Doors are firmly shut as I wander the hushed corridors of Israel's oldest university, the Technion in Haifa, formally known as the Israel Institute of Technology. The hush is partly attributable to the fact that it's a holiday period on a campus normally accommodating 13,500 people. But the Technion press officer maintains that even in quieter times, behind every door sits a brilliant mind pondering the next pioneering innovation.

Established in 1912, Technion's science and technology research has brought game-changing inventions in fields including defence, robotics, medical sciences and engineering. Three Nobel laureates have been associated with the university.

It was Technion graduates who developed the Iron Dome missile defence system that saved Israeli lives during Operation Protective Edge. It was here that scientists came up with a system that could breath-test for cancer and it was also a Technion graduate who developed ReWalk, the robotic suit used by paraplegic Israeli and British war veterans. So it is hardly surprising that the university is regularly visited by British military chiefs.

Technion additionally has an enviable reputation for turning innovations into a global commercial success. I am introduced to a researcher working on a potential "next big thing". I expect to encounter a madcap professor, perhaps of august age and seriously academic. Instead, it's a calm and enterprising 32-year-old wearing shorts and sandals.

So inventive: Technion's top 10

Tel Aviv-born assistant professor Matthew Suss lives on campus. A mechanical engineering graduate who previously worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he once considered leaving academia to launch a start-up, but says Technion does not crimp his commercial flair.

With a start-up, "I would have to work all hours of the day with a lot of responsibility on my shoulders," he explains. "But if you are a professor here, you don't have that and you can still be entrepreneurial. It's a big perk of this job. Also, Israel is a great place to commercialise technology and get a company off the ground. It is a good test market.

"There is a culture where people are willing to take risks, where you work with people who know about start-ups. At the Technion, there is an infrastructure of people who have the know-how and can advise you through it."

Dr Suss is currently working on a project to preserve solar energy via a method he one day hopes to market. Having not yet filed for a patent, he does not want to disclose too much. What he will say is that together with six Israeli technology students (two of them undergraduates), he hopes to produce a battery that will change the way the world stores renewable energy.

"There is a real market need for this - a real economic and market need," he says. "We need to shift towards renewables. It is a way to save money - you get free energy from the sun. It could work in any country, but where there is more sun and less clouds, there will be more energy.

"Typically, I come up with the ideas," he adds. "I have the experience. The students' job is to put the ideas into practice. Technion students are very intelligent and motivated and motivation really is the best quality."

If Dr Suss's device proves a big earner - with the help of the university's commercially focused T3 department - he will share profits with Technion. This is an improvement on America, where he says it is more common to have smaller grants and for the university to claim 70 per cent of profits.

There is also the potential to be head-hunted by a major player. Google, Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo! and Hewlett-Packard have local operations and have hired some of the university's brightest talents.

Its prominence has not gone unnoticed by Israel boycott campaigners. In October, when more than 300 British academics pledged to boycott Israel, its academics and institutions, an advertisement in the Guardian named the Technion as a target for having "developed weaponised unmanned bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes, and [having] created special technology to detect tunnels that Palestinians use to break the illegal siege on Gaza".

The 343 signatories vowed to never work with or visit the university, where Arabs account for 20 per cent of the student population.

But Technion UK chairman Daniel Peltz - recently appointed an OBE for philanthropic and charitable services - is not worried. "The Technion is a world-class institution," he says. "The research it puts out, especially in medical science, actually saves lives. It transcends borders and the boycott movement. You don't get three Nobel laureates from here by accident."

It's a sentiment echoed by Tony Bernstein, Technion UK's executive director. Speaking at its central London office, Mr Bernstein argues that the institution's spirit reflects the ethics of graduate and Nobel Prize in chemistry winner Daniel Shechtman, who set up an entrepreneurial course at Technion. "He taught students that when they set something up, they should not have to sell it straight away. Instead, he taught them to develop and invest in it, to promote it and then take it to the marketplace. It has made the students more commercially aware and taught them how to turn their science into a successful start-up."

For years, an exchange programme has co-ordinated initiatives between Technion and top British universities.

The post-doctorate programme, known as the Coleman-Cohen Fellowship, has this year facilitated exchanges between Technion and universities including Leeds, Exeter, Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, Edinburgh, Loughborough and Sheffield.

Each student costs the fund, administered by Technion UK, up to £10,000, but Mr Bernstein considers it a sage investment - and likewise, the SciTech exchange for sixth-formers.

"I hope they return feeling they want to give something back," he says. "It has certainly changed their lives."