Eli Aljadeff

Professor, Head of Mathematics with Computer Science Program

Eli Aljadeff is a chair-holder professor in the Mathematics department at the Technion and an employee at GTIIT for teaching and research. Eli is in charge of the mathematics program at GTIIT. Prof. Aljadeff received his Ph.D in mathematics from Tel Aviv University in Israel in 1988. He was a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in USA, Insitute for advanced mathematical research in Strasbourg, France, University of Murcia in Spain and University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. Eli is an algebtraist, working on topics as polynomial identities and group gradings on algebras, Brauer groups, group cohomology and division algebras. Prof. Aljadeff arrived to the Technion in 1990. Between 2015 and 2018 he was the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics at the Technion.

I have been teaching in GT over the years, I have contacted students and parents, and I have some understanding of the college entrance examination. In China, the college entrance examination is the most important measure of high school students' academic performance, and tens of millions of students take the examination every year. This examination is like a huge competitive platform, with a lot of competitive content, strong technicality, and clear standards. From the perspective of making good use of human resources and promoting social progress, I think we can also do more in terms of cultivating students' love of science and stimulating their curiosity and creativity. 

Everyone is unique, and talents are diverse. The point of human resource management is to inspire everyone's strengths and make them contribute to society. Every family can do personal attention, but the whole society needs a lot of resources to do it. To cite two extreme examples of enlisting in the army: In Israel, high school students take various tests about a year and a half before graduation to discover their strengths and arrange suitable positions according to their personal characteristics and wishes when enlisting in the army; on the contrary, in Argentina, many years ago, the type of service enlisted in the army was determined by the result of drawing. High numbers, say above 900 (out of 1,000), were drafted to the navy whereas very low numbers, below 100, were not enrolled at all! It does not take much effort and depends on luck, of course, without considering personal characteristics. Going back to the college entrance examination, Israel has a small population and lack of natural resources, and people must give full play to their talents. Therefore, the country sets up every year a great variety of tests, in terms of number of topics and in terms of levels of difficulty, this in order to try to enable students with different interests to find their favorite programs and maximize their personal intelligence. Of course, this approach may not be suitable for China in light of a huge base of candidates. However, as a populous country, China needs to use the best method to activate the individual talents of a huge group of students and become a populously strong country. This is also an important aspect of education.

There are top universities in China, excellent programs, and good education. All in all, if students want to make progress in universities, they must receive academic challenges. Challenges may succeed or fail. However, according to my observation, it is difficult for current university students to find a suitable way out if they fail their studies. Conversely, if the difficulty of academic challenges is reduced in order to avoid failure, or even no challenge, then the result is that no one fails, and of course it is difficult for anyone to make progress through challenges. In GT, I deal with such problems from time to time. 

GT's education has had a good start. Our students have a good foundation, and most of them have scores within the upper 15% of the college entrance examination group. In my opinion, GT provides students with academic challenges and development opportunities that are difficult to provide by other universities admitted with the same admission scores. More importantly, GT has stimulated students’ courage to challenge and innovate, and cultivate their love for science and technology and their will to overcome difficulties. Let’s say other universities’ requirement is running 100 meters in 12 seconds, while we require running that distance in 10 seconds. Receiving such a challenge may succeed or fail. But we believe that as long as students follow the concepts and methods we advocate and complete the "prescribed actions", they will be successful. The situation of the first graduates cohort has confirmed this. 

We are in the same line as the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. First of all, the MCS program attaches importance to logical, clear and precise thinking (e.g. proofs), understanding abstract notions and implementing them to the real world. The teaching content is much more difficult than similar programs. For example, the content of the Calculus course taught at GT in the first semester, is not taught in most of the Universities in the US, even the well known ones, before the second year. Advanced courses, as group theory, combinatorial algorithms or topology are taught at GT much earlier than in most prestigious Universities in the US. Therefore, many of the students who graduated from our program are better prepared (comparing to graduates from US Universities) to enter US university for Ph.D. In fact, in the United States, mathematics programs in universities generally make slow progress in teaching in the first and second academic years, and the final learning outcome is not very prominent, and many students fail to meet the requirements for Ph.D studies. Therefore, through studying in our program, students' knowledge and capabilities in mathematics will be greatly improved. 

Secondly, our program mathematics with computer science combines in a very strong way these two areas. Mathematics may not be the only knowledge needed for computer science but is fundamental and definitely most important, especially for software development. In particular, mastering mathematics means mastering the ideas and creativity needed for generating computer programs. This is the top of the professional field. We carefully selected 9 computer science courses to enhance students' in-depth understanding of computers. 

For example, in the course "Introduction to Systems Programming", students become familiar with notions such as abstraction, encapsulation, generics and more. These notions are crucial in the design and implementation of every complex system. 

Q6: What kind of students do you think are suitable for studying in GT?

Their college entrance examination scores are not necessarily the highest, but they must love science, love mathematics, physics and chemistry, love thinking, and be curious. Don't give up easily when they find a problem that they can't solve, think of a way to solve it, don't let it go when they find something they don't understand, and try their best to understand. 

In the past few years, it was difficult for them, and it will not be easy after entering university. I recommend them to relive the time as a child, find their own interests, and then choose their favorite program in light of their future development.

Text/Photos: GTIIT News & Public Affairs