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Attitudes towards math are more important than school math attainment for public understanding of quantitative COVID-19 data

Being afraid of math prevents people from engaging with it when they need it – even if they learned it at school, a new study claims.

Since COVID-19 emerged as a global crisis, the news has been dominated by graphs and terms like “R numbers” and “exponential growth,” referring to the rate of spread of the disease. To what extent does the average adult understand the quantitative information appearing in the news? The results of a new study paint a gloomy picture: When asked about “math in the news” items presented to them, even people who had taken advanced mathematics classes in high school did not typically figure everything out, but obtained only an average “grade” of 72/100. But these advanced learners make up a small minority of high school graduates. Those who took only the mandatory level of high school math – as over 50% of high school graduates with official Israeli matriculation certificates tend to do – correctly interpreted much fewer items on average (54/100).

Results were even more troubling for participants who had not passed all the examinations required for the official state certificate. Participants in this group obtained an average “grade” of 44/100 – suggesting they didn’t understand over half of the items in the questionnaire. This latter group represents about 45% of the total cohort of 17-year-olds in Israel in recent years. These findings raise concern about the relevance of school mathematics to the real-life needs of most learners and call attention to the importance of providing all learners with mathematics literacy.

The findings emerged from a new study on mathematical media literacy among a representative sample of 439 Israeli adults. The study was conducted by a team of researchers at the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology during the first wave of COVID-19 cases in Israel (March-April 2020). The team was led by Profs. Einat Heyd-Metzuyanim, Ayelet Baram-Tsabari and Aviv J. Sharon.

The researchers were surprised to find a factor that appears to be even more strongly associated with the participants’ understanding of mathematical information in the news than the level of math they had taken at school: the participants’ self-perceptions as being “good at math” and the extent they find mathematics useful and interesting. This finding suggests that being afraid of math prevents people from engaging with it when they need it – even if they had learned it at school.

“These results seem to show that school mathematics, especially in its high levels, may prepare adults to understand critical information important for their well-being, such as at a time of global pandemic. However, they also indicate that negative attitudes towards math may significantly hinder adults’ engagement with such information,” said the study’s lead author, Prof. Heyd-Metzuyanim. “Our findings should trigger some soul-searching in the mathematics education field,” she added. “After all, the goal of learning mathematics, for most of the public, is to be able to deal with mathematical information in their daily lives. We should therefore make sure that high-school graduates leave school with both the cognitive tools for processing mathematical information around them, and the attitudes and dispositions that would allow them to do so.”

Click here for the paper in Educational Studies in Mathematics

The production of optical components across industries has been drastically simplified by Technion scientists

Technion scientists have dramatically improved and simplified the production of precise optical components by immersing them in liquid. The study, led by Ph.D. student Reut Orange-Kedem and Professor Yoav Shechtman from the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, was published in the journal Nature Communications.

The scientists developed a novel process of manufacturing these elements – a method that significantly simplifies the production, enabling optical components to be made using a regular 3D printer. This method makes optical components fast and cheap to create, and also allows one to increase the complexity of the elements produced. And all this at no cost in precision.

To achieve this, the scientists immersed the optical component in liquid: a mix of water and glycerol (a cheap substance widely used across industries, including as a food additive). Light moves at different speeds through different substances. For example, it slows down when passing through water or glass. This difference in speed is called the material’s refractive index. The refractive index of the liquid the scientists used is very close to that of their optical component.

Under those conditions, the optical component needs to be 1,000 times bigger in order to perform its function, which is just what the scientists wanted. Being larger, the component is now much easier to produce, and much less sensitive to manufacturing errors. Instead of a lengthy and complex process requiring a cleanroom, it can now be manufactured using a regular 3D printer. The simplicity of the process also allows for the production of more complex components that were near impossible using traditional methods. And the novel components are also tuneable, unlike their traditional predecessors, through manipulation of the glycerol concentration.

Overall, this is an achievement in optics, which puts a better and cheaper tool into the hands of scientists and industries across multiple fields.

