we are proud to encourage a diverse environment. Out of our 240 graduates of this year, 102 students, making up 42.5%, are women. This aligns perfectly with the gender distribution at the time of their birth, disproving the stereotype that engineering is a predominantly male field. All of this year graduates, regardless of their gender, are now engineers.

However, it is important to realize that, as you climb up in your studies and careers, gender balance becomes less evident. While we can see the beginning of positive change, the duty to accelerate this transformation is on all of us male and female.

To our female engineers, a message of support: I want you to hear this very clearly. You are just as able, just as talented, and just as deserving of success. Never give up your dreams or settle for less. As young professionals, you are about to experience several big life changes, including starting families of your own. And facing that future, I want to remind you that you don't have to choose between a brilliant career and a family. With determination and support, you can definitely have and do well in both!

The second mission is connected with responsibility that your Technion diploma represents. It is not just a symbol of your school achievements, but also a sign of the duty to use your knowledge and skills to make the world a better place and address its big challenges. We have seen the super rapid development of mRNA vaccines and other medicines to treat the emerging corona virus variants. This new technology is now being harnessed to develop vaccines to other diseases, including cancer. On another front, sustainable innovative solutions are urgently needed to secure proper food to the growing world. We expect the population to grow to 10 billion by 2050, with worry that 2 billion will be undernourished. One of the most important environmental technologies developed recently to solve this is the production of animal-free alternative proteins through fermentation. This allows to redesign food and produce, for example, cultures meat in the form of 3d-printed steaks and burgers that fully mimics the texture and taste, as well as sea-food, milk and dairy products.

You can contribute at any front - innovation, education, public engagement... We ask you to use your talents, your education and your heart to create a more beautiful, more glorious, and more joy-filled world.

In just a few minutes, with the Technion diploma in hand you will officially become part of the honored alumni community of the Technion and GTIIT. I wish you the best on your new journey! Remember, always aim high but stay true to your values. Aim for the best, but also be kind to those around you.

Congratulations again – Class of 2023

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