Frieda Granot
Technion Stories
My name is Frieda Granot and I am a proud member of both the Canadian Technion Board of Governors and the International Technion Board of Governors.
I was born in a Displaced Persons Camp in West Germany, and emigrated to Israel with my family (parents and my older sister) in 1949. After living for three years in a temporary housing (maabara), my family moved to Kiriat Ono, just north of Tel Aviv.
Upon high school graduation, I was offered the option to postpone my army service and study in an Israeli university as part of the army academic reserve The Technion was the first to offer me admission, which I accepted.
The Technion had a major impact on my life. First and foremost, it is where I met my husband Daniel (Danny) Granot, who studied Industrial Engineering and Management, and as we say, the rest is history. We are happily married for more than 54 years. Courtship was a bit challenging at the beginning, and Danny used to joke with friends that at the Technion he had to walk a few steps behind me “since as a mathematics student I would not be caught dead dating an engineering student”. Evidently, we overcame these challenges.
At the Technion I studied in the mathematics stream. When I graduated with my BSc Cum Laude, I was offered a scholarship from the newly established computer science department at the Technion. The army had agreed to delay my service, and in return I prepared officers for their entrance exams to the Technion. I received my MSc in Computer Science with Distinction and started working on my PhD. By that time, we had a baby girl and I was released from Army service. We were advisedthat we would benefit from doing our third degree in the US, and thus decided to pursue our PhD there.
In 1972, with a young daughter, we travelled to Austin, Texas, to do our PhDs in an interdisciplinary area (Business Administration, Mathematics and Computer Science). Then, following a one-year postdoc in the Math department in Dalhousie university, Halifax, Nova Scotia, we have accepted faculty positions at the University of British Columbia (UBC). We have been living in Vancouver since 1975, very much enjoying the relatively mild weather, the city, and the University of British Columbia.
Indeed, since 1975, we have both been faculty members in the same division, at UBC we have published many joint papers And we both believe that our Technion education gave us a good start in our long academic career.
During our Technion studies the Technion was a male dominated environment. For the first 10 years, I was the only tenure-track female among 120 male colleagues. I have also served in many university-wide committees where I was the only female.
In 1996, for a period of ten years, I also served at UBC as the first female Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Interdisciplinary Studies, where together with my team we have created over thirty new university-wide think-tanks and interdisciplinary units, for which I was the awarded in 2007 the Order of Canada as well as Queen Elizabeth Gold and Platinum medals.
Danny and I are both grateful for the wonderful start we had at the Technion, both personally and professionally, and are happy to be able to now help to increase awareness and support of the Technion in Western Canada together.