From Waze to cancer-busting nano-ghost cells and 3-D printed hearts, The Times of Israel takes a dive into tech that helps us get where we’re going and keeps us safe and healthy

Article published at www.timesofisrael.com on January 1, 2020.

The Beresheet selfie during landing, April 11, 2019. (YouTube screenshot)

As we enter 2020, The Times of Israel has taken a look at some of the coolest Israeli technologies and inventions of the past 10 years — those that are already hugely impacting the way we live and those that have the potential of changing our lives and health.

The list is of course purely subjective, and there are so many other Israeli technologies and startups out there that are making a difference to our world.

Driving with your personal navigator: Waze
This GPS navigation software works on smartphones or car screens, providing turn-by-turn information to drivers about how best to get to their destination, including estimated length of travel and time of arrival.

The software has revolutionized how people drive: like old-school GPS systems, it does away with printed maps and recalculates if you make a mistake, but this unflappable piece of software also smoothly updates its instructions based on real-time conditions and bases its advice partly on user input relating to traffic jams and other road pitfalls.

Waze navigation screen (photo credit: Courtesy)

The technology was developed by Israeli founders Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar and Uri Levine and was snapped up by US tech giant Google in 2013 for some $1 billion.

Using public transportation better: Moovit
This smartphone app allows users to find the best way to their destination using public transportation, and the Israeli startup by the same name this summer hit a milestone of over half a billion users around the world. Moovit, founded in 2012 by entrepreneurs Nir Erez, Roy Bick, and Yaron Evron and headquartered in Ness Ziona, has been referred to as the “Waze for public transportation.”

The Moovit app in use in Washington, US (Courtesy)

The free crowdsourced app provides real-time bus, train, subway, and light rail schedules, offers route options to help users find the quickest, most efficient way to their destinations, and issues exact instructions on how to get there.

The firm has raised some $131.5 million to date from investors including Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel Corp., Sequoia Capital Israel, BMW i Ventures, and NGP Capital, a VC firm based in Palo Alto, California.

Water from thin air: Watergen
This startup creates drinking water by capturing the humidity from the air. It was set up in 2010 by Arye Kohavi, a former combat reconnaissance company commander in the Israel Defense Forces.

Drawing water from a Watergen generator in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. (Screenshot/YouTube )

The water-making machine uses a series of filters to purify the air. After the air is sucked in and chilled to extract its humidity, the water that forms is treated and transformed into clean drinking water. The technology uses a plastic heat exchanger rather than an aluminium one, which helps reduce costs; it also includes proprietary software that operates the devices.

Did we get all of the cancer out? Dune Medical Devices
The startup developed the MarginProbe device to help surgeons find out, on the spot, if they have removed all of the cancerous tissue or not, thus helping women with breast cancer avoid undergoing dreaded follow-up surgery to remove residual cancer cells after a tumour is excised. The device has shown to reduce re-excisions in breast-conserving surgery by over 50% and has been used in over 20,000 procedures in hospitals in the US and in Israel, according to the firm.

Dune Medical’s MarginProbe reduces amount of follow-up breast cancer surgery (Courtesy)

The startup was founded in 2002 by Dr. Dan Hashimshony.

Shooting rockets out of the sky: The Iron Dome missile system
The Iron Dome is an air defence system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. Using advanced radar and software, this device, which predicts an incoming rocket’s trajectory and shoots it out of the sky, has helped save lives in Israel during rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. The system was initially deployed in 2011 near Beersheba, where it successfully intercepted its first rocket. Brigadier General Danny Gold and Chanoch Levine were behind the development of the system.

An Israeli missile launched from the Iron Dome defence missile system, designed to intercept and destroy incoming short-range rockets and artillery shells, in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, on November 12, 2019. (MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP)

Helping those with paralysis to walk: ReWalk Robotics
This Israeli firm has developed the ReWalk “exoskeleton system” that enables people who are paralyzed to walk by letting computers and motion sensors do all of the “heavy lifting” of the body. The system controls movement using subtle changes in the center of gravity mimics natural gait and provides a functional walking speed, enabling people who are paralyzed to stand up straight again, walk down the aisle with their loved one and even run marathons.

With the help of ReWalk Robotics, Dudu Shevy is able to walk down the aisle (screen capture: Channel 2)

ReWalk Robotics is a Nasdaq-traded Israeli company. The inventor of the system, Amit Goffer, is a mechanical engineer who became paralyzed from his upper back down after an accident.

Helping the blind ‘see’: OrCam
This Israeli startup develops products based on advanced computerized visual interpretation capabilities. The firm’s artificial vision wireless product is basically a miniature camera attached to a computing device, less than an ounce in weight and the size of a finger, with a personal speaker on the other end.

OrCam’s MyEye 2 can recognize text from any surface (Courtesy)

When the OrCam camera is attached to the frame of a pair of glasses, users can point to text on any surface, and the speaker transforms the image into words and reads them out. That way, users can “read” newspapers, restaurant menus, or books — even ballot slips. The AI-driven software uses the high-resolution video camera and smart algorithms that analyze what the camera is seeing, and reads back the information to a user in real-time.