Prof. Yoav Shechtman is a member of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI), and the Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences & Engineering. 
Reut Orange-Kedem is a Ph.D. student under his supervision. This study was supported by the ERC (Horizon 2020) grant, the Zuckerman Foundation, and the Israel Innovation Authority.

Click here for the paper in Nature Communications 

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, users prefer warmth over competence

Users Prefer the Warmth of an AI System Over Its Competence

A Study by three Technion researchers reveals that AI systems’ competence isn’t enough: for users to choose a system, it needs to have warmth.

Spotify or Apple Music? Waze or Google Maps? Alexa or Siri? Consumers choose between artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems every day. How exactly do they choose which systems to use? Considering the amount of money and efforts spent on AI performance enhancement, one might expect competence and capability to drive users’ choices. Instead, a recent study conducted by researchers from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology shows that the “warmth” of a system plays a pivotal role in predicting consumers’ choice between AI systems.

Research findings from a study featuring more than 1,600 participants, recently published in the Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, offer some insight into the psychology of potential users. The researchers, Zohar Gilad, Prof. Ofra Amir, and Prof. Liat Levontin from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion, examined the effects of users’ perception of AI systems’ warmth, that is, the systems’ perceived intent (good or ill), and AI systems’ competence, that is, the systems’ perceived ability to act on those intentions, on the choices they made.

Most of the research done to date regarding warmth perceptions of AI-based systems addressed systems with a virtual or physical presence, such as virtual agents and robots. The current study, though, focused on “faceless” AI systems, with little or no social presence, such as recommender systems, search engines, and navigation apps. For these types of AI systems, the researchers defined warmth as the primary beneficiary of the system. For example, a navigation system can prioritize collecting data about new routes (benefitting the system) over presenting the best-known route, or vice versa.

The researchers found that the system’s warmth was important to potential users, even more than its competence, and they favored a highly warm system over a highly competent system. This preference for warmth persisted even when the highly warm system was overtly deficient in its competence. For example, when asked to choose between two AI systems that recommend car insurance plans, most participants favored a system with low-competence (“using an algorithm trained on data from 1,000 car insurance plans”) and high-warmth (“developed to help people like them”), over a system with high-competence (“using a state-of-the-art artificial neural network algorithm trained on data from 1,000,000 car insurance plans”) and low-warmth (“developed to help insurance agents make better offers”). That is, consumers were willing to sacrifice competence for higher warmth.

These findings are similar to what is known of human interactions: warmth considerations are often more important than competence considerations when judging fellow humans. In other words, people use similar basic social rules to evaluate AI systems and people, even when assessing AI systems without overt human characteristics. Based on their findings, the researchers concluded that AI system designers consider and communicate the system’s warmth to its potential users.

Technion has been ranked No. 1 in the field of artificial intelligence in Europe

Over the years, the Technion has established itself as a leading academic institution in AI. It is currently ranked 15th in the world, with 100 faculty members engaged in areas across the AI spectrum.

The Technion’s efforts to advance the field of artificial intelligence have positioned it among the world’s leaders in AI research and development. CSRankings, the leading metrics-based ranking of top computer science institutions around the world, has ranked the Technion #1 in the field of artificial intelligence in Europe (and of course, in Israel), and 15th worldwide. In the subfield of machine learning, the Technion is ranked 11th worldwide. The data used to compile the rankings is from 2016 to 2021.

One of the innovations that is part of the framework of the Technion’s AI prowess is the Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems (MLIS) research center, which aggregates all AI-related activities.

Today, 46 Technion researchers are engaged in core AI research areas, and more than 100 researchers are in AI-related fields: health and medicine, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, industrial robotics, cybersecurity, natural language processing, FinTech, human-machine interaction, and others. Two leading AI researchers co-direct MLIS: Professor Shie Mannor of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor Assaf Schuster of the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science.

According to Prof. Mannor, “for years, the Technion has maintained its position as the leading research institute in Israel and Europe in core AI areas. The Technion has a unique ecosystem that includes tens of researchers from various faculties, research centers, and a number of undergraduate and graduate programs in the field.”

