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Stanford and MIT receive well-deserved recognition as hotbeds of entrepreneurship, but neither of those is as singularly influential in the US as the Israel Insitute of Technology, better known as the Technion. Since the university’s founding over one hundred years ago, a quarter of the university’s graduates have started businesses. Since 2004, graduates of the Technion have won four Nobel Prizes, and a remarkable two-thirds of Israeli companies listed on NASDAQ have been founded by graduates of the Technion. Israel is often referred to as “start-up nation”, and the Technion has contributed more than any other institution to that reputation.

Article by Peter High, published on Forbes.

Peretz Lavie, President of the Technion

Since 2009, Peretz Lavie has served as President of the Technion. During that time, he has hired faculty who are experts across traditional academic silos, encouraged more professors and students to get involved in starting businesses, and in the process has bolstered the university’s reputation as a hot-house for new businesses.

Peter High: President Lavie, the Technion, for those who may not be as familiar with it, has a really storied place in Israeli entrepreneurial culture. Many people refer to your nation as startup nation, and many rightly believe that your university is at least partially, if not largely, responsible for that boom in entrepreneurship. Amazingly, a full quarter of the graduates of the university have started businesses. How has the university been such a hotbed of entrepreneurship?

Peretz Lavie: Indeed the Technion is the engine behind a startup nation. I have been asked this question many, many times and I have come to the conclusion that a world class university that plays such a major role in the economy of its environment or its state must have three ingredients: excellent students, excellent faculty members, and this is obvious, but it must have also a third ingredient and it is not so clear when you think about universities. This is a statement of mission. A mission statement must be part of the DNA of the university. I’ll give you some examples from the history of the Technion where the mission statement historically changed the Israeli economy. First, the Technion was established in the early 20th century as a mission to allow the Jewish people to get an education in engineering. When the decision was made to establish the Technion in 1905, Jews in Europe could not study engineering. So there was a mission for this engineering school to allow engineering education for the Jewish people.

Then, the school was opened in 1924 after the First World War. When the state was established, David Ben Gurion, the legendary prime minister of Israel, made a decision that the Technion would be one of the more important institutes for the future of the newly established state. He picked a site on the top of the Carmel Mountain, and he also made the decision of which faculty to open first: the faculty of aeronautical engineering. Why? Because he realized that this was important for the future of the state even as early as 1954. The same year, the Israeli aircraft industry was established which is now one of the three largest industrial complexes in Israel and every one of the 5,000 engineers was educated at the Technion.

Another example is 1969. The Technion decided to open a micro-electronic institute. At that time, few people knew how to spell micro-electronic. The decision was made to provide the country with badly needed semiconductors that were deprived by an embargo that was imposed on Israel by Charles de Gaulle after the Six Day War. So the university had the mission to serve the country and mankind as part of its DNA.

Students who were educated under such an environment knew that when they graduate from the Technion, they also should serve a mission. Therefore combining excellent students and excellent faculty with the DNA of the university that it serve higher goals: humanity, the country, etc., I think you have an outcome like changing the economy and changing the environment.

High: You have spent considerable time in the United States. As I think about the comparison between the US and Israel, they are each country that have a great deal of immigrants from all over the world. There is something about going to a different land where one’s future is uncertain that is fundamentally entrepreneurial. I have always believed that in the US that we have entrepreneurship in our DNA in some ways and it strikes me that Israel is exactly the same in many cases as well. Is that a hypothesis that you share?

Lavie: Yes, I share your hypothesis, but again, we have an added layer that in our region, necessity is the mother of invention because of where we are and the neighbourhood in which we live. We have needs and a reason to be inventive. So if you add to this layer that you mentioned, immigration, to the nature of the country and the fact that we must be on our tiptoes with respect to our inventive capacity, then you also get very motivated students, faculties, and universities.

High: With all the exposure you have to entrepreneurs, do you think that entrepreneurship can be taught, or does it require attributes that one is born with? To what extent is it nature versus nurture?