Ziv Aviram, the CEO and co-founder of the Jerusalem-based startup, set up the firm in 2010 together with Prof. Amnon Shashua. The two entrepreneurs are also the founders of Mobileye, a maker of self-driving car technologies, acquired in 2017 by Intel Corp. for a massive $15.3 billion.

Have a heart: The 3D-printed heart
Scientists at Tel Aviv University unveiled a 3D print of a heart with human tissue and vessels earlier this year, calling it a “major medical breakthrough” that advances possibilities for transplants.

Professor Tal Dvir presents a 3D print of a heart with human tissue at Tel Aviv University on April 15, 2019. (Jack Guez/AFP)

While it still remains a far way off, the scientists hope one day to be able to produce hearts suitable for transplant into humans as well as patches to regenerate defective hearts.

Ghost cells that target cancer: NanoGhost
NanoGhost is a startup set up by Prof. Marcelle Machluf that aims to shrink the deadliest forms of cancer by precisely targeting tumours. Machluf developed the technology in her lab at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and she has now set up a startup as a spin-off from the university to commercialize the technology. The startup got funding earlier this month from the moon venture capital fund.

In their work, Machluf and her team at the Technion used mesenchymal stem cells — cells, found in all humans, that play multiple roles in the body, differentiating into a variety of cell types. These cells help cancerous cells hide from the immune system, allowing the cancers to thrive and grow to a size that makes it impossible for the immune system to later attack.

The Technion’s Prof. Marcelle Machluf, left, at her lab in Haifa with a lab assistant; June 19, 2019 (Shoshanna Solomon/Times of Israel)

Machluf’s team took these cells and emptied them of their content — creating “ghost-like” cells — and then reconstructed them into nano-vehicles filled with anti-cancer drugs. These are then injected into the bloodstream and released directly into the tumours. Animal experiments have shown that NanoGhosts may reduce tumour size in small lung carcinoma, prostate, and pancreatic cancer tumours by as much as 85%, the company said.

And what does your gut say? DayTwo
The DayTwo startup has developed an app that provides customized nutrition recommendations based on an analysis of gut bacteria, with the aim of helping diabetes patients find the best foods for them to avoid sugar spikes.

Users of the service get a home kit through which they send a sample of their stool by courier to a lab, where their gut bacteria’s genetic profile is analyzed. Patients also fill out a medical questionnaire and provide blood test results. They then get a personalized diet with recommendations for menus that best suit their gut.

The DayTwo app in action (Courtesy)

DayTwo was founded in 2015 by entrepreneur Marius Nacht, who is also the founder of Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., chairman Yuval Ofek, CEO Lihi Segal, and managing partner Yair Schindel.

The company’s technology is based on research developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The researchers genetically sequenced the DNA of all of the bacteria of the gut and then created multiple profiles of people based on their bacteria. Their study showed that different people eating the same foods can have different sugar — or glycemic — responses, depending on the kind of gut bacteria they have.

Shooting for the Moon: Beresheet, by SpaceIL
Beresheet was an Israeli spacecraft that never managed to land on the moon, crashing on it instead, but was a winner anyway because of the chutzpah and daring it represented. Had the landing succeeded, it would have made Israel the fourth country, with the first privately owned spacecraft, to land on the moon.

Yariv Bash, right, Yonatan Winetraub, middle, and Kfir Damari, the founders of SpaceIL, inserting a digital time capsule into the Beresheet spacecraft, December 17, 2018. (Yoav Weiss)

“We are on the moon, but not in the way that we wanted to,” operational control director Alex Fridman said grimly to engineers in the control room after the spacecraft crashed on the moon in April this year.

The spacecraft, roughly the size of a compact car, was budgeted at fraction of the cost of vehicles launched to the moon by major powers the US, Russia and China in the past.

It was a crazy idea that was hatched by three friends at a bar in Holon, Yonatan Winetraub, Kfir Damari and Yariv Bash, who set up the SpaceIL startup to propel their moon-landing dream. Together they somehow collected $100 million in donations, harnessed a team of dozens of engineers, and captured the attention and dreams of Israel and the world.

Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s: New Strategies, New Hope

Virtually everyone has been impacted by either Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. Watching as a beloved grandparent or friend experiences cognitive decline is heartbreaking. And as the number of older Americans grows, so too will the number of cases. Americans with Alzheimer’s are slated to rise from about 5.8 million people today to 13.8 million by midcentury, while the number of Americans age 45 or older with Parkinson’s is forecasted to jump from about 930,000 today to 1,238,000 in a decade.

Technion researchers are on the front lines battling both degenerative diseases. Professor Ester Segal, along with her Ph.D. student Michal Rosenberg in the Technion Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, and scientists from Bar-Ilan University, are studying a novel approach to treatment.

Conducted with the support of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion and tested in mice, their approach hinges on a probable cause of Alzheimer’s: the accumulation of the protein amyloid beta, which blocks and kills neurons and damages motor function. Existing research suggests that treating Alzheimer’s patients with another protein, neural growth factor, can inhibit the disease’s progression. But there is a real barrier to success: the “blood–brain barrier,” a filtering mechanism that restricts drugs’ passage from bloodstream to brain.