“All fields of science, technology, and engineering at the Technion have been upgraded in recent years, applying Technion knowledge in AI fields,” said Prof. Schuster, “Most include components based on information processing and machine learning. Furthermore, the Technion views the dissemination of its acquired knowledge as a mission of national importance for commercial sector. In that regard, the Technion operates in close cooperation with the technology sector in Northern Israel and within its partnership with the prestigious EuroTech Universities Alliance. These partnerships in Israel and worldwide link AI research at the Technion to the vanguard of activity in this field.”

The MLIS center strives toward four main goals: (1) establishing the Technion as a top-5 university in the field of AI worldwide; (2) pooling resources, recruiting researchers, and students from all Technion departments to advance and conduct joint research in the field; (3) connecting Technion researchers with relevant parties in the industry, especially technology companies and other organizations that generate Big Data; (4) Establishing close research collaboration with other prominent research institutes in the AI field in Israel and worldwide.

In May 2021, the Technion entered a long-term collaboration with American software giant PTC, under which the company will transfer its Haifa research campus to the Technion, to advance joint research in AI and manufacturing technology. PTC joins several other organizations that collaborate with the Technion in these fields, among them the technological universities of Lausanne (Switzerland), Eindhoven (Netherlands), Munich (Germany), and the Paris Polytechnique (France) in Europe, as well as Cornell Tech, home of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, Waterloo University, and Carnegie Mellon University, which operates the largest center for AI and robotics in the United States.

In a Nano Optics Breakthrough, Technion Researchers Observe Sound-Light Pulses in 2D Materials for the first time

Haifa, Israel June 11, 2021 – Using an ultrafast transmission electron microscope, researchers from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have, for the first time, recorded the propagation of combined sound and light waves in atomically thin materials. 

The experiments were performed in the Robert and Ruth Magid Electron Beam Quantum Dynamics Laboratory headed by Professor Ido Kaminer, of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Solid State Institute. 

Single-layer materials, alternatively known as 2D materials, are in themselves novel materials, solids consisting of a single layer of atoms. Graphene, the first 2D material discovered, was isolated for the first time in 2004, an achievement that garnered the 2010 Nobel Prize. Now, for the first time, Technion scientists show how pulses of light move inside these materials. Their findings, “Spatiotemporal Imaging of 2D Polariton Wavepacket Dynamics Using Free Electrons,” were published in Science following great interest by many scientists.

Light moves through space at 300,000 km/s. Moving through water or through glass, it slows down by a fraction. But when moving through certain few-layers solids, light slows down almost a thousand-fold. This occurs because the light makes the atoms of these special materials vibrate to create sound waves (also called phonons), and these atomic sound waves create light when they vibrate. Thus, the pulse is actually a tightly bound combination of sound and light, called “phonon-polariton.” Lit up, the material “sings.”

The scientists shone pulses of light along the edge of a 2D material, producing in the material the hybrid sound-light waves. Not only were they able to record these waves, but they also found the pulses can spontaneously speed up and slow down. Surprisingly, the waves even split into two separate pulses, moving at different speeds.

The experiment was conducted using an ultrafast transmission electron microscope (UTEM). Contrary to optical microscopes and scanning electron microscopes, here particles pass through the sample and then are received by a detector. This process allowed the researchers to track the sound-light wave in unprecedented resolution, both in space and in time. The time resolution is 50 femtosecond – 50X10-15 seconds – the number of frames per second is similar to the number of seconds in a million years.

“The hybrid wave moves inside the material, so you cannot observe it using a regular optical microscope,” Kurman explained. “Most measurements of light in 2D materials are based on microscopy techniques that use needle-like objects that scan over the surface point-by-point, but every such needle-contact disturbs the movement of the wave we try to image. In contrast, our new technique can image the motion of light without disturbing it. Our results could not have been achieved using existing methods. So, in addition to our scientific findings, we present a previously unseen measurement technique that will be relevant to many more scientific discoveries.”

