The Technion continues to set the standard for innovation and excellence and once again puts Israel on the world stage.
Haifa and London – The Technion, Israel Institute of Technology has earned major international recognition for both academic excellence and entrepreneurial impact, according to newly released global rankings.
The Technion has been ranked first in Israel and Europe in a leading international computer sciences index measuring peer-reviewed conference publications between 2005 and 2025. The institution placed 21st worldwide overall, with particular strength in artificial intelligence and machine learning, including a top-10 global ranking in machine learning.
The index evaluates research output and impact across key computer science disciplines, underscoring The Technion’s leadership in advanced technologies shaping the future of AI, data science, and computational research.
In addition to its academic distinction, The Technion has also been ranked among the top 10 universities worldwide for producing venture-backed founders, according to the latest PitchBook University Rankings. Climbing six places from the previous year, the Technion secured 10th place globally, reflecting the growing influence of its alumni within the global startup ecosystem.
Technion graduates have founded hundreds of companies that have collectively raised billions of dollars in venture capital, reinforcing the university’s reputation as a powerhouse of deep-tech innovation and entrepreneurship.
Alan Aziz CEO of Technion UK commented: “These rankings reflect more than academic achievement, they represent the Technion’s unique ability to turn groundbreaking research into real-world impact. From pioneering advances in AI to nurturing the next generation of global entrepreneurs, The Technion continues to set the standard for innovation and excellence and once again puts Israel on the world stage.”
Together, these achievements highlight the Technion’s ability to combine world-class scientific research with tangible commercial success advancing knowledge while fuelling technological innovation worldwide.
Ali Ayoub told the Globes Putting the North at the Center Conference that Nvidia does not see the north as a periphery but as the center of the AI revolution.
“I was born and raised in the (Galilee) village of Majd al-Krum and was infatuated by the field of technology from an early age. I remember my father buying us a computer, which was not a given. I shared the computer with my brothers,” Nvidia VP software engineering Ali Ayoub told Globes technology editor Assaf Gilead at the Globes Putting the North at the Center Conference held in cooperation with Bank Leumi and Strauss Group.
Ayoub spoke about AI and if it will replace engineers and juniors, how to hire employees in the North, how to integrate Arab society into tech professions, Nvidia’s cooperation with academia, and how he reached his current position at Nvidia. Ayoub’s path to Nvidia VP included several stages: he earned a degree in computer engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, worked at Mellanox, moved to the US where he worked at Google and founded a startup, and after 10 years he returned to Israel and Mellanox, and remained there even after the acquisition of Nvidia. At the US chip giant, he founded the DOCA feature group and today manages hundreds of employees at Nvidia in Israel and around the world. He is also cofounder of the HAAT food delivery company.
When asked why he chose to return to Israel, he replied: “People usually ask why I left the center of the country and came to the north. I left the center of the world, Silicon Valley, and returned to the north. This is home. In high-tech, they always talk about the importance of work-life balance, the north is ‘life’, and also being close to family and Nvidia is ‘work’. For me, the stars aligned and looking back, this is one of the best decisions I made.”
Nvidia is to build a large development center in Kiryat Tivon over the next decade for 8,000-10,000 employees. Why in the north and specifically in Kiryat Tivon?
“The north has excellent human capital, and tech companies are really looking for the best. In the north, first of all, there are very good universities. Also in general, if you want to find good people, it is worth looking where others are less likely to look. In Nvidia’s eyes, the north is a place with excellent human capital and a place for growth, and it is no coincidence that they chose Tivon. From our point of view, there is raw material here and it is full of talent that we would be very happy to recruit to Nvidia to reach even further and greater growth. In my opinion, not only is there talent here, but also untapped talent here.”
Can you expand about Nvidia’s activities in Israel?
“Nvidia Israel, which employs 5,000, is the company’s biggest branch worldwide outside the US. The employees are the nervous system of data centers. They focus on the field of networking and the transformation of AI. Nvidia makes the GPU (graphics processing unit), the AI engine, and if hundreds of GPUs were once enough to build AI data centers, today thousands are needed. They must be connected to a very fast network, and this is where Nvidia Israel comes in. We provide these fast networks. This is the beating heart of the AI revolution not only in Israel, but around the world.”
How do you hire employees in the North?
“Firstly, you have to believe that they exist, look for them and then find them. It’s a matter of cause and effect. In all kinds of jobs, not just in high-tech, there is a lot of stress on the balance between work and home. The North brings the home part and we have to work on the work part. So, companies must set up branches here and focus on here and create the opportunity to work in quality jobs. This is, in my opinion, the number one element that will keep people here. Nvidia does not see the North as a periphery but sees it as the center of the AI revolution, and you have to believe in it and see it and when you look, you find it.”
Are you working with universities in order to build a pool of employees in the future?