As a work-around, Prof. Segal and her team have developed a nanoscale silicon chip with a porous structure that can carry large amounts of neural growth factor. Measuring just 2 millimeters on each side and 10 microns thick, the chip is small enough to get through the blood–brain barrier. And consisting of 70% holes, it acts like a sponge that can be tailored to carry the neural growth factor, releasing it over a span of a month to the target brain region. After doing so, the chips
safely dissolve.
The Segal team has described two methods of chip delivery: either implanting it into the tissue surrounding the brain or injecting it via a gene gun. Developed for a separate purpose, the gene gun was reworked by Bar-Ilan Associate Professor Orit Shefi into a spray that can propel the chip into the brain through the nose, avoiding the blood–brain barrier. Experiments so far have been restricted to animals and are ongoing.

Dozens of people from all over the world have contacted us since the publication of our work,” said Prof. Segal. “I was devastated from some of their stories and the depression of early-diagnosed Alzheimer’s patients and their families.
The Technion has a notable history in neurodegenerative research. Professor Emeritus Moussa Youdim co-created the first anti-Parkinson’s drug, rasagiline, now marketed as Azilect®. Other Technion researchers are following suit. Associate Professor Simone Engelender, for example, has posited a new theory that better accounts for the progression of Parkinson’s symptoms than the conventional model.

Although clinical studies enrolling Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients are required to gauge the long-term significance of Technion research, the advances that Prof. Segal and others are making provide solid hope for an improved standard of care for both nefarious diseases.

Researchers at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and their partners at Bar Ilan University have developed new technology to inhibit the development of Alzheimer’s disease. The work was recently published in the journal Small and also appears on the magazine cover. The research was led by Professor Ester Segal and Ph.D. student Michal Rosenberg from the Technion Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering and their partners, Professor Orit Shefi and Ph.D. student Neta Zilony-Hanin from the Bar Ilan University Faculty of Engineering.

Article published at www.ats.org on November 19, 2019.

Technion Professor Ester Segal

Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, is characterized by symptoms that include memory loss, speech impairments, orientation problems, and significant impairment of motor functions. The disease primarily strikes the elderly population, and after the age of 85 reaches a prevalence of some 30%. Due to the increase in life expectancy and the increase in the elderly population, the overall incidence of the disease has grown and is today referred to as the “gray epidemic” or the “21st century plague.”

Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease, meaning that it originates in the brain cells. The major cause of the disease is the accumulation of a protein called amyloid beta (Aβ) in brain tissues. The protein blocks kill the nerve cells, also called neurons, in different regions of the brain. This leads, in part, to damage of the cholinergic mechanisms essential for brain function.

Administering a specific protein, neural growth factor, inhibits the damage to the cholinergic mechanisms and the exacerbation the disease. But delivering the protein into the target area of the brain is not a simple task because the brain rests beneath the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which protects the central nervous system (the brain) from being infiltrated by bacteria and harmful substances from the blood. This barrier also restricts the passage, from the bloodstream to the brain, of drugs intended to treat brain diseases.

Ph.D. Student Michal Rosenberg

The Technion and Bar Ilan University researchers have presented an innovative solution to this challenge: Nanoscale silicon chips for direct insertion of the protein into the brain and its release into the target tissue. The dedicated silicon chips, developed in Prof. Segal’s lab, have a nanoscale porous structure that allows them to be loaded with large amounts of protein.

Through precise control of chip properties –- pore dimensions, surface chemical properties and more – the researchers were able to reach an optimal configuration that retains the protein in its active form and then releases it gradually, over a period of about a month. Afterwards, the chips safely degrade in the brain and dissolve.

In this way, as mentioned, the protein is not required to cross the blood-brain barrier since it is inserted directly into the brain in one of two ways: by implanting it into the brain (as a chip) or sending it to its target as microparticles with the use of a dedicated gene gun. Upon reaching the target location in the brain, the protein is released from the chip and the chip breaks down into non-toxic components.

Cover of the November 6, 2019 issue of Small, dedicated to the research of Prof. Ester Segal. Silicon chips are inserted into the brain of a mouse by safe implantation or with a gene gun. The chips break down while releasing a neural growth factor, a protein that prevents the death of nerve cells in Alzheimer’s disease. (credit: Ella Maru Studio)

“In a series of experiments, we showed in mice that the two ways of delivering the platform into the brain led to the desired result,” said Technion doctoral student Michal Rosenberg. “Furthermore, our technology has also been tested in a cellular model of Alzheimer’s disease and indeed, the protein release has led to rescuing the nerve cells.”

The research was conducted with the support of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion.

Technion students and professors set aside lectures, books, and exercises for a day, as startup founders, multinationals and VC investors flock to campus to talk entrepreneurship.

Students and professors at Haifa’s Technion — Israel Institute of Technology set aside their lectures, books and exercises for one day last week, as startup founders, multinationals’ officials, and VC investors from the nation’s thriving tech field flocked to the campus, located on Mount Carmel, to talk about entrepreneurship.

Article published at www.timesofisrael.com on December 25, 2019.

Technion students faced with challenges of entrepreneurship at the Technion, December 19, 2019. (Courtesy)

During the day, students and faculty members huddled at tables around hackathons that aimed to try to find a solution to pressing problems like building site accidents, traffic jams and road crashes, and health challenges, while officials from tech giants operating in Israel, including Facebook, Intel Corp. and IBM.

Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, a Technion graduate, kicked off the day talking about how behavioural economics can change the world and how to motivate people.

Kfir Damari, the co-founder of SpaceIL spoke about how the startup tried and failed, to reach the moon with their Beresheet spacecraft; Dor Gross of Facebook talked to students about how to Crush their Coding Interview while entrepreneurs from Israeli firms like Mellanox Technologies Ltd. and startups like Taboola talked about how to succeed, grow a firm, and make an exit.

Former Intel Israel President Mooli Eden, left to right; Lena Levine, the co-founder of Via Surgical; Yossi Vardi; Gal Haber, co-founder and managing director of Plus500 Ltd; Dov Moran speak in a panel at entrepreneurship day at the Technion Dec. 19, 2019 (Courtesy)

“Which one of you wants to be a startup entrepreneur,” called out tech guru Yossi Vardi to a hall full of students during a panel. A bunch of hands went up in the room. “Which of you have a mother who want you to set up a startup,” Vardi asked, immediately after. This time, hands remained down.

Vardi was part of a panel together with former Intel Israel President Mooli Eden, Dov Moran, the inventor of the disk on key, and Gal Haber, co-founder and managing director of Plus500 Ltd., the maker of an online trading platform, and Lena Levine, the co-founder of Via Surgical, which has developed a medical device to perform sutures in hernia-repair surgeries in a minimally invasive way. All of the participants of the panel were themselves Technion graduates, and they debated the future of the so called Startup Nation and provided words of wisdom to entrepreneurs in the making.

“Make sure you have the right people,” to join your venture, was one of the nuggets — employ people who are modest, not big spenders and don’t have huge egos; finding a mentor to save growth pains of the company was another piece of advice, along with “follow your passion”, as trends come and go; creating a successful startup requires also a bit of luck — so make you are “not sitting on the toilet” when luck comes knocking at your door, was another golden insight. The pros and cons of joining a startup — or setting up your own — or joining the ranks of a large multinational were also debated, with opinions swinging both ways.

Ezri Tarazi, professor of industrial design in charge of the t-hub entrepreneurship program of the Technion, December 19, 2019. (Shoshanna Solomon/Times of Israel)

The day was organized by the Technion’s “t-hub,” a program set up earlier this year, as part of a national plan to boost entrepreneurship at Israeli colleges and universities.

“We want to create the appetite, the spark,” said Ezri Tarazi, a professor of industrial design in charge of the program and of the entrepreneurship day. “Besides studies, academic institutions must provide the spark of innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Organizations globally today understand that “innovation is an engine” without which they cannot grow, Tarazi said, and those who do not keep up with the pace, cannot survive.

Entrepreneurship can be taught, he added. “Talent can be developed,” he said. “It takes awareness and exercise.” Rather than studying events in the past and how they were resolved, he said, studying innovation focuses on finding solutions to challenges that to date have no answers. “Even the teachers don’t know how to solve the problem,” he said.

Technion students taking a break on the grass on a sunny winter day when entrepreneurs flocked to the Haifa campus to talk to students, December 19, 2019. (Shoshanna Solomon/Times of Israel)

In Israel, which boasts the greatest number of startups per capita in the world, and sports the nickname Startup Nation, entrepreneurship courses have been sprouting at universities and colleges throughout the country to meet a grassroots demand. These programs aim to arm students with much-needed theory along with a toolbox of mentorships, networking, and tips on how best to approach investors for funding.

The Technion was one of the first universities to recognize this need, Tarazi explained, with Nobel Prize winner Professor Dan Shechtman, world-renowned for his work in chemistry and material science, setting up and running a course on technological entrepreneurship at the Technion for the past 30 years. Now there is a push to deepen these activities, Tarazi said.

The aim of the t-hub is to hold these kinds of days, workshops, and lectures on a regular basis, so that the university not only provides students with the “hard skills” – the deep scientific knowledge they glean from their lectures and classes, but also with soft-skills, like how to write a CV, pitch to an investor, work in a team and how to interview to make it in an ever-changing new world.

The hackathon about behavioral economics held by Dan Arieli at the Technion, December 22, 2019. (Courtesy)

The university will also be launching, next October, a minor degree in entrepreneurial leadership that can be added to a variety of majors, he said.

Meanwhile, at the construction hackathon, students in hard hats suggested putting up sensors at risky spots on construction sites to help avoid accidents. In the Dan Ariely’s behavioural economics hackathon, students suggested adding a feature to navigation app Waze to alert drivers about bikers on the road, while another group suggested cutting traffic by creating work-sharing spaces on trains, to get entrepreneurs to drop their cars and hop on the wagons.

Luna Karayanni, a 20-year-old second-year computer sciences student was walking around the campus with her friends, taking a break from sessions. She had attended the Crushing your Coding Interview session earlier that morning, she said. The key takeaways she gleaned from the talk were that people need to be honest about their capabilities, and must highlight any significant projects they took part in while studying. She also attended the talk by the SpaceIL co-founder and said it was “inspirational, and very emotional.”

