Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine

The faculty combines medical education, biomedical research, and clinical training within the Technion. Its main medical campus is at Bat Galim, where the 14-story Rappaport Family Medical Sciences Building stands next to Rambam Health Care Campus and houses both the faculty and the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences.[2][3]

The faculty describes its position within a technological institute as uncommon and links this setting to an emphasis on quantitative science and collaboration with engineering researchers.[1]

The faculty's own history and a Ynet account date its establishment as an independent medical school in Haifa to 1969.[6][1] A 2023 national report gives the establishment year as 1969–70, while an Encyclopedia.com account says the Technion established a medical school in 1970.[4][5] Its first class comprised 43 students who had completed preclinical studies abroad; they entered as fourth-year students and completed their M.D. requirements after two years of clinical training in Israeli hospitals.[1] The school initially operated in a monastery on the grounds of Rambam Hospital.[6] Early efforts to establish it faced institutional resistance: a committee initially rejected the request to create another medical school, then later permitted the school to admit students into its fourth year in coordination with existing universities.[6]

On January 3, 1971, the Technion Senate approved merging the medical school with the Technion, with the merger to take full effect on October 1, 1973.[1] Technion's academic backing enabled a complete six-year medical curriculum combining preclinical and clinical studies, and the first class in that integrated program was admitted in 1973.[1] Since its first graduation in 1974, the faculty reports awarding more than 2,000 M.D. degrees; by 1995, close to 500 M.D. degrees had already been granted.[1][5]

Bruce and Ruth Rappaport provided substantial financial support for a permanent faculty building. Its cornerstone was laid in June 1974, and the medical faculty and research building was inaugurated on October 30, 1979.[1] In June 1991, in recognition of the Rappaports' continuing support, the faculty was officially named the Ruth & Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine.[1] Ruth and Bruce Rappaport gave tens of millions of dollars over approximately 30 years to the faculty's activities, and they conceived, established, and supported the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences.[7][2]

The Rappaport Family Medical Sciences Building, a 14-story structure next to Rambam Health Care Campus, houses both the Faculty of Medicine and the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences.[2] The faculty describes Ruth and Bruce Rappaport as supporters from almost the institution's inception.[2] Their donations assisted in erecting the faculty building and the research institute. Together with Rambam Health Care Campus, they also initiated construction of the Ruth Rappaport Children's Hospital.[8]

Ruth Rappaport recalled that when the cornerstone was laid for the building, Bruce declared, "You'll see, one day we'll get a Nobel Prize."[6] That prediction proved prophetic when faculty members Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[8] In a later initiative marking the faculty's golden jubilee, the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation and the Bruce and Ruth Rappaport Foundation announced a collaboration to establish the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Human Health Building, which is to house the Bruce and Ruth Rappaport Cancer Research Center.[8] Technion President Uri Sivan described the initiative as pursuing cancer research and human health through a multidisciplinary approach and the Technion's close ties with hospitals, particularly Rambam Healthcare Campus.[8]

The standard M.D. program spans six years. The first three years focus on chemical, physical, and biological sciences, during which students earn a B.Sc. in Medical Sciences.[3] From their first week, students spend one day each week in clinical settings, encountering patients and medical staff.[3] The final three years consist of clinical training in small groups at affiliated medical centers and clinics, followed by a year of practical work at a central health-care center under the guidance of senior doctors.[3] Training takes place at both the Technion's Mount Carmel campus and its medical campus at Bat Galim.[3]

The faculty also offers multidisciplinary tracks for outstanding students, including M.D./Ph.D. and M.D./Engineering programs, as well as an M.D./Law program in collaboration with the University of Haifa.[1] A joint eight-year program with the Technion's biomedical engineering faculty awards three degrees: a B.Sc. in biomedical engineering, a B.Sc. in medical sciences, and an M.D.[9] Students in that program choose among biomedical engineering tracks including medical imaging and signals, biomechanics and flow, or tissue engineering and biomaterials.[9]

The faculty was listed in a 2023 report as offering a six-year track and a foreign-student program.[4] In 2021, it recorded 133 newly enrolled students in the six-year track and 24 foreign students, for 157 new students in total.[4] Six-year-track annual intake between 2010 and 2021 ranged from 100 to 133, while foreign-student intake over the same period ranged from 24 to 35.[4] The faculty body includes clinical scientists and clinical educators, approximately 350 technical and administrative personnel, 600 medical students, and 200 graduate students.[1]

Faculty members conduct basic and clinical research into human biology, disease mechanisms, and potential therapies and drugs.[10] Research departments cover areas including cell biology, development, genetics, physiology, immunology, neuroscience, and translational research; many faculty members combine basic research with clinical practice.[10] Current research areas encompass artificial intelligence, big data, immunology, neuroscience, cancer, stem cells, drug development, biomedicine, and bioinformatics.[11]

Major research centers include the Technion Integrated Cancer Center, the Allen and Jewel Prince Center for Neurodegenerative Disorders of the Brain, and the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences.[12] These centers bring together researchers across departmental affiliations and Technion faculties for interdisciplinary work.[12] Core facilities provide researchers, industry, and other academic institutions with equipment and technologies.[10] The Rappaport Institute is described as a major research pillar offering research opportunities in molecular biology and biomedical sciences.[1]

The faculty's most celebrated research achievement is the work of Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover on ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. Ubiquitin is a system that marks proteins for breakdown, allowing cells to remove damaged or defective proteins and reuse their building blocks.[13] A 1984 Technion event presenting research on ubiquitin was organized in part by Hershko and Ciechanover, and the faculty is described as the academic setting from which their Nobel Prize-winning research developed.[6] The faculty was also listed among ten interventional-cardiology sites in the region and the United States that participated in the international "Heart Knows No Borders" studies of two stent-device combinations.[14]

The faculty describes itself as one of a small number of medical faculties worldwide located within a technological institute rather than a university, a distinction reflected in its emphasis on quantitative and basic sciences and in encouraged collaboration between medical and engineering researchers.[1] Technion president Yitzhak Apeloig characterized it as a distinctive setting for teaching medicine within an engineering and technology institution, while a former faculty dean said research excellence and teaching had been central aims since its founding.[13]

The faculty's stated mission extends beyond research and teaching to delivering high-quality health care in northern Israel.[1] Its affiliated medical centers include Rambam, Bnai Zion, Carmel, HaEmek, and Hillel Yafe hospitals, the psychiatric hospitals Shaar Menashe and Tirat HaCarmel, and the geriatric hospitals Fliman and Shoham.[1] The faculty has also stated plans to expand affiliations and strengthen ties with family-practice clinics across northern Israel.[1]

The Ministry of Health reported that in 2022 the Technion had a ratio of 5.11 hospital beds per student in the last three clinical years—the highest such ratio among Israeli medical schools, counting beds in major fields such as internal medicine, surgery, and pediatrics.[4] The report noted the ratio varied twofold between the Technion and the Hebrew University, which had the lowest figure.[4]

A 2014 study of 1,050 Israeli medical-school graduates found that half of graduates from the Rappaport Faculty and Ben-Gurion University's medical school had worked, or previously worked, in Israel's geographic periphery—a notably higher share than the fewer than one-third recorded for graduates of the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University schools.[15]