“For us, universities are not just a collaboration, but complement us. This is not done as a favor to the universities, but we want to bring the best to us. Personally, every two months, there is a high school or school that comes to visit. It starts even before the universities.”
Ayoub spoke about collaboration with the universities: “We work very closely with them. This is reflected in job fairs, and we have a program that provides AI tools to lecturers and students, and this brings us very close together.”
On the change required in universities and the integration of AI tools, he said, “I think universities are changing. They also turn to us and we suggest how to change the syllabus and courses. The juniors and students we hire do an excellent job and integrate into AI very quickly. We take people when they have the basic tools, and we do the education and use of AI tools within the company.”
On the difficulty of juniors finding tech jobs, he said, “We hire a lot of juniors and we are at the center of the AI revolution that will require more work. We need to hire people. The reason we are doing this is because we believe in juniors and do not believe that AI will replace them.”
“Whoever doesn’t use AI will get left behind”
You are Nvidia VP software engineering, and this is the area most vulnerable to the impact of AI. There are companies where employees and programmers have not programmed for six months. Do you believe that the programmer will be replaced by AI?
“Not at all. AI will not replace the engineer, but any engineer who does not use AI will be replaced by another engineer who does use it. Almost every engineer at Nvidia uses AI. Things that take weeks to do alone, today can be done in days or hours. It is such an essential tool that anyone who does not use it will be left behind. AI will certainly create new jobs for those who look at it from the right angle.”
What would you recommend to your young children when they grow up to study: software or electrical engineering?
“You cannot do one without the other. I studied software and work in it, but the software I make is software that complements the hardware. The hardware is the body and the software is the mind. You cannot have a body without a mind and vice versa. They complement each other.”
You have previously told me that when you were growing up, your family took it very hard that you went to study computer engineering.
“My parents wanted me to be a doctor, maybe to this day,” laughs Ayoub. “I remember when I wanted to enroll in school, there was the option to give two majors. But I asserted myself, and I only registered the first major.”
How has Arab society changed in recent years and how easy is it for young people to integrate into the tech industry?
“We see them at the Technion, but many give up after their degree and go do other things. But still, almost 16% of the students today in technology subjects are from Arab society. At the Technion, close to 20% of students are Arab, which is very close to the percentage of the population. 50% of Arab students are female students, and this representation we are very proud of. Tech companies are looking for diversity and we see it as a blessing and something good that brings better products.”
Ayoub stresses that more work is needed because there are not many entrepreneurs from Arab society: “Today there is more openness and exposure to technology and we need more role models to say ‘When I grow up, I will be a tech professional’. I think it is happening, but we need to give it more push.”
Full disclosure: The conference was held in cooperation with Bank Leumi and Strauss Group, and sponsored by Aura Investments, Tel-Hai Academic College, Propdo, and with the participation of Netivei Israel National Transport Infrastructure Co.
The special collaboration will help advance Israeli innovation, energy security, and civil aviation. After concluding the project feasibility study, Boeing and the Technion announce advancement to the next stage of practical development
January 27, 2026 – Dr. Brendan Nelson, President of Boeing Global, visited the Technion yesterday to mark a milestone in the activities of the Boeing–Technion Innovation Centre for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and to launch the implementation phase. This strategic partnership, the Boeing–Technion SAF Innovation Centre, was launched in 2023 to develop sustainable fuels for the aviation industry. According to the project partners, aviation’s long-term growth will be enabled by producing SAF from feedstocks including green hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and the joint centre will advance this process to a level that enables commercial production at a competitive cost.
Also participating in the visit on behalf of Boeing were Boeing Israel President Maj. Gen. (res.) Ido Nehushtan and Haggai Mazursky, Head of the SAF project. The Boeing delegation was welcomed at the Technion by Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan; Vice President for Research Prof. Noam Adir; Vice President for Innovation and Industry Relations Prof. Yuval Garini; and Head of the Centre Prof. Gidi Grader of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering.
Dr. Nelson, a physician by training, previously held senior positions in the Australian government, including Member of the Australian Parliament, Minister of Defence, Minister for Education and Science, and Ambassador to Europe. During his visit to the Technion, Nelson said: “In addition to delivering high-quality fuel-efficient airplanes to our customers, Boeing works globally and regionally to enhance energy security, support the growth of the civil aviation industry, and create new economic opportunities through sustainable aviation fuel and other technologies. We are pleased to partner with Technion and other stakeholders in the SAF Innovation Centre to support Israel’s aerospace industry.”
“This is a historic collaboration of national importance for the State of Israel,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “The partnership with the global aviation leader, Boeing, is, for us, a vote of confidence in the Technion, its researchers, and our technological capabilities. Through this collaboration, Technion experts are taking on a tremendous mission: to develop technologies for producing clean fuels through sustainable processes, thereby making a significant contribution to aviation—and no less importantly, to human health and the environment. I do not doubt that we will meet this challenge, just as we have met many others over the past hundred years.”