This study was born in the height of the COVID-19 epidemic. In the months of lockdown, with the universities closed, Yaniv Kurman, a graduate student in Prof. Kaminer’s lab, sat at home and made the mathematical calculations predicting how light pulses should behave in 2D materials and how they could be measured. Meanwhile, Raphael Dahan, another student in the same lab, realized how to focus infrared pulses into the group’s electron microscope and made the necessary upgrades to accomplish that. Once the lockdown was over, the group was able to prove Kurman’s theory and even reveal additional phenomena that they had not expected. 

While this is a fundamental science study, the scientists expect it to have multiple research and industry applications. “We can use the system to study different physical phenomena that are not otherwise accessible,” said Prof. Kaminer. “We are planning experiments that will measure vortices of light, experiments in Chaos Theory, and simulations of phenomena that occur near black holes. Moreover, our findings may permit the production of atomically thin fiber-optic “cables”, which could be placed within electrical circuits and transmit data without overheating the system – a task that is currently facing considerable challenges due to circuit minimization.”

The team’s work initiates the research of light pulses inside a novel set of materials, broadens the capabilities of electron microscopes, and promotes the possibility of optical communication through atomically thin layers.

“I was thrilled by these findings,” said Professor Harald Giessen, from the University of Stuttgart, who was not a part of this research. “This presents a real breakthrough in ultrafast nano-optics, and represents state of the art and the leading edge of the scientific frontier. The observation in real space and in real-time is beautiful and has, to my knowledge, not been demonstrated before.”

Another prominent scientist not involved with the study, John Joannopoulos from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, added that “The key in this accomplishment is in the clever design and development of an experimental system. This work by Ido Kaminer and his group and colleagues is a critical step forward. It is of great interest both scientifically and technologically, and is of critical importance to the field.”

Prof. Kaminer is also affiliated with the Helen Diller Quantum Center and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute. The study was spearheaded by Ph.D. students Yaniv Kurman and Raphael Dahan. Other members of the research team were Dr. Kangpeng Wang, Michael Yannai, Yuval Adiv, and Ori Reinhardt. The research was based on an international collaboration with the groups of Prof. James Edgar (Kansas State University), Prof. Mathieu Kociak (Université Paris Sud), and Prof. Frank Koppens (ICFO, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology).

Montfort launches revolutionary Brain Profiler app, which will be sent with Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe to the International Space Station in 2022.

Article published at www.Israel21C.org on June 29, 2021.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 300 million people worldwide suffer from diagnosable psychiatric disorders such as clinical depression or schizophrenia. But they can only be diagnosed based on the observation and description of symptoms.

That’s the problem Israeli medical startup Montfort (Mon4T)aims to solve with its newly launched Brain Profiler.

This science-based method looks at mental disorders as brain disturbances that can be accurately diagnosed in a clinical manner.

Developed by practicing psychiatrist and Technion lecturer Dr. Abraham Peled, the approach bridges between classical psychiatry and computational neuroscience.

“We cannot fix a system if we do not know exactly what is wrong with it. It is absolutely critical that we discover the causes of mental disorders if we ever hope to cure them,” Peled said.

“The frustration of not being able to truly cure these patients drove me to change my approaches and connect to the digital world and to algorithms, including Montfort’s EncephaLog application.”

Montfort already uses smartphone technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide FDA-cleared digital neurological tests for patients with conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease.

As a result of the cooperation with Peled in the past year, Montfort added to its test protocol indicators assessing anxiety, depression and more.

Montfort translates the collected digital indicators into terms that psychiatrists are familiar with, such as depression, anxiety or psychosis, and suggests a neurological explanation, said Peled.

“As a next step, the diagnosed network disturbance will be demonstrated by EEG, a procedure that was previously very complicated to conduct and therefore available only in hospitals, but is now available to any patient at home.”

The Brain Profiler will also be used far from home soon, as it was selected as one of the technologies to accompany Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe on his journey to the International Space Station at the beginning of 2022. The astronauts will use the Montfort app to do motor and cognitive self-tests while physicians on Earth monitor their functioning in real time.