Luna Karayanni, a 20-year-old second-year computer sciences student at the Technion, left, together with Mais Haddad, her 20-year old friend, who studies bio-medical engineering, and Sabri Asssaf, a 20-year-old bioengineering student, at the Technion campus in Haifa’ December 19, 2019. (Shoshanna Solomon/Times of Israel)

Mais Haddad, her 20-year old friend, who studies bio-medical engineering, said that she also found the SpaceIL talk “motivational” — SpaceIL co-founder Damari urged the students “to believe in ourselves and be good at what we do,” she said. Taking part in the day’s activities was important, she said. “As students, we may know how to get good marks, but we don’t always know how to cope in the workplace.”

Twenty-six year old Idan, who preferred not to give his surname, said that he took part in the talk by Dan Ariely, and then attended the panel with Vardi and the other entrepreneurs. “It’s been an Achla day,” he said, using an Arab word for “awesome.”

“Instead of just studying we have been given many talks and a wide choice,” he said. “It has been interesting.”

Technion researchers have developed an inexpensive, environmentally friendly and safe hydrogen production technology. A start-up called H2Pro is now working on commercialising this revolutionary discovery.

The prestigious Harvey Prize for science and technology was awarded at Technion in early November to Profs. Emmanuelle Charpentier, Jennifer Doudna and Feng Zhang, who developed the groundbreaking genetic editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, and to Prof. Christos H. Papadimitriou, a founding father of algorithmic game theory.

Scott Leemaster of Franklin, Michigan is the new chair of the Technion Board of Governors. He assumed the post
in June during the Board’s annual meeting, succeeding long-time chair Lawrence Jackier.

Read here for the latest from the Technion.

Last night at the Churchill Awards Dinner at The Biltmore Hotel in Mayfair with 280 curious minds gathered to celebrate the achievements of The Technion, the leading science university of Israel.

The evening started with Professor Alon Wolf, the Vice President talking about the latest innovations and discoveries by the scientists and researchers working hard to make our world a better place.

Later in the evening, Lord Robert Winston received with the Churchill Award for his achievements in the field of fertility and genetics and for his strong commitment to Technion and the State of Israel. Winston Churchill, who was a huge supporter and fan of Israel and the Technion.

The main speaker was Brigadier General Professor Jacob Nagel who has had served as the Head of Israels National Security Council. Professor Nagel explained what Technion has been doing as a major contribution to the nation’s security. He told the audience about the current situation and balance, mentioning Hezbollah gaining strength and building munition programs, about the escalation of tension in Gaza and West Bank, the continuing negative approach towards Israel in Europe. Professor Nagel talked about the question of what will happen with ISIS after Syria, about the political changes in the USA and about the Turkish-Kurd tension but the three most pressing concerns are IRAN, IRAN, IRAN.
The nuclear deal of Iran gives it a clear path to enriched uranium, ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Professor Nagel also informed the audience about his and his researchers work at the Technion. Their development of the “Arrow” of “David Sling” and of the “Iron Dome”. He also mentioned the Space and Satellite program; the cybersecurity/data science; lasers; image analysis; robotics and many – many more.
He reminded us that “We, Israelis live in a jungle. The weak can’t survive in the Middle East”
The evening ended on a very high note with a room full of energy.

If you are interested in watching the recorded video of the speeches of the night, please contact the office on info@technionuk.org

The FIRST robotics team, which operates under the aegis of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, won a silver medal at the competition that featured 191 teams, representing 191 countries.

Read more on JNS.org.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis host the Israeli robotics team that participated in the First Global Challenge robotics olympiad in Dubai, Nov. 6, 2019. Credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis welcomed the Israeli robotics team—students from the Megiddo Regional High School, who participated in the First Global Challenge robotics Olympiad in Dubai—at the prime minister’s residence on Wednesday.

The FIRST robotics team, which operates under the aegis of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, won a silver medal at the competition that featured 191 teams, representing 191 countries.

The Israeli team reached the finals and won silver after finishing the preliminary stages with the highest points ranking. It also won a special prize for its assistance to other groups.

Netanyahu congratulated team members, who showed him their medal-winning robot, on their achievements in the competition.

“This is truly a great honour for the State of Israel. You were in Dubai, which is not coincidental,” said Netanyahu. “This represents what is above the water.”

“There are, of course, currents under the water that occur, and which occur, inter alia, because of this,” he continued. “You went there with robotics and technology, but the reason why the State of Israel has forged ties with many countries in the first place is because we have technologies and capabilities against a common enemy in both the security and civilian spheres. What you have done here is another step in this process, and it is not bad at all.”

Congratulations to Nobel Laureate for Physics in 2019 Prof. James Peebles. Jim Peebles won the Technion Israel Harvey Prize in 2001. The Harvey Prize is known to be a strong precursor and indicator of Nobel quality!
Peebles is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading theoretical cosmologists, with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis, dark matter, the cosmic microwave background, and structure formation.

Read more on Wikipedia.org.

Nobel Laureate Prof. James Peebles, Source: Wikipedia.org

Researchers from the Technion Faculty of Biology may have found a way to make salmonella bacterial infections less aggressive by inhibiting the formation of biofilm, a layer of microorganisms that constitutes a serious medical and environmental problem because it protects bacteria and enables them to attach to tissues, medical devices, pipes and more.