“Boeing has been active in Israel since before the establishment of the State and serves as an important supplier to El Al and the Israeli Air Force,” said Maj. Gen. (res.) Ido Nehushtan, President of Boeing Israel. “Israeli industries are now key suppliers to Boeing, and many Israeli systems are integrated into the company’s products worldwide. Boeing has continued to deepen its research and development ties with academia and industry in Israel, as well as its investments in the high-tech sector.” The President of Boeing Israel added that the collaboration between the Technion and Boeing will pave the way for the development of Israel’s most advanced technologies and capabilities, which will be integrated into future generations of aerospace systems around the world.
The Boeing–Technion partnership was initiated by Boeing and includes partners from across the industry and government in Israel. The Israeli Government has provided measures and financial support to accelerate the Israeli SAF industry, which include Israel’s Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology establishing the ISAF research consortium and the Israel Innovation Authority launching SAF-IL which is an incubation program for Israeli start-ups dealing with SAF development.
To lead this groundbreaking vision for the development of SAF, Boeing partnered with Prof. Gidi Grader of the Technion’s Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering to establish the centre, which has now completed its proof-of-concept phase. As part of the partnership, 11 Technion faculty members and dozens of doctoral students from five different faculties are working on various aspects of aviation fuel production, including efficient and competitive manufacturing; theoretical aspects of catalytic reactions and fuel combustion; safety considerations; full life-cycle analysis; and the establishment and operation of an experimental fuel-testing facility at the Technion, which will be only the second of its kind in the world.
The announcement of the Boeing–Technion partnership was originally planned for October 2023. Despite the events of October 7 and the war that followed, the decision was made to continue with the technical work, as Dr. Nelson explained several months later: “We launched this initiative, a project of resilience and innovation in the spirit of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, shortly after the horrific October 7 attack. When I met the Prime Minister a few months earlier, I told him that if there is one country in the world capable of solving civil aviation’s emissions challenge, it is Israel, led by the Technion—the Israeli MIT.”
Now, two years later, following the completion of the initial feasibility phase, senior Boeing executives were presented with the progress achieved to date, and the second phase of the initiative was launched: the development of SAF produced from green hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and the advancement of the process to a level that will enable competitive commercial production.
Five companies across the hardware-software stack position Israel among the world’s most dynamic quantum hubs.
Israel’s quantum computing sector is experiencing a breakout year. In 2025 alone, five Israeli quantum companies have raised almost $500 million, an influx of capital that places the country among the most active and diversified quantum hubs in the world. The companies – Quantum Art, Classiq, QuamCore, Qedma, and Quantum Machines – span nearly every layer of the quantum stack, from hardware and scaling architectures to control systems and error-correction software.
Quantum Art: A Hardware Bet With an Aggressive Roadmap
The most recent deal came on Wednesday, when Quantum Art announced a $100 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $124 million. The round was led by Bedford Ridge Capital with participation from Battery Ventures, Destra Investments, Lumir Growth Partners, Disruptive AI, Harel Insurance, and others, alongside continued investment from Amiti Ventures, StageOne Ventures, Vertex Ventures, Entrée Capital, and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Founded as a spin-off from Prof. Roee Ozeri’s group at the Weizmann Institute, the company is led by Dr. Tal David (CEO), Dr. Amit Ben Kish (CTO), and Ozeri (CSO). It specializes in trapped-ion quantum computing, a field long known for precision but criticized for scalability. Quantum Art argues it has solved key challenges through proprietary techniques in multi-qubit gates, modular architectures, and robust error correction.
In June, the company unveiled an unusually detailed roadmap targeting Quantum Advantage by 2027 and a one-million-qubit system by 2033. The timeline includes a 50-qubit system next year; a 1,000-qubit “Perspective” line in 2027; an ultra-dense 12,000-40,000 qubit “Landscape” platform; and ultimately a fault-tolerant “Mosaic” architecture.
Classiq: Software as the Missing Layer
Quantum computer. (Courtesy)
On the software side, Classiq raised an estimated $30 million in November in an up-round that included AMD Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, IonQ, and major financial institutions such as Mirae Asset Capital, Bank Leumi’s LeumiTech77, and Quantum Eretz. The company has now raised more than $200 million to date, following a $110 million Series C completed just six months earlier and an additional $10 million investment from SoftBank.
Classiq founders. (Photo: Eyal Toueg)
Classiq builds an operating system and development environment that translates high-level goals into quantum circuits, allowing organizations to build applications without deep knowledge of quantum physics. Its partnerships with NVIDIA, Microsoft, and AWS, and customers including BMW Group, Comcast, Rolls-Royce, Citi, Toshiba, and SoftBank, suggest that enterprises increasingly see value in preparing for quantum computing years before the hardware matures.