Lavie: I’m very skeptical that you can teach entrepreneurship or that you can make someone who doesn’t have the fire in his belly change and become an entrepreneur. Either you have it or you do not. Being entrepreneurial and being innovative is affected by a multitude of factors. First, how the student or the entrepreneur is educated. The ability to take risk or the ability to sustain failure is very important. Remember, among startups only one in ten is successful. Some entrepreneurs are successful only in their seventh or eighth attempt, so you must be resilient to failures. The need to achieve is very important. These are characteristics of sometimes immigrants as you said yourself, or people who need to live in an environment or a neighborhood that constantly challenges them. What you can do in order to direct them or to make them a better entrepreneur is to give them some tools. You can provide them with role models, and this is what we are doing in the Technion, you can provide them with some basic information that can help them to build their own business plan, how to present their ideas, etc. So it’s a mixture of some basic tools that you can provide them, and I believe, personality and the history of a person that makes them an entrepreneur.

High: I know that a key aspect of the curriculum at the Technion is learning by doing, as well as combining disciplines that have traditionally been silo’d. Please describe these two approaches.

Lavie: Yes, it is very interesting. When I meet Technion graduates ten years after they left the school and I ask them, can you go back and tell me, “What did the Technion give you? What was the most important education you got at the Technion?” They almost unanimously tell me, “The Technion taught us how to think, how to solve problems. So I’m in a high tech company and there is not a single area that I’m not familiar with and I can tackle any problem.” We give a very broad education and we demand a lot of independence. And this bridging across areas is very important.

Science was done in the past in silos as you mentioned. You were an expert in your field, you didn’t need any others, you did your own thing and that’s it. Science in the 21st century, and it is going to be even more emphasized in the second half of the 21st century, must be based on several areas of expertise. You cannot rely on your own knowledge, you must bridge different areas. So most of the research centers in the Technion now are interdisciplinary. I’m now recruiting faculty members who can be conversant both in computer science and biology and medicine, because in the future, you won’t be able to deal with medicine without knowledge of big data. And I have now in the faculty of mechanical engineering, a cell biologist, and in the computer science [faculty], I have a biologist. This is, I believe, how science will be done in the future. So it is very important, the interdisciplinary approach or the multidisciplinary, both to educate students and for research. Research in the future will be done by people who can bridge between different fields of science.

High: You mentioned your conversations with alumni, President Lavie, I can only imagine that this is a great luxury for current students, that there are in fact so many role models to emulate. It is easier to do so when you know that others that have been through the same program have been successful, perhaps in some comparable way to what you envision for yourself. Can you talk a bit about the role that alumni play in fostering opportunities for students, in acting as advisors, etc.?

Lavie: Excellent question. I’ll give you an example. Professor Dan Shechtman, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2011, has taught a course for 27 years called “Entrepreneurship” that is open to all students of the Technion. Every year, the course enrolls between 200 and 600 students. In this course, Danny, the motivator of the course, presented the students role models of Technion graduates who made it, and they discussed both the success stories and the failures. Since I am an amateur entrepreneur, I gave, for the last 17 years, both my experience in entrepreneurship and in academia. And you have to see these students fill the hall with their shining eyes who swallow every word they say and the questions that they ask later. And I believe that presenting the students with role models of, as I said, both the success and the failures, will provide them with some idea regarding what is entrepreneurship and how to proceed.

In addition to that, we have several programs on campus in which alumni take upon themselves to guide groups of students who are building a business plan or have an idea; we call it “Technion for Life.” There is a national competition called BizTEC in which 75 groups are selected out of hundreds in order to continue to develop their ideas to a point that they can start their own company. Each one of these groups is accompanied by a Technion alumnus in the comparable field. So we do a lot to provide the students with the experience and the excitement of being able to build your own ideas based on the experience of others. This is very important.

High: You have also developed a partnership with Cornell University and you are in the process of working with them to develop a campus on Roosevelt Island in New York. I am curious: how did you choose New York and how did you choose Cornell?

Lavie: Well, the story is very interesting. We were approached by Mayor Bloomberg to participate in the competition to open a research centre in New York, and he was very candid and open. He said, “We are envious of the Silicon Valley, we’d like New York to become the technology capital of the world.” And I must admit, in the beginning, I thought that somebody was pulling my leg, but then we realized that indeed they wanted the Technion to participate. At the first phase, there were 55 universities. Now the city provided free land for 99 years, and $100 million, provided that you match with $100 million of your own. We are a state university so we didn’t have this money and the committee suggested that we provide them with a program and then find an American university that would share our vision and take upon itself the financial responsibility. And indeed, the program we suggested to New York was based on our experience in a multidisciplinary approach to research and education. And we suggested building in New York three hubs that have a common denominator. The first is the hub of connective media that is tailor-made to the industrial strength of the city: the finance world, the media, the advertisement industry. Then, a second hub dedicated to a healthier life, not disease-oriented, but improving the quality of life using technology. And the third one, a hub of the built environment. And the common denominator of these hubs was big data and information technology.