The discovery by Associate Professor Meytal Landau, doctoral student Nir Salinas, and the laboratory research team could lead to the development of innovative treatments that will inhibit the antibiotic resistance of virulent bacteria.

Article by Kevin Hattori published at www.ats.org on September 13, 2019.

Associate Professor Meytal Landau and Mr. Nir Salinas

In 2017, Prof. Landau’s research team published an article in Science describing new discoveries about Staphylococcus aureus—an especially virulent bacterium that has become resistant to many types of antibiotics and that is responsible for a considerable number of infections in hospitals and in the community. The researchers discovered that this bacterium, which attacks the organism’s T-cells of the immune systems, does so in part by means of secreting certain fibrils. These toxic fibrils resemble amyloids, proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, but differ from them structurally. In an article published in Nature Communication in 2018, Nir Salinas and his colleagues on the research team revealed their discovery that proteins from the same family as the toxic fibrils produce exceptionally stable amyloid structures that can survive under extremely difficult conditions and protect the bacteria. Prof. Landau expressed the hope that these discoveries will lead to new treatments that will impair the fibrils and significantly diminish the aggressively virulent infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus.

In a recent study in PLoS Pathogens, the Technion researchers suggested that by interfering with amyloid fibrils produced by E. coli and Salmonella, bacteria often linked with contaminated water or food, they can hamper the bacteria’s defense mechanisms and their ability to attach to tissues and medical devices. This is accomplished by repurposing substances that have already undergone clinical trials for treating Alzheimer’s. The major advantage of this repurposing is that the approval process is much shorter and less expensive than in the case of a new compound.

The substances tested on Salmonella bacteria do not harm the bacteria directly. Instead, they damage the biofilm, the resilient layer that protects bacteria from substances that pose a danger to them, including antibiotic drugs. The researchers estimate that this approach of impairing the biofilm will reduce the risk of developing resistance compared to antibiotics that kill the bacterial and thereby induce defense mechanisms against the drug, making the bacteria more resilient and virulent.

The research examined the possibility of damaging Salmonella and E. coli bacteria found in contaminated food. Nevertheless, the researchers hope their discovery will also be effective in battling other bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus. In his ongoing doctoral research, Mr. Salinas will focus on developing stable antibacterial substances and on examining small molecules that will interfere with the in-vitro assembly of amyloids in bacteria. He hopes these developments will accelerate the crucial battle against the development of virulent strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Left: Atomic structure of a segment from a protein that forms fibrils that structure the biofilm of E. coli and Salmonella bacteria. This structure is highly similar to that of the amyloid fibrils related to Alzheimer’s disease, and this structural similarity inspired the idea of harming the bacterial biofilm fibrils using substances developed to combat Alzheimer’s fibrils. Top (black and white): Micrographs taken with an electron microscope. The left image shows fibrils produced by bacterial proteins that serve to build the biofilm; the right image shows impairment in the formation of the fibrils as a result of adding the substance developed to combat Alzheimer fibrils (ANK6). Bottom (black and red): Three-dimensional images taken by a confocal laser scanning microscope after coloring the bacterial biofilm in fluorescent red. Left: High biofilm biomass. Right: Addition of ANK6 leads to a significant decrease in the amount of biofilm.

The research is being carried out in collaboration with the Institute for Complex Systems in Jülich and in Düsseldorf, Germany. The Technion Center for Structural Biology (TCSB), the Lorry Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering, the Electron Microscopy Center, and the Center for Electron Microscopy of Soft Matter in the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) also provided assistance for this project.

Associate Professor Landau joined the Technion faculty after completing post-doctoral studies at UCLA, where she specialized in X-ray micro-crystallography of amyloids associated with Alzheimer’s disease. In September 2012 she founded her laboratory in the Faculty of Biology at the Technion.

Mr. Nir Salinas completed his bachelor’s degree in molecular biochemistry in the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion. Today he is following a direct program to a doctoral degree in the Faculty of Biology.

Breakthrough at the Technion: Researchers have developed an inexpensive, environmentally friendly and safe hydrogen production technology.

The E-TAC water-splitting technology facilitates an unprecedented energetic efficiency of 98.7% in the production of hydrogen from water and has other key advantages over water electrolysis. A startup company, H2Pro, was founded based on this development and is working on its commercialization.

Article published at www.technion.ac.il on September 15, 2019.

Group photo (L-R) : Dr. Hen Dotan , Avigail Landman , Prof. Avner Rothschild and Prof. Gideon Grader.
Credit: Chen Galili, Technion Spokesperson Department

Researchers at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology have developed an innovative, clean, inexpensive, and safe technology for producing hydrogen. The technology significantly improves the efficiency of hydrogen production, from ~75% using current methods to an unprecedented 98.7% energy efficiency. The researchers’ finding were recently published in Nature Energy.

The Technion researchers developed a unique process based on a cyclic process in which the chemical makeup of the anode (the electrode where the oxidation process takes place) changes intermittently. In the first stage, the cathode (the electrode where the reduction takes place) produces hydrogen by reducing water molecules while the anode changes its chemical composition without producing oxygen. In the second stage, the cathode is passive while the anode produces oxygen by oxidizing water molecules. At the end of the second stage, the anode returns to its original state and the cycle begins again. This innovative process, called E-TAC water splitting (Electrochemical – Thermally-Activated Chemical water splitting), decouples the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions. Based on this technology, the researchers founded H2Pro, a startup company working on converting the technology to a commercial application.

