The Board of Governors of the Technion today approved the appointment of Prof. Peretz Lavie as the next President of the Technion. Prof. Lavie will assume the office of Technion President on October 1, 2009, replacing Prof. Yitzhak Apeloig, who will be completing two terms of four years each.

“I will make great efforts to recruit excellent new faculty members to the Technion, since good lecturers attract good students,” said Prof. Lavie upon being chosen for the position. “In parallel, we will explain to young Israeli men and women why it is worthwhile for them to study at the Technion, one of the important institutions in Israel and without whose tremendous contribution of 80,000 graduates, the State of Israel would look very different. Our students will feel at home at the Technion and will also feel that we are here for them.”

Prof. Peretz Lavie, 60, was born in Petah Tikva and grew up in Zichron Yaakov. He is the father of modern sleep medicine and research in Israel. Prof. Lavie is one of the outstanding sleep researchers in the world and the winner of the EMET Prize in Medicine. His research has influenced tremendously the quality of life of many in Israel and around the world. His work from the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s proved that breathing disturbances during sleep, which until then were considered to be rare, are the most common disturbances in adults and have a decisive influence on causing heart and blood vessel illnesses. These findings had a decisive influence on the development of sleep medicine in the world and Prof. Lavie’s numerous publications have been cited to date thousands of times.

Prof. Lavie is the editor-in-chief of the “Journal of Sleep Research”, one of the two most important scientific publications in the field of sleep research. He has published eight books, written more than 300 scientific articles and given hundreds of lectures all over the world. His bestselling book “The Enchanted World of Sleep”, published by the prestigious Yale University Press, has been translated into 14 languages.

In 1979, Prof. Lavie established the Technion Center for Sleep Medicine. The center has expanded tremendously due to great demand and today has branches all over Israel. He was also a partner in the establishment of the Sleep Medicine Center which is part of the Harvard School of Medicine in Boston, and was set up according to the model of the center at the Technion. In the Technion center, more than 100,000 persons have been examined. “The quiet channel”, which operated on the radio during the First Gulf War, was at the suggestion of Prof. Lavie. This channel went on the air only when there was a missile attack and enabled Israelis to sleep without fear that they would not wake up for the sirens. “The quiet channel” was also operated during the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead. Cancellation of “zero hour” in elementary schools (classes in the very early morning before the official start of the school day) came about in the wake of Prof. Lavie’s recommendations to the Ministry of Education after his research showed that this had a negative influence on the children due to the lack of sleep that it caused them. Change of an army regulation concerning the sleep time of soldiers was done following consultation given by Prof. Lavie to the IDF. He was also part of the public struggle in the 1980s to institute daylight savings time in Israel.

Prof. Lavie served six years as Dean of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion and seven years as Executive Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development. During the period in which he was Vice President, the Technion raised more than $500 million.