The city liked the proposal, so we moved to the second stage, and then we started to look for a partner. After two disappointments, I got a telephone call from Sandy Weill, and he convinced me that Cornell and the Technion was a match made in heaven. An hour later, I got a telephone call from David Skorton, the President of Cornell. In a week, I was with my team in New York and we came to an agreement. The agreement was to establish the Technion Cornell Innovation Institute, which would be part of Cornell Tech. We will adapt our program of three hubs for this new partnership. It’s amazing that immediately after that, we got a gift from Irwin Jacobs, one of the founders of Qualcomm. Now, we are referred to as Jacobs Technion Cornell Institute (JTCI).

Now, two years later we are up and running. Roosevelt Island will be ready in 2017 and Google provided us with space in their headquarters in Chelsea. We have 60,000 square feet there and we are already full of students, faculty, and post-docs. I visited the site, and the excitement – you can feel it in the air – it’s incredible. The impact on New York is already visible. Recently, I met the comptroller of the state of New York, Mr. DiNapoli, and he issued a report about what happened to high tech industry in New York in the last three years. They mentioned the establishment of Cornell Tech and JTCI as one of the reasons for the incredible increase in the number of employers and the number of businesses in high tech. I had to pinch myself to make sure that I was not dreaming.

High: You have been affiliated with multiple startups in your career. As you mentioned, you humbly refer to yourself as an “amateur entrepreneur.” Do you encourage faculty to get involved in businesses and to be active in management or on the boards of companies that students are developing, and if so, what are the advantages that you see to faculty in addition to students?

Lavie: The tension between what is called applied science and basic science exists on the campus of every university. There are faculty members who say, “I am interested in gaining knowledge, I’d like to understand how the body works, what are the laws of nature, I have no interest whatsoever in applying my findings to anything.” On the other hand, there are people like me who feel that if they have a basic finding, the next step is to see what can be done in order to improve human life. I believe that this tension is a healthy tension. When there is a bias toward one of them, then it is unhealthy. But you have to encourage both groups.

What I did when I became president was to encourage people who believe that they could apply their findings. First, I established a fund, which I call a proof of concept fund. Any faculty member who has an idea that can become a useful technology can apply to the fund and get support for the proof of concept, and this is the entry to the pipeline.

Then I established a second fund that participates in financing, not in the startup phase, but in the second and third round of financing. Why? First to provide confidence to outside investors and second, to protect our equity in this newly established company. I see the results: in the last six years, the Technion spinoff companies raised $271 million and between six and thirteen companies every year spin off based on Technion technologies. I believe in the future this will be a source of income to the Technion because we split revenues 50/50 between the faculty member and the Technion. Again, this encourages faculty members who have the ability and they have fire in their belly to go to the applied mode.

Some examples of companies that were brought about through these programs are Mazor, which is a company that produces robotics for spine surgery and ReWalk, a company that provides the paraplegic with the ability to walk. There are others coming on in future months. So this is my own belief, that this tension between applied and basic research is a healthy one and you should encourage both groups to do what they like to do.

High: If one thinks about some of the stereotypes of an entrepreneur, President Lavie, one thinks someone who works at all hours, and sacrifices tremendously when it comes to sleep. You are a pioneer in sleep research, interestingly enough, so you are actually in a position to advise and work with entrepreneurs. In preparation for our conversation, I was fascinated to learn about the concepts of the “sleep gate” and the “forbidden zone for sleep.” Can you describe these concepts, and how they might be applied to entrepreneurs?

Lavie: These were studies that I did during the ‘80s and ‘90s, and indeed those were the two terms that I used in the literature: the “sleep gate” and the “forbidden zone for sleep.” For many years, the ruling concept was that sleepiness or the accumulated need for sleep is a linear process or an exponential process: we wake up in the morning fresh and full of energy, and then during the day there is an accumulation of fatigue and the need to sleep which reaches a peak during the evening hours. And we knew there were morning people and evening people, so for morning people, the peak is earlier and for evening people the peak is later. There was a bump during the afternoon that was called the siesta zone, but this was the concept.