Founded in 2020 by CEO Nir Minerbi, CPO Amir Naveh, and CTO Dr. Yehuda Naveh, the company employs 100 people, three-quarters of whom are based in Israel.
QuamCore: The Race to a Million Qubits
In August, QuamCore raised $26 million in a Series A that brought its total funding to $35 million, including a $4 million grant from the Israel Innovation Authority. The round was led by Sentinel Global, with participation from Arkin Capital and returning investors Viola Ventures, Earth & Beyond Ventures, Surround Ventures, Rhodium, and Qbeat.
QuamCore founders. (Photo: QuamCore)
QuamCore claims to have developed a fully designed and simulated architecture for scaling superconducting quantum systems to one million qubits in a single cryostat, far beyond the ~5,000-qubit per-module limit achieved by Google and IBM. If validated, the approach would fundamentally rewrite assumptions about the physical limits of superconducting systems.
The company is led by CEO Alon Cohen, formerly of Mobileye’s EyeC Radar Group, and CTO Prof. Shay Hacohen-Gourgy and Chief Scientist Prof. Serge Rosenblum, both leading figures in superconducting quantum research at the Technion and the Weizmann Institute. Their combined academic work has appeared in Science, Nature, and other top journals.
Qedma: Fixing Quantum Computing’s Biggest Problem
Error rates remain the defining barrier to practical quantum computing, and Israeli startup Qedma has positioned itself squarely at this chokepoint. The company raised $26 million in July in a Series A led by Glilot+ with participation from IBM, Korean Investment Partners, and others.
Qedma team. (Photo: Eyal Toueg)
Qedma develops software that identifies and learns the noise profile of each quantum device and adjusts algorithms to suppress and mitigate errors. The company claims its methods can enable quantum calculations up to 1,000 times larger than today’s hardware alone can support. That would dramatically reduce the overhead required for quantum error correction, which typically consumes up to 1,000 physical qubits for every single logical qubit.
The company traces its origins to a 2020 conversation between Prof. Netanel Lindner and Dr. Asif Sinay, later joined by Prof. Dorit Aharonov, a pioneer of the fault-tolerance theorem that proved large-scale quantum computing was theoretically possible. Their weekly discussions evolved into a startup aiming to build the “operating layer” that quantum machines currently lack.
Quantum Machines: Control Systems Become Strategic
The year’s largest raise came in February, when Quantum Machines closed a $170 million Series C, bringing its total investment to $280 million and valuing the company at an estimated $700 million. PSG Equity led the round with participation from Red Dot Capital Partners, Intel Capital, TLV Partners, Battery Ventures, and entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz.
Quantum Machines team. (Photo: Ilya Melnikov)
Quantum Machines builds hybrid control systems used across nearly every type of quantum hardware. Its technology has seen broad global adoption, including through a strategic collaboration with NVIDIA on DGX Quantum, which integrates real-time quantum control with high-speed classical computing.
The company was founded in 2018 by Dr. Itamar Sivan (CEO), Dr. Yonatan Cohen (CTO), and Dr. Nissim Ofek (VP R&D), all alumni of the Weizmann Institute’s Submicron Center.
Prof. Gal Shmuel of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology has developed an innovative approach that enables precise control of heat conduction in ways that do not occur naturally.
The breakthrough could lead to new applications in energy harvesting and in protecting heat-sensitive devices. The research, conducted in collaboration with Prof. John R. Willis of the University of Cambridge, was published in Physical Review Letters.
The researchers’ approach is based on designing materials with asymmetric and nonuniform microstructures, inspired by similar methods previously developed for controlling light and sound—but never applied before to heat conduction. The challenge in adapting these ideas stems from the fact that light and sound propagate as waves, while heat spreads through a spontaneous process known as diffusion.
The solution developed by Profs. Willis and Shmuel relies on a unique homogenization method that accurately maps the average heat flow in composite materials. Using this method, the two propose thermal metamaterials (engineered materials with thermal properties not found in nature) in which the average heat flow is asymmetric: the heat flow pattern depends on the direction from which it enters the material.
This engineered asymmetry makes it possible to “tame heat,” guiding it in desired directions. According to Prof. Shmuel, “This capability is essential for various technological applications. It expands our toolkit for managing heat and offers new solutions for protecting temperature-sensitive electronics and efficiently routing heat in thermal energy harvesting systems.”
At 15, when a neurological condition took Tobias Weinberg’s ability to speak, aspects of his personality became more difficult to express.
Typing to communicate, he struggled to keep up in conversations, especially to make the jokes or sarcastic comments that had been his norm. And his first text-to-voice device was monotone, with Mexican or Spanish accents but not his native Argentinian.