The research, part of the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP), was conducted by Professor Avner Rothschild of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor Gideon Grader of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, together with Dr. Hen Dotan and Avigail Landman, a doctoral student under the joint supervision of Prof. Grader and Prof. Rothschild.

Enormous amounts of hydrogen are produced annually worldwide: ~65 million tons valued at ~130 billion dollars, with a total energy of ~ 9 exajoules (EJ), the equivalent of ~2,600 teraWatts per hour (TWh). These amounts are constantly increasing and are expected to triple over the next 20 years. Hydrogen consumption is expected to reach 14 exajoules by 2030 and 28 exajoules by 2040.

About 53% of the hydrogen produced today is used to produce ammonia for fertilizers and other substances, 20% is used by refineries, 7% is used in methanol production and 20% serves other uses. In the future, hydrogen is expected to serve additional applications, some of which are in accelerated stages of development: hydrogen as fuel for fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV), fuel for storing energy from renewable energy sources for grid balancing and power-to-gas (P2G) applications, industrial and home heating, and more.

About 99% of the hydrogen produced today originates in fossil fuels, mainly by extraction from natural gas (SMR). This process releases ~10 tons of CO2 for every ton of hydrogen and that is responsible for ~2% of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. The presence of considerable amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere accelerates global warming. This explains the urgent need for cleaner and more environmentally friendly alternatives for hydrogen production.

Currently, the primary alternative for clean hydrogen production without CO2 emissions is water electrolysis. This process entails placing two electrodes, an anode and a cathode, in alkaline- or acid-enriched water to increase electrical conductivity. In response to passing an electrical current between the electrodes, the water molecules (H2O) are broken down into their chemical elements, such that hydrogen gas (H2) is produced near the cathode and oxygen (O2) is produced near the anode. The entire process takes place in a sealed cell divided into two compartments. Hydrogen is collected in one part and oxygen in the other.

“Water splitting” – illustration. In the ETAC process, water is split into hydrogen and oxygen in two separate steps at a high efficiency of 98.7%. (Credit: Tom Kariv)

Clean hydrogen production entails a series of technological challenges. One of these is the significant loss of energy. Today the energetic efficiency of electrolysis processes is only 75%, and this means high electricity consumption. Another difficulty is related to the membrane that divides the electrolytic cell into two. This membrane is essential for collecting the hydrogen on one side and the oxygen on the other, yet it limits the pressure in the electrolytic cell to 10-30 atmospheres, while most applications require hundreds of atmospheres of pressure. For example, fuel cell electric vehicles use compressed hydrogen at 700 atmospheres. Today this pressure is increased by means of large and expensive compressors that complicate operation and increase system installation and maintenance costs. In addition, the presence of the membrane complicates the assembly of the production apparatus, significantly raising its price. Moreover, the membrane requires periodic maintenance and replacement.

The E-TAC technology has several significant advantages over electrolysis:

1. Absolute chronological separation between hydrogen production and oxygen production, with the two processes occurring at different times. Consequently:
a. The membrane separating the anode from the cathode in the electrolytic cell is no longer necessary. This represents a substantial savings over electrolysis: the membrane is expensive, complicates the production process and requires high purity water and ongoing maintenance to prevent it from fouling.
b. It eliminates the risk of a volatile encounter between oxygen and hydrogen. Such an encounter is liable to occur in ordinary electrolysis if the membrane ruptures or its seal is broken.
c. Currently, the use of membranes limits the pressure in hydrogen production. The technology developed at the Technion renders the membrane unnecessary, thus facilitating hydrogen production under much higher pressure, thus eliminating some of the high costs of compressing the hydrogen later.

2. In the new process, oxygen is produced via a spontaneous chemical reaction between the charged anode and the water, without using an electrical current at that point. This reaction eliminates the need for electricity during oxygen production and increases energetic efficiency from 75% using customary methods to an unprecedented 98.7% efficiency.

3. The E-TAC technology is expected not only to lower operating costs but also equipment costs. H2Pro estimates that the cost of equipment to produce hydrogen using E-TAC will be about half the cost of equipment used in existing technologies.

Electrolysis was discovered more than 200 years ago and since then has undergone a cumulative series of individual improvements. Currently the Technion researchers are proposing a disruptive change in concept that they believe will lead to less expensive, clean and safe hydrogen production. They also believe the new process is likely to generate a revolution in hydrogen production based upon clean and renewable energy such as solar energy or wind power.

Initial assessments indicate that it will be possible to produce hydrogen on industrial scales at competitive production costs compared to production from natural gas via SMR and, as noted, without emitting CO2 into the atmosphere.

The developers of the technology—Prof. Gideon Grader, Prof. Avner Rothschild and Dr. Hen Dotan—joined together with the founders of the Viber company to establish H2Pro, a company working on commercializing this new technology. Located in the Caesarea Industrial Park, the company was given an exclusive license by the Technion to commercialize the product and to date has raised ~$5 million in a campaign led by Hyundai. H2Pro has more than 20 employees, most of them Technion graduates.