My studies showed that indeed sleepiness and the accumulation of sleepiness is not a linear, nor an exponential concept. There is a period during the evening hours that I termed the “forbidden zone for sleep” that is the best period for creative work. Just before the sleep gate is open, and again it is different for evening people and morning people, say between 6 o’clock in the afternoon and 8 or 9 o’clock at night, we are at the best with respect to our alertness. It is difficult to fall asleep at that period, and if you need to do some creative thinking and some work that requires concentration, it is the best time. This was contrary to the ruling concept was that sleepiness accumulated throughout the day. Nevertheless, we have a period of high alertness. And then sleepiness, or the ability to go to sleep is almost an all or none phenomenon. The sleep gate is a short period of time during which you can easily fall asleep and it’s not an accumulated process.

For many years, people thought that this forbidden zone and sleep gate occur only in Haifa and is typical of the students of the Technion. Later, it was found out, that indeed this is the rule everywhere in the world. The name of the concept has been changed to the Wake Maintenance Zone not the forbidden zone for sleep, and they found the sleep gate is a true phenomenon. It has many implications to the design of shift work, the design of day work, how to treat insomniacs, or how to change the pattern of sleepiness. We found that melatonin, the hormone that was for many years considered to be the opener of the sleep gate starts to increase in the blood stream about an hour before the sleep gate is open and it’s locked to the sleep gate, so this provides us with information about when to take melatonin if you’d like to use it as a sleeping pill.

High: How strictly do you apply your findings to your own life?

Lavie: I try to synchronize my behavior to the sleep gate even though as the president, your nights are very long and when you go to sleep you have so much on your mind that even the sleep gate is not always open on time.

High: Through your work and your collaboration with your fellow professors, students, and alumni of your university, you have reason to think a lot about trends – about which ones have legs and which ones do not. I’m curious, what are a couple of those that you’re particularly excited about in the next year or two or three?

Lavie: There are two trends, both of them technology dependent, that excite me. First the ability to use technology to monitor different bodily functions. There are in the Technion now, several groups working on very inexpensive sensors to detect tuberculosis and malaria based on nanotechnology. This is amazing and I was involved, in one of my companies, in detecting atherosclerosis based on very non-invasive technologies that will allow us to do it in ten minutes, to really make a prediction regarding the future health of arteries. This is something which is very promising. Many universities and many industries are working on it: wristwatches that monitor your bodily functions etc. I’m very excited by this trend.

The second is the ability to communicate between people speaking different languages using automatic translation, I believe is around the corner. And this will change the way we push globalization in a way that we cannot even fathom. I just want to give you an example of MOOCs, massive online open courses. The Technion put one course in nanotechnology in two languages. One in English has 33,000 registered and one in Arabic with 8,800 registered on the Coursera platform. It was a smashing success. I believe that the ability to overcome the barrier of language using technology is one of the most exciting trends for the future.

Applied with a glue gun, the melted polymer works both externally and internally, and is nontoxic, flexible and biodegradable, researchers say.

Article by Shoshanna Solomon, published on The Times of Israel on June 11, 2019.

Technion researchers have developed a medical glue gun to help heal human tissue that has been seriously injured (Courtesy).

Researchers at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology have developed a glue gun to put the human body back together when it has been seriously injured.

The pins and stitches currently used to treat serious injuries come with drawbacks: They can be painful, they leave scars, they require high skill from the doctor, and they sometimes have to be removed after the tissues heal. Suture on the intestine, lungs or blood vessels often leak and therefore require a sealant.

The medical glue that the researchers have developed is a “two in one,” said Prof. Boaz Mizrahi, head of the Biomaterials Laboratory of the Technion. It replaces both stitches and the sealant, and is good for both external and internal injuries, he said.

All sorts of medical glues are already being used in dermatology, surgery, and other areas. Israeli startup Nanomedic Technologies Ltd., for example, has developed a medical device that it says can dress burns and other wounds with nano materials that mimic human tissue and peel off once the skin below is regenerated.

Still, the glues currently in use to replace sutures and staples are limited by their mechanical properties and toxicity, the researchers said. Because they are very toxic, they can be utilized only on the surface of the skin. In addition, hardening of the glue may make the organ less flexible or the adhesion may not be sufficiently strong.

With these limitations in mind, researchers have been on the hunt for a glue that is suitable for different tissues, nontoxic, and flexible after hardening. Such a glue would also need to decompose in the body after the tissue is fused together.

Mizrahi worked together with doctoral student Alona Shagan and came up with what they say is a “very strong, nontoxic tissue adhesive that remains flexible even after solidification.” Their study was published in the journal of Advanced Functional Materials.