Montfort CEO Dr. Ziv Yekutieli said, “With the complexity of the human brain in general, and psychiatric disorders in particular, psychiatrists have a hard time keeping up with advances in other medical fields. A practitioner has to take clinical decisions based on subjective and non-quantitative data, which is gathered at random, short clinical visits, that do not reflect the patient’s actual status throughout his or her daily life. These difficulties limit the psychiatrist’s ability to treat the patient optimally, and limit pharmaceutical companies’ ability to develop new drugs.”

A hundred million patients the world over benefit from the technology of Diagnostic Robotics — most of them are not even aware of it. Via artificial intelligence and big data analysis, the company from Israel is trying to make the world’s health systems more efficient and to predict the patients’ deterioration. “There are very few opportunities in life to do something with such a big impact.”

Article published at www.forbes.co.il on June 29, 2021.

Total fundraising: $38 million
Employees: 110 employees; 80 of them in Israel
Founders: Yonatan Amir, Kira Radinsky And Moshe Shoham
Founded: 2017
Investors: Mayo Clinic, Maverick, Accelmed, Kobi Richter, Morris Kahn and others

“Throughout the pandemic we all saw what happened when there was a heavy load placed on the health system. In another ten years this load will naturally accumulate and reach similar dimensions to those that we saw during COVID-19,” predicts Dr. Kira Radinsky, acclaimed scientist and alumna of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Radinsky (34), got her start in the world of artificial intelligence and big data at the young age of 15, when she became a student at the Technion. During her doctorate she developed mechanisms for predicting events based on gathering information from news sites and social networks, and among other things, predicted the outbreak of the cholera epidemic in Cuba in 2012. Since then she has added more accomplishments to the list, including selling the start-up SalesPredict, where she served as VP of technology, to eBay.

In 2017 she met with Yonatan Amir (33), also an alum of Forbes Israel’s 30 under 30 list, and Professor Moshe Shoham (founder of Mazor Robotics) and together they founded Diagnostic Robotics — a start-up based on AI technology which assists medical teams to make faster and more accurate diagnostic decisions, and to provide physicians with vital data that will help them make the best decisions. For example, a doctor who receives a patient at the hospital can be assisted by the system in order to quickly determine a triage score for the patient (the index which determines the urgency of treatment).

With the coronavirus outbreak in Israel, another initiative took shape — using Diagnostic’s technology to identify hotspots. In cooperation with the Ministry of Health, the HMOs and other research bodies, a symptoms questionnaire was distributed to the public which helped decision-makers to process data and curb outbreaks in various parts of the country.

“We are looking at the coronavirus system as a triage system in every way. The symptoms which were knowns then to be coronavirus were fever and cough, and by analyzing the answers through our system, within three days we also identified the symptom of loss of taste and smell,” says Radinsky, company chairman. “It was among the insights that we brought to the HMOs and it really changed the triage process because there weren’t enough tests, and in general the health system had to know how to prioritize the division of resources.”

In general, the coronavirus was a boon for the company, as the field of digitalized medicine received a huge boost. “There is a very large wave of inquiries from organizations from the fields of digital medicine, remote consulting and early forecasting,” says Amir, CEO. “With the first wave there was a huge drop in the number of emergency room visits — 42% less. If the medical problem wasn’t very severe, people wouldn’t come… suddenly there was a spike in the use of digital medical systems, alongside the natural development of consumption habits.” 

What are the chances?

Diagnostic’s core business is roughly divided into two parts: on the patient side, the company operates technology for regulating loads through automation in the reception of patients’ data, rapid diagnosis and referrals for further treatment in health institutions; on the health organizations’ side, the company developed a system for preventative medicine, based on the organizations’ databases and the broader historical picture — thanks to which it provides systems with early detection of patients’ chronic diseases, and provides warnings to health organizations. “For example, if a diabetic patient is not treated in time, he will deteriorate to the point that he will turn up at the emergency room,” Amir offers by way of example and clarifies that the price of such a development is paid by both the patient and the institution administering treatment.

“We work across the whole spectrum. In working with health organizations, there are those for whom we are the first to help them with the processes of digitization and automatization, and there are organizations who take our product as a kind of ‘plug and play.’ It’s like a puzzle that can be put together or taken apart.”

