Peretz Lavie

Professor Peretz Lavie is an early pioneer of sleep research and the 15th president of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Professor Peretz Lavie served as president of the Technion from 2009 to 2019, transforming the university into a global player. In New York City, he was instrumental in creating the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. In China, he helped establish the Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology.

Accelerating the ascent of the Technion to one of the world’s top institutes for science and technology, he recruited world-class faculty; forged international research collaborations; and advanced multidisciplinary learning with the establishment of the Technion Integrated Cancer Center and the Helen Diller Center for Quantum Science, Matter and Engineering.

Joining the Technion in 1975, he founded Israel’s first sleep research laboratory, where he demonstrated the prevalence of breathing disorders during sleep and its link to hypertension and heart disease. He was active in bringing daylight savings time to Israel, and in abolishing school classes in the early morning “zero hour.”

Prior to his presidency, Prof. Lavie was the Technion vice president for resource development and external relations, and dean of the Nobel Prize-winning Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. Currently, he serves as professor emeritus in the Faculty of Medicine and as a consultant to universities in South Korea, France, and Portugal.His research led to sleep medicine technologies including the Watch-PAT, a hand-mounted device for the diagnosis of sleep apnea. In addition, he was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sleep Research, and his bestselling book “The Enchanted World of Sleep” has been translated into 15 languages.