“The monotone voices, the timing of interjections and conveying my personality through this new way of communication was definitely frustrating,” wrote Weinberg, now a doctoral student and Siegel PiTech Fellow at Cornell Tech. As part of the Matter of Tech Lab, he is exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance the technologies that he and more than two million Americans with speech disabilities use to communicate.
Through a standing partnership between Cornell Tech and YAI—a nonprofit that supports more than 20,000 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in New York, New Jersey and California—Weinberg spent a year working with a group of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) users who live in group homes in Tarrytown, New York to better understand needs and behaviors and to improve prototypes.
The resulting research and lines of inquiry, which incorporate Weinberg’s own experience, could transform assistive technology design.
The field is taking notice. Weinberg’s first paper—”Why so serious?”—won best paper honorable mention and jury best demo awards at the prestigious Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). Those are highly coveted commendations according to his advisor, Thijs Roumen, assistant professor at Cornell Tech.
“Tobi really is a trailblazer,” said Roumen, who has a joint appointment in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. “He’s been developing technology while also using the technology, which changes the way it’s shaped and the way we reflect on it. In the process, he’s hitting on a richness that is going to make the future of AAC technology much much better, and he’s also inspiring a whole generation of researchers.”
Judith Bailey-Hung, supervisor of the YAI Center for Innovation and Engagement, said he’s also inspiring the AAC users involved in his studies.
“For the people we support, it was very powerful to see that this person’s working on their Ph.D., they’re interested in improving how you communicate, and they want to involve you in that process,” said Bailey-Hung, who has supervised three Cornell Tech interns as part of a larger partnership. “It gives them a voice and a way to advocate for themselves.”
Humor, backchanneling and AI villains
Heather Klippel, who has cerebral palsy and lives in a YAI group home, has similar frustrations with AAC devices to Weinberg’s—she gets overwhelmed when too many people are speaking and struggles to convey tone and humor.
“Those things are very hard to express as a nonverbal person,” Klippel wrote.
In the first of two studies, Weinberg interviewed Klippel and six others and designed an interface that could help users write jokes or humorous comments they can then interject in real time.
“There is an inherent tradeoff between agency and efficiency when designing AI tools that support communication,” Weinberg wrote. “While an AI auto-complete will enable making humorous comments faster, there is a risk that it diminishes the user’s sense of agency by making jokes for users instead of with the user.”
Weinberg designed interfaces that explored this tradeoff—in one, users selected keywords they wanted the AI to use in crafting a joke; in another, they were able to edit and modify AI-written jokes; and in another, they could simply choose a joke that the AI provided.
“What we found is in time-pressured scenarios, like making a humorous comment, AAC users were willing to give up some agency to deliver the comment faster,” Weinberg wrote. “This challenged the existing research that said AAC users care most about maximum agency, which is true in general but not always.”
At 15, Weinberg lost the ability to speak and found it harder to communicate certain aspects of his personality, like humor. Now, he’s working to make assistive communication technologies more expressive. Credit: Alexandra Bayer/Cornell University
That led Weinberg and his collaborators to think about the purpose of humor. Often, he said, the joke itself is less important than participation and engagement in the conversation. The team started to consider other types of “backchanneling,” or ways we communicate engagement, alongside the primary conversation, like saying “uh-huh” or nodding.
In a second study with the AAC users—resulting in a paper, “One does not simply ‘Mm-hmm'” presented at the ASSETS’ Conference on Computers and Accessibility in October—Weinberg and his team found that the participants formed their own micro-culture of bachkchanneling, such as tapping their armrests to indicate agreement or raising eyebrows. The interviews and observations led him and his team to recommend a design approach that amplifies and incorporates what users are already doing, rather than imposing mainstream behaviours.
“There can be this tendency to just want to build an app and solve a problem,” Roumen said. “But by asking ourselves these fundamental questions and driving the curiosity that Tobi brings as a researcher to really understand what’s happening, we can now start to understand how we can be really impactful in this space.”
Those fundamental questions are often also ethical ones. For a third paper currently in submission, Weinberg developed an app that collected everything he’d typed over a period of seven months and used the text to train a large language model that could help facilitate and speed his communication.
While the resulting “AI-twin” captured a verbal identity, incorporating characteristic phrases and Argentinian slang, it failed in practice to suggest or provide that language in appropriate contexts and risked exposing private information at the wrong times. Weinberg also felt the app dampened control over his own self-presentation.
“AI is a very wonderful but dangerous technology, especially if it mediates everything we say as AAC users,” Weinberg wrote. “So, my work serves both sides, providing design guidelines for future developers and also playing the villain, warning of the socio-technical implications of AI in the lives of AAC users like myself.”
Building community, inspiring others
Weinberg disassembled his first computer at age 2 and at age 7 told his parents he wanted to invent things that would help people. But when he arrived at Cornell Tech for a summer internship in 2022, he didn’t know what a Ph.D. was and did not see it in his future.