“We are building the capacities for medical decision-making so that it can be used to establish an order of actions,” Radinsky continues. “Let’s say I have pain in my lower belly now, and my day is such that I have Zoom calls all day. Just to make an appointment, to get to the doctor and wait for my turn — it’s a whole production. We think about how it could be possible to save ourselves some of the appointments. While booking a doctor’s appointment, the application can ask me. Behind the scenes we can offer a doctor the probability, what percentage it is likely that I have a urinary tract infection. And the HMO decides at what probability a urine test referral should be done, and what probability the doctor should look at the results within three hours and approve antibiotics remotely. So what did we do? We didn’t build the application for the HMO, we didn’t build the digital system for the HMOs, but our tools are in there.”

Diagnostic’s systems integrate a variety of sources of data in real time: from sensors on the body of the patient, to lab test results to analysis of his medical records in the computerized medical file. Naturally, this is a learning system which is constantly improving, and it is important for the company’s people to emphasize that this is anonymous information coming from different health organizations. Israel, by the way, has the second largest medical database in the world.

“In recent years we received access to several billion past medical visits, and we developed tools that know what to ask the patient, to predict how urgent the care is and which tests he needs. We made it possible to automize the medical system. A family doctor today is responsible for over 2,000 patients, and he needs to be responsible for them in a proactive way too: to see deterioration and predict it in time, but that is very hard to do in an efficient way when you have thousands of patients,” says Radinsky.

“We are a company of deep-tech, automation and early detection. What is important to us is to be the necessary piece of the puzzle for leading health organizations. During the pandemic, we connected with additional corporations and sold our technology to governments. We developed different kinds of systems and we want to implement them on top of an existing set of services of health organizations and improve patients’ quality of life,” says Amir. 

Touching millions

Among the company’s clients are hospitals, insurance companies, governments and commercial companies in Israel and around the world, including: Mayo Clinic, Salesforce, Deloitte, the Israeli Ministry of Health, Clalit Health Services [HMO], Leumit Health Services {HMO] and others.

The main market that the company is targeting is in the US, where healthcare spending crossed the 3.8 trillion dollar mark last year: Americans spend $460 to 680 billion dollars a year on emergency medical services, and an average of $350 billion annually on family medicine.

Within about three years, the analysts predict, the general spending on health services will grow to $5.5 trillion. If patients with fitting symptomatic and diagnostic segmentation are referred for a visit to the family doctor as opposed to a specialist — the annual savings are expected to be $170-250 million.

“100 million patients benefit from our technology, through dozens of health organizations all over the world. The company’s sales began officially in 2019, after two years of building the product, and everything grew very rapidly, with the main pricing model being SaaS (Software as a Service).”

110 workers are employed by Diagnostic Robotics: 80 of them are in Tel Aviv, in research and development roles, and 30 in New York are responsible for the marketing, sales and business development. Up until now, funding of $38 million was raised in a series A round, a big part of which was in November 2019, after which the company raised 24 million dollars led by Accelmed , Maverick, Mayo Clinic, billionaires Kobi Richter and Morris Kahn and others. 

“By the end of the year we want to have a major growth round led by leading funds and strategic investors,” says Amir. “Furthermore, we want to continue to grow the rate of revenue and the number of customers, and to reach more organizations, particularly in the American market. We already reached the cream of the crop of the US businesses, so now our goal is how to begin to work in a top-down approach, and to begin to supply smaller organizations and deploy systems at a rapid pace.”

“We are about to publish new scientific articles. One of them shows how our technology successfully anticipates medical deterioration as much as a half year or a full year in advance, and this has great clinical value,” Radinsky adds. “We are talking about a clinical trial on a very large scale — in other words, it gives it the clinical seal of approval. For the first time we have data from billions of past visits and can save the lives of many, and if not save them then at least extend many lives by at least five years.”

According to Radinsky, the success, as they see it, is in the fact that they are touching hundreds of millions of people’s lives, and not the value of the company. “The clinical impact and also the business growth of the company is what is important — not the rounds of funding.”