The research is supported by the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP), the Ed Satell gift for Nitrogen-Hydrogen Alternative Fuels (NHAF), the Adelis Foundation, the Ministry of Energy, and the European Commission (EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme).

Israeli startup DermaDetect offers users super-fast, AI-based diagnosis for hundreds of skin conditions from the comfort of their own phones.

Article by Naama Barak published on www.israel21c.org on August 19, 2019.

DermaDetect enables to diagnose skin conditions using a dedicated, AI-based app. Photo by Vulp via Shutterstock.com

Let’s say your child has a weird skin rash. What do you do? Head to the local clinic and wait for hours until a doctor examines your child for exactly 20 seconds before prescribing medication. A day truly well-spent. Not.

One parent who had enough of this waiting game is Israeli entrepreneur Eugene Dicker. A few years ago, a single spot appeared on his daughter’s face. They spent the obligatory time waiting for a doctor who prescribed medication, but the condition worsened and even after consulting with another doctor spots appeared over most of her body.

Exasperated with the time wasted, Dicker phoned dermatology specialist Prof. Arieh Ingber, who proceeded to ask him a couple of questions before correctly diagnosing his daughter.

“When all that happened over the phone, the penny dropped,” Dicker recounts. He realized that visuals aren’t the only channel for diagnosis and that he could translate the over-the-phone questioning to computerized Q&A – a move that could provide patients with correct diagnoses without going to the doctor.

Shortly afterwards, he joined forces with Ingber and two other doctors, and the startup DermaDetect was born.

DermaDetect analyzes both photos and patients’ information to provide diagnosis that overcomes the need for physical examination by a doctor. Photo by Evgeniy Kalinovskiy via Shutterstock.com

“Our goal is to enable people to diagnose skin diseases using a smartphone,” he explains.

Patients use the DermaDetect app to take a photo of the skin lesion and answer a few questions before receiving either a treatment or management plan.

“You might have a mosquito bite that you scratched and is now bleeding, and you’ll get a treatment plan,” Dicker explains. “However, if we reach the conclusion that you have advanced psoriasis that usually can’t be immediately treated, you’ll receive a management plan.”

Intelligent system

The questions posed to users are intelligent, in the sense that they follow up one another based on the answers already given.

“For example, if you choose an area of the lesion that can’t have hair loss, we won’t ask you about hair loss,” Dicker says. “The artificial intelligence knows how to analyze the information both from the photograph and the patient’s answers. That’s our uniqueness.”

This artificial intelligence (AI) analysis is based on a deep learning process, which has involved gathering information from health systems and clinics around the world for the past two years.

If the thought of leaving your health in the hands of AI scares you, worry not.

“At the end of this process, all this data is conveyed in an automatic, anonymous and encrypted manner to specialist skin doctors [who] approve or disapprove the results of the diagnosis – just like Tinder — in less than 30 seconds,” Dicker explains.

“If they approve, the result is immediately transmitted back to the patient’s app,” he says. If the doctor doesn’t approve, the diagnosis reaches a panel of several other doctors who decide on the case within 72 hours.

DermaDetect strives to make your dermatologist’s waiting room a distant memory. Photo by Sopotnicki via Shutterstock.com

This process, Dicker stresses, enables quick and professional diagnosis at a time when waiting times are soaring due to a growing shortage of clinical dermatologists, while skin conditions are becoming more prevalent due to stress, air pollution and food pollution.

“These two trends are clashing, and that’s why waiting times for dermatologists are getting longer around the world,” he says.

DermaDetect, now in the midst of its second round of funding, is in the process of receiving its CE certification and expects to receive FDA approval by the end of the year. For the past six months, it has been operating a pilot in Israel in the field of pediatric skin conditions and is about to begin cooperating with a local HMO.

“Our goal for the health system is to eventually bring to the clinic only the cases that need a clinic,” Dicker says. “Most people don’t need to go to the clinic because their problem can be diagnosed from afar.”

The solution DermaDetect offers is unique, according to Dicker. Unlike some competitors, it only requires users to take one or two photos of a small area of the body, rather than full-body scans. And it offers diagnoses for around 350 skin conditions. It doesn’t focus on skin cancers, Dicker explains, because cancerous lesions must be examined at a clinic.

One top of that, he adds, is the app’s unique capability to combine information from photo analysis and information from the patient. The company doesn’t hold onto or even see the patients’ data; the only people privy to users’ information are the doctors at the end of the process.

That’s why, for example, Dicker can’t divulge the most common skin conditions the app deals with, only saying that they belong to the field of common acute dermatology, meaning non-chronic conditions.

“We as a company don’t see the information about the cases and the patients. The only person to directly see it is the doctor.”

Summer skin tips

At ISRAEL21c’s request, DermaDetect offered some skin-protection tips ahead of the scorching summer.

Their experts’ top tip was to avoid spending too much time in the sun and to make sure to drink plenty of water.

They also recommend using high SPF protection on all areas exposed to the sun – ears, noses and even scalps for those of us with a little less hair on top.

Wearing wide-brimmed hats is also a good idea, they say, as well as long and dark-colored clothes because dark materials provide a higher ultraviolet protection factor (UPF). The ideal level of protection is UPF 50+, and the average white tee offers a meager UPF 15+.