Wendy Ju, associate professor at Cornell Tech, encouraged Weinberg to apply for the doctoral program after completing his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. In 2023, he joined Roumen’s lab, intending to work on digital fabrication. But Roumen encouraged Weinberg, as he does all students, to find a project he really cared about.
“I told Thijs, there was this other thing I really care about, but neither of us has any experience with it,” Weinberg wrote. “He was on board to give it a try, and here we are.”
Weinberg and Roumen teamed with Stephanie Valencia at the University of Maryland, who specializes in AI and agency in AAC use. After overcoming steep learning curves—embarking on what Roumen calls “a journey” for them both—Weinberg is now inspiring others.
“It amazes me that somebody with an AAC device was going for his doctorate,” Klippel wrote. “I know that people with disabilities can achieve such high degrees in education, but it was quite an honor to actually meet somebody like this.”
The studies have also built community. Klippel said she became closer to another AAC user during the course of the studies and continued the friendship.
For Weinberg, seeing that connection form was one of the most rewarding parts of the research. “It didn’t feel like a workshop, it felt like a couple of friends hanging out and sharing anecdotes about our AAC hurdles and use, not only for me but also for them,” he wrote.
The other reward was seeing the participants use the systems to express themselves in new ways. Weinberg often replays a video from the humor study, of an AAC user working with the platform to write a joke and bursting into laughter at what she had created.
“That made all the hard work worth it,” he wrote.
Looking ahead, Weinberg hopes to reframe AAC—not as a workaround for missing speech but as a medium of expression. “This vision represents a step toward the broader goal of enabling AAC users to fully participate in spoken communication and to flourish in society,” he wrote.
The laboratory, operating at the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was upgraded with the support of Apple, Intel, and NVIDIA
The Technion inaugurated the renovated VLSI Laboratory at the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The field of VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integration) – the creation of complex, multi-component integrated circuits—lies at the core of the development of advanced chips.
The laboratory was upgraded through an investment of approximately $1 million from Apple, Intel, and NVIDIA. The upgrade included renovation of the facilities, the addition of personnel, and the renewal of equipment. The inauguration ceremony was held in the presence of Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan, Faculty Dean Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky, the VLSI Laboratory’s Academic Director Prof. Ran Ginosar, and senior executives from the three companies – all Technion alumni: Tamir Azarzar, Senior Vice President of Chip Design at NVIDIA; Karin Eibschitz Segal, CEO of Intel Israel and Corporate Vice President at Intel; and Rony Friedman, GM of Apple Israel.
Over the years, the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering has trained the scientific and technological leadership that has made a decisive contribution to establishing Israel’s status as a “Startup Nation” and as a global center for chip development. The faculty’s researchers and alumni have played a leading role in the evolution of the semiconductor industry and continue to do so in the development of chips and computing architectures for the era of artificial intelligence. The combination of deep foundational knowledge, mathematical excellence, creativity, and engineering innovation gives the faculty’s graduates – who integrate into and lead Israel’s high-tech industry – a sustained competitive advantage at the forefront of global technology.
The VLSI Laboratory focuses on the development of advanced computing architectures and large-scale integrated systems, including in-memory computing, hardware acceleration of artificial intelligence, hardware security, and highly energy-efficient systems. The companies’ investment in the laboratory reflects a deep commitment to training the next generation of VLSI engineers in Israel. This partnership between academia and industry is designed to provide students with practical knowledge at the cutting edge of technology and to ensure a strong pipeline of engineers who will lead chip development in the years ahead.
Students in the new laboratory
The inauguration of the laboratory marks a strategic step in deepening the connection between advanced academic research, education, and Israeli and global industry, and in strengthening the Technion’s position as a leading force in shaping the fields of microelectronics and computational hardware in Israel and worldwide.
10% of the companies on the global “AI Disruptors” list were founded by Technion alumni
Greenfield Partners has released its 2025 AI Disruptors List highlighting the most important new companies in the field of artificial intelligence. Six of the companies on the list were founded by Technion graduates.
Out of the 60 companies on the list from around the world, 16 are Israeli, and among them, the following six were founded by Technion alumni:
Dustphotonics (ultra-fast communication in data centers)
Emerix (AI platform for supply chain, procurement, and inventory management)
Exodigo (subsurface mapping platform without excavation)
Decart (real-time interactive video generation)
PhaseV (optimization, acceleration, and improvement of clinical trials)
Qodo (automated code review and testing)
Itamar Friedman, CEO of Qodo, says that several members of the founding team had previously worked at Alibaba under Prof. Lehi Zelnik-Manor, now the Technion’s Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development. The company is developing an AI-based platform that automates and improves code quality throughout the development lifecycle. The goal: to help developers understand, refine, and maintain the standards they set for themselves – at a time when much of today’s code is generated by AI tools.