Melting the glue and smearing it on the damaged tissue is performed with a hot-glue gun. The gun warms the glue to just above body temperature so as not to cause a burn. After the glue is applied, it quickly hardens, then decomposes within a few weeks. The adhesive is also suitable for use on tissue inside the body, and it is four times as strong as existing adhesives used for this purpose. Tested on cells and laboratory animals, it was effective and nontoxic, the researchers said.

Use of the polymer for medical purposes has previously been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “We played with its physical structure,” said Mizrahi, to lower the polymer’s melting point, but its chemical properties otherwise remains the same, so there is no need for additional FDA approvals, he said.

The polymer is inserted into a glue gun and melts upon minimal pressure. It is squeezed directly onto the wound, where it solidifies, bonding strongly with both edges of the wound, the Technion said in a statement.

The researchers believe the new concept will lead to the development of devices that will reduce the use of stitches, staples and pins, speed up the healing process and reduce scarring.

The university tested the technology on animals and has patented it. Because its components are materials that have been previously approved by the FDA, Mizrahi hopes that “the product can reach the market in two or three years.” The university is now looking for a partner to commercialize the technology, he added.

Hot glue guns can be used for a myriad of projects, including scrapbooking, arts and crafts, and assembling toys. Now, researchers at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology have developed a glue that is applied with a hot glue gun to adhere seriously injured human tissues.

Article by Kevin Hattori, published on American Technion Society on June 6, 2019.

Illustration of glue being applied to an incision using a hot glue gun.

Most serious injuries are currently treated with pins and stitches that have many drawbacks. For the patient, they are very painful, leave scars, require high skill from the doctor, and sometimes have to be removed after the tissues heal. Medical glue, on the other hand, can produce improved medical and cosmetic results.

Such tissue bioadhesives are widely used in dermatology, surgical theaters, and in the field. But even though they have advantages over sutures and staples, currently available tissue glues are limited by their mechanical properties and toxicity. Because they are very toxic, they can be utilized only on the surface of the skin. In addition, hardening of the glue may make the organ less flexible or the adhesion may not be sufficiently strong.

With these limitations in mind, researchers have long been trying to develop a glue that is suitable for different tissues, non-toxic, and flexible after hardening. Such a glue would also need to decompose in the body after the tissue is fused together.

In an article published recently in Advanced Functional Materials, Biomaterials Laboratory head Prof. Boaz Mizrahi and doctoral student Alona Shagan introduce a very strong, non-toxic tissue adhesive that remains flexible even after solidification.

Melting the glue and smearing it on the damaged tissue is performed with a hot glue gun. Unlike the glue guns with which we are familiar, this gun warms the glue to a moderate temperature – just above that of the body – so as not to cause a burn. After the glue is applied, it quickly hardens, and decomposes within a few weeks. The adhesive is also suitable for the adhesion of tissue inside the body, and it is four times as strong as existing adhesives used for this purpose. Tested on cells and laboratory animals, it was effective and nontoxic.

The new approach is based on a biocompatible, low-melting-point, four‐armed N‐hydroxy succinimide‐modified polycaprolactone (star‐PCL‐NHS). Star‐PCL‐NHS is inserted into a hot-melt glue gun and melts upon minimal pressure, the team wrote. It is squeezed directly onto the wound, where it solidifies, bonding strongly with both edges of the wound. Changes in molecular weight allow control of adhesive strength, melting point, and elasticity properties. In-vitro and in-vivo evaluations confirm the biocompatibility of this system. The straightforward synthetic scheme and the simple delivery method – combined with the desirable mechanical properties, tunability and tissue compatibility – are desirable traits in wound management.

Doctoral student Alona Shagan

The researchers believe the new concept will lead to the development of devices that will reduce the use of stitches, staples and pins, speed up the healing process and reduce scarring.

Created by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this YouTube video about the Technion features appearances by Nobel laureates, Distinguished Professors Dan Shechtman and Aaron Ciechanover. Among other things, the video highlights the Technion as a place where diseases are cured, Nobel Prizes are won, and the technology that’s making the world a better place is made.

Article by Kevin Hattori, published on American Technion Society on May 31, 2019.

Researchers at the Technion believe their discovery of a new technology to monitor metabolic processes in cancerous tissue could lead to targeted drugs for preventing malignant growth.