Amir displays a more business-oriented approach. “In the end, in order to build big companies, the company really needs a strong financial backbone, the kind that can fund more and more innovation and products. We are in territory where we can built a company of a few billion dollars. If at another time it was unusual to speak of unicorns — today it happens at a high speed, for a lot of reasons. We know how to get there in a relatively simple and clear way. We are strong technologically, and are at the forefront of companies providing advanced technology.”

“I think that there are very few opportunities in life to do something with a big impact that will totally change the worldview in such an important field — like the one in which we work. I am proud that we are in this field, the impact that we are making, and that the company is also growing significantly on the business level in order to help us make more and more of an impact,” Radinsky concludes.

The study is expected to lead to a deeper understanding of biological processes, as well as developments that will allow for an early diagnosis of a variety of diseases

Article published at www.jpost.com on July 4, 2021.

Israeli Technion researchers, in collaboration with international partners, have reached a breakthrough in identifying the genetic profiles of single cells, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Methods last month.

The paper follows SMPS19 (Single-Molecule Proteins Sequencing), an international conference held in Jerusalem in 2019 organized by Prof. Amit Meller of the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. 

In the paper, the researchers discuss the developments made in technologies aimed at decoding the protein profile of single cells. They also described future protein sequencing technologies and identification on the individual molecular level. 

An example of such technologies being developed at the Technion’s ILaboratory involves nanometric sensors, which allow the direct sensing of individual proteins. Labelled with fluorescent dyes, the proteins flow through the sensors and the optical signals are analyzed by a deep learning-based system, which has also been developed in the Technion lab.

The study, which has been supported by the European Union, the Israeli Science Foundation and the Azrieli Fellowship Program, is expected to lead to a deeper understanding of biological processes, as well as the development of highly sensitive medical tests that will allow for an early diagnosis of a variety of diseases.

The collaborative study was led by Meller, along with Prof. Chirlmin Joo of the Netherland’s Delft University and Dr. Javier Alfaro of Poland’s Gdansk University.

Some 3 million people worldwide miss tuberculosis diagnosis every year, often because tests unavailable; Haifa-made skin sticker will help, scientists say

Article published at www.timesofisrael.com on July 5, 2021.

A new Israeli tuberculosis-detecting skin patch will reduce the huge number of people who die from the disease due to a lack of diagnosis, and could help the world eradicate it altogether, scientists say.

Tuberculosis is responsible for 1.4 million deaths a year, almost exclusively in poor countries. It is easily transmitted by sneezing, spitting and coughing, and each infected person passes it to more than 10 people on average.

Treatment is available, but cases are often missed due to poor provision of tests, which require lab processing.

The World Health Organization has considered tuberculosis a “global health emergency” since 1993, and highlights the power of testing, reporting that an estimated 60 million lives were saved through diagnosis and treatment between 2000 and 2019. But testing infrastructure is poor, and around 3 million cases are missed annually.

A research team from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has revealed, in a peer-reviewed journal article, that it has produced and tested a patch that gives a diagnosis an hour after it is attached to the skin.

“The patch contains sensors made from nanoparticles, and what we’re doing is sensing changes in the smell pattern of the person, which can tell us with high accuracy whether or not they have tuberculosis,” Dr. Rotem Vishinkin told The Times of Israel.

“Simplifying diagnosis is important for detecting cases and enabling people to be treated, and this is our focus,” added Vishinkin, whose team hopes it will help healthcare providers in the developing world to eradicate the disease.

She carried out the research under the supervision of Prof. Hossam Haick, a pioneer of disease detection using smell, whose past work is the basis for a new respiratory monitoring device that is being developed with a major European Union grant.

The main advantage of the new tuberculosis patch is that it can expand testing way beyond areas where there is a good infrastructure of clinics and labs, said Vishinkin.

“The patch is simple to use, and just needs to be placed on the skin,” she said.

In the current model, a computer is needed to provide results, but the final product will automatically transmit results to a cellphone or to a clinic, Vishinkin added.