Itamar Friedman, CEO of Qodo
Friedman grew up in Karmi Yosef. “Even as a teenager, I started learning software development – specifically website building. I started a company in the field with several friends, and we reached 40 clients before I enlisted in the army. Technology has always fascinated me, and during my military service, I was exposed to the world of robotics, which drew me to the intersection between software and the physical world, and from there to electrical and computer engineering at the Technion. Already in my first year, I began to realize that almost every problem in the physical world boils down to an optimization problem. That fascinated me and pushed me to learn more and more about learning systems.”
He completed his B.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with highest honors (specializing in learning systems and optimization) and an M.Sc. in machine learning and computer vision under the supervision of Prof. Zelnik-Manor. Today, with 25 years of experience in development – 20 of which involve algorithms and machine learning – he heads Qodo. “I really love sailing – the combination of calm and storm. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened much since founding Qodo,” he laughed. “Last August I moved to New York with three kids, two cats, and one wife – and I’m trying to keep that exact ratio: no more, no less.”
The AI Disruptors list was presented at the TechCrunch Disrupt conferencein San Francisco. The total valuation of the 60 companies on the list is approximately $3 billion. The publication of this “AI Breakthroughs” list adds to other recognitions of the Technion’s excellence: CSRankings ranks the Technion second in Europe in AI research, and PitchBook ranks the Technion among the top ten universities worldwide for entrepreneurial success of undergraduate alumni (not only in AI). Together, these achievements highlight the Technion’s brilliance – clearly reflected in its global alumni community of about 100,000 graduates.
H2Pro believes it can slash costs and clean up one of the world’s dirtiest industries.
In the Caesarea industrial zone, an Israeli startup is working on a technology that could help reinvent one of the world’s most polluting industries. H2Pro, founded in 2019 after a chance bus ride conversation between two Technion professors and later led by serial entrepreneur Talmon Marco, is aiming to transform how green hydrogen, hydrogen produced without carbon emissions from renewable energy, is generated.
The means: a fundamental re-architecture of electrolysis, the decades-old process used to produce hydrogen from water. The ambition is bold, streamlining the process enough to drive the cost of green hydrogen down to around one dollar per kilogram, making it competitive with hydrogen produced using fossil fuels.
Prof. Avner Rothschild (left), Prof. Gideon Grader of H2Pro (Daniel Campos)
Today, the world consumes roughly 100 million tons of hydrogen each year, a market worth an estimated $200 billion. “The large hydrogen market today is in refineries, chemical plants, and steel manufacturing, and in the future, jet fuel production,” says H2Pro CEO Tzahi Rodrig. The problem is that hydrogen production accounts for roughly 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“About half of the hydrogen used globally goes to ammonia production, and the other half to the oil industry,” says Prof. Gideon Grader, one of H2Pro’s founders from the Technion. “This market creates enormous pollution because of the way hydrogen is produced.”
Most hydrogen today is made using steam methane reforming (SMR), a cheap but highly polluting process that relies on natural gas. The clean alternative, electrolysis, which separates hydrogen from oxygen in water using electricity, has been known for more than a century, but it remains prohibitively expensive.
“The cost of producing hydrogen through electrolysis simply can’t compete with the polluting methods,” says Prof. Avner Rothschild, another Technion professor and company co-founder. The most expensive and problematic component, he explains, is the membrane at the heart of the electrolyser, which separates hydrogen and oxygen gases.
“Our invention challenged something that no one had questioned before,” says Rothschild. Instead of producing hydrogen and oxygen simultaneously, separated by a membrane, H2Pro’s system generates the two gases in separate stages.
In the first stage, one electrode produces hydrogen while the other temporarily stores oxygen. In the second stage, the oxygen is released. “This two-step architecture dramatically reduces costs and complexity,” Rothschild says.
The change required an entirely new type of electrode. “We had to reinvent the electrode, its composition, its structure, everything,” he explains. At H2Pro’s R&D facility in Caesarea, engineers manufacture electrodes from scratch, mixing metal powders and sintering them at temperatures of up to 1,200 degrees Celsius to withstand the harsh operating conditions inside the electrolyzer.
Protecting the technology poses its own challenge. “You can’t protect hydrogen itself, it’s a natural molecule,” says Dr. Revital Green of the Ehrlich Intellectual Property Group. “Once hydrogen is sold, there’s no way to trace its origin. That’s why protection has to focus on the system: the components, their configuration, and how they interact.”
For hydrogen to be truly green, it must be produced using renewable electricity from solar or wind. But those energy sources are inherently volatile.
“Conventional electrolyzers don’t cope well with fluctuations in power supply,” says Rothschild. “They degrade quickly, and that comes at a high cost.”
H2Pro’s system, by contrast, can be turned on and off repeatedly without damage. “Existing electrolyzers can’t handle constant cycling,” says Rodrig. “Ours can.”
That capability allows the system to be connected directly to solar fields. In theory, farmers growing tomatoes or cucumbers could also produce hydrogen on-site and sell it as an additional revenue stream.
“To reach one dollar per kilogram of hydrogen, every cost component has to be attacked,” says Rodrig. “Electricity is the biggest one. At around five cents per kilowatt-hour, the math starts to work.”
Talmon Marco, who chairs the company after selling Viber for $900 million in 2014 and Juno for $200 million in 2017, is cautious about timelines. “A dollar per kilogram is an extremely tough target,” he says. “But reaching a low, economically viable price, probably around 2031, is realistic.”
Marco frames the effort as part of a broader climate solution. “Green energy may be less fashionable right now, but progress is real, especially in China,” he says. “In the end, we’ll have to go where the problem leads us: solving the climate crisis.”
H2Pro has raised more than $100 million from investors, including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy fund and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. A 50-kilowatt system is already operating at its Caesarea facility. In February 2026, a 500-kilowatt system is scheduled to go live in Ziporit, near the Sea of Galilee, followed by a much larger system, up to 50 megawatts, in Spain or Portugal.
“There simply isn’t enough green hydrogen today,” says Rodrig. “Even if everyone wanted to switch tomorrow, the supply doesn’t exist. Someone has to build the infrastructure.”
That demand could soon explode. “Aviation wants hydrogen. Shipping wants hydrogen. Heavy-duty trucking wants hydrogen,” he says. “We’re talking about a market that could eventually reach trillions of dollars.”
Cornell Tech hosted the inaugural Disability and Access in Tech and AI Summit on Oct. 9-10 on its Roosevelt Island campus, bringing together researchers, technologists, and community advocates to explore how disability and accessibility intersect with innovation. The summit welcomed speakers, students, faculty, alumni, and community members from Cornell’s Ithaca campus, New York City, and around the United States. The event, designed to be a space for dialogue, lived experience, and cross-sector collaboration in addition to showcasing research, was co-organized by Omari W. Keeles, senior director for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and Thijs Roumen, assistant professor of information science at Cornell Tech.
The idea to create the event emerged from conversations across campus and a growing recognition that accessibility deserves a central place in the tech landscape.
“We felt there was a bigger opportunity here,” said Roumen, who is also affiliated with the Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. “The most important outcome is to find one another — those who built technology, those who make policy, and those who use the technology. There is so much we can all learn from one another.”
Event organizers Thijs Roumen and Omari W. Keeles.
The event was powered by YAI, a nonprofit organization that supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. YAI’s involvement helped ground the summit in real-world impact, connecting Cornell Tech’s academic community with practitioners and advocates working directly with people with disabilities. YAI also co-hosted interactive workshops, including one where attendees could try out assistive technologies and engage with startup founders developing tools for communication and mobility. In welcome remarks, Keeles began the summit by acknowledging the systemic barriers that have historically excluded disabled voices from tech and academia. “When disabled researchers and practitioners lead and contribute to the development of technology, the outcomes are more responsive, more creative, and ultimately more just,” he said.
The opening keynote was delivered by Shiri Azenkot, associate professor of information science at Cornell Tech, Cornell Bowers, and the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. Azenkot shared her lab’s work on making augmented and virtual reality technologies accessible to people with low vision and other disabilities.
One project involved designing an augmented reality system to help users locate specific products on store shelves, a task that can be frustrating and time-consuming without visual cues. Another explored how blind users could navigate social virtual reality environments using a “sighted guide” avatar they could virtually “hold onto.”
Throughout the summit, panels covered a wide range of topics, each rooted in personal experience and practical application. One session explored the challenges of navigating graduate school while undergoing cancer treatment, highlighting the often invisible nature of disability. Another focused on mental health and disability justice in higher education, with speakers reflecting on how institutions can better support students and faculty with neurodivergence or intellectual disabilities.
A panel on AI and safety examined how emerging technologies can support disabled people across cultures, while another featured startup founders building expressive communication tools for nonverbal users.
Stephanie Valencia, assistant professor at the University of Maryland, giving a talk on Day One of the Disability and Access in Tech and AI Summit.
The summit concluded with a powerful closing keynote by University of Washington Professor Jennifer Mankoff, a leading researcher in human-centered design and accessibility. Mankoff shared insights from her work on accessibility in AI and the importance of centering disabled voices in technology development. The event’s hybrid format, in-person on Thursday and fully remote on Friday, reflected this ethos, ensuring broader participation for those unable to travel to New York City and expanding the accessibility of the summit.
Roumen said he hopes the summit will inspire students and technologists to think more deeply about accessibility — not just as a niche concern, but as a universal design challenge.
“I hope more people, even those not directly working on accessibility, take this important demographic into consideration when developing technology and policy,” he said. “This will not only make the world better for people with disabilities, but for everybody else too.”