With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, her team has tested the patch on 1,000 people — in South Africa, India and Latvia — and it showed 90 percent sensitivity. More testing is underway, and the Technion team hopes to get the product on the market within a few years.

Vishinkin said that the nano-sticker format could in the future be used to diagnose other diseases, helping to reduce missed cases for a range of conditions.

“We are working to promote close research cooperation and to turn the Technion into a hub for many diverse industries, a platform where industry and academia meet.”

Article published at www.jpost.com on June 21, 2021.

A computer-generated redition of the nano-satellites in orbit (photo credit: Courtesy)

Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) Space Division are partnering to literally reach for the stars by developing and launching a nano-satellite to orbit the moon.

The project, which is to be carried out by Technion students with the help of IAI space engineers and facilities, will begin at the start of the 2021/22 academic year in October and will progress until it finishes in a few years’ time.

The project is also being assisted through a major effort by the Technion Faculty of Aerospace Engineering to balance aeronautics and outer space.

“While in the past only about 10% of the faculty syllabus was dedicated to space, in the past few years there has been an effort to change this and reach a more equal balance between the two fields,” Faculty dean Prof. Tal Shima said in a statement.

“To achieve this. we updated the faculty curriculum and we are currently in the process of hiring new staff members with expertise in outer space. Cooperation with IAI’s space facility will allow us to expose students to additional joint projects with IAI focused on space. This is a fascinating field where activity in Israel and the world is stepping up and I hope to see as many students as possible focusing on it.”

The project will be headed by Prof. Gil Yudilevitch for the Technion, and by Technion alumnus and current IAI space engineer Niko Adamsky for IAI.

“The project will allow students to become partners in a project with the industry and help them reach the end of their studies prepared to be integrated into Israel’s developing space industry,” Yudilevitch explained.

“The interface between academia and industry is changing fast and the Technion is investing great efforts in being established in Israel and internationally,” Technion president Prof. Uri Sivan said at a signing ceremony.

“We are working to promote close research cooperation and to turn the Technion into a hub for many diverse industries, a platform where industry and academia meet. We are quickly working to commercialize technologies that originated on campus.”

“As an alumnus of the Technion, accompanying projects and different mentoring programs over the years, I am excited by the existing and future cooperation between IAI and the Technion,” IAI president and CEO Boaz Levy explained.

“We must strengthen cooperation with the Technion, especially the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, which is unique to its kind in Israel, and which holds a leadership position among similar faculties worldwide. Increasing our cooperation with the Technion produces added value to both sides and will help us strengthen and integrate in creating groundbreaking, challenging, and leading technology in Israel and abroad. To this end, it is important we formulate together the image of the engineer we envision – an involved engineer with system-wide perspective and deep business understanding and research capabilities.”

This is not the first time IAI and Technion have collaborated together for nano-satellite technology. In August 2020, Technion and IAI collaborated to develop an advanced and unique innovative receiver and a satellite computer as part of the Adelis-SAMSON project. Said project saw Technion launch three autonomous nano-satellites called CubeSats on March 20, 2021. The satellites were launched from Kazakhstan onboard a Glavkosmos Soyuz rocket, and each 8 kg. satellite came equipped with sensors, control systems and navigation tools.

This was not the Israeli university’s first foray into space. In 1998, Technion launched the Gurwin-TechSat II. Eleven years later, that satellite is still in orbit.

However, this is not the first time an Israeli university has launched nano-satellites. In February, a nanosatellite designed, developed, assembled and tested by Tel Aviv University was launched from a NASA launch facility in Virginia.

The development and launching of nanosatellites is seen by some experts as being a part of the the “Civil Space Revolution.” Also called New Space, this term refers to how the field of satellites is no longer limited to just massive, well-funded companies. This is especially notable, as many experts believe the nanosatellite field will be critical in maintaining high-speed Internet and communications in the future.

Technion had already joined New Space with the Adelis-SAMSON satellites, and now this new project could see them go a little farther.
Maayan Hoffman and Sarah Chemla contributed to this report.