Article by Kevin Hattori, published on American Technion Society on May 14, 2019.

Professor Tomer Shlomi.

In recent decades, many studies have been conducted around the world on the development and spread of malignant tumors in the body, as well as their diagnosis and treatment. One of the most important discoveries is related to the unique metabolic properties of the cancerous cell.

Metabolism is a vital process that makes it possible for the cell to generate energy and produce the molecules needed for its development and survival. This process is very different in the malignant cell, as cancer cells divide uncontrollably, and their speedy growth reduces the oxygen and nutrients available to them and requires reprogramming of the metabolic processes. Successful monitoring of these metabolic changes could lead to the development of specific anti-cancer drugs that would impair the metabolic processes needed to sustain the cancerous tissue.

But applying this idea is not simple, because cellular metabolism is a very complicated process that involves the activity of thousands of genes and metabolic enzymes. Another major complication is that different areas of the cell maintain different metabolic processes, and existing technology does not allow each of them to be tracked separately.

Now, in a study published in Nature Communications, Professor Tomer Shlomi of the Technion Faculty of Biology and Computer Science and the Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering present a new technology for monitoring metabolic processes in different parts of the cell.

“We have developed a technique for monitoring the rate of metabolic reactions at sub-cellular resolution, particularly mitochondria and cytosol,” he said. Mitochondria are the cell’s “power station,” and cytosol is the fluid inside the cell.

Prof. Shlomi’s research group is an interdisciplinary team comprised of researchers from the fields of biology and computer science. The new technology also combines biological methods with computational methods, namely molecular biology and mass spectrometry, technology for identification of materials in a sample, along with decoding of measurements using computational analysis. This combination enables modeling of the metabolic processes at the sub-cellular level.

The new technology was used to study mutations that interfere with mitochondrial activity in cancer cells. To their surprise, the researchers discovered a unique backup mechanism that allows cancer cells to overcome mitochondrial mutation damage and survive through unknown metabolic activity, the reversal of the direction of the Krebs cycle, a major metabolic pathway involved in cellular respiration.

“This is the first time that a reversal of the activities of these enzymes has been observed in human cells and specifically in cancerous ones,” said Prof. Shlomi. “Understanding this reversal mechanism is paving the way for medical treatment that will neutralize it. In other words, drug targeting of this backup metabolic process enables to selectively kill the mutated cancer cells without harming the healthy cells.”

The study was supported by a grant from the European Research Council (ERC) and carried out with Dr. Alina Eisenstein and doctoral students Won Dong Lee and Dzmitry Mukha.

Aimed at using scientific knowledge to improve sports performance, the First Scientific Conference of the Israeli Olympics Sports Research Center was held recently at Technion. Among the attendees were leading researchers and scientists, senior coaches from Israel and members of the sports-tech industry, and guest lecturers from the USA and England.

Article by Kevin Hattori, published on American Technion Society on May 22, 2019.

(L-R) Muli Epstein, scientific director of Israel’s Olympic Committee; Prof. Yannis Pitsiladis, Brighton University; Yael Arad, Olympic Committee of Israel; and Prof. Alon Wolf, head of the Israeli Olympic Sports Research Center at the Technion.

The conference was held at the Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering on May 15, as part of the Annual Belfer Symposium. It marked a new cooperative venture between the Technion and the Olympic Committee of Israel.

The Israeli Olympics Sports Research Center, which is focused on applied research for advancing Olympic Sport in Israel, is headed by Professor Alon Wolf of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and directed by exercise physiologist Muli Epstein, scientific director of Israel’s Olympic Committee and its Elite Sports Unit.

Among the discussions related to scientific and technological challenges in the field of athletic achievement was the challenge of breaking the two-hour barrier in marathon races. Running a marathon in less than two hours is more than just a physiological challenge, and new developments in the field of footwear and nutrition could help break the elusive two-hour mark. Experts agree that it is possible to beat the record, and many believe that Kenyan Olympic runner Eliud Kipchoge could achieve do so in the near future.

Prof. Yannis Pitsiladis, an expert in sports and exercise science at England’s Brighton University and a world expert on the genetic and environmental effects of athletic performance, spoke about the enormous challenge of breaking the two-hour barrier in a marathon.

“The borders are not fixed, and by investing time and energy, they can be extended,” said Prof. Pitsiladis. In order for the goal to be reached, there must also be cooperation among researchers in various fields, including nutritionists, biomechanics and data scientists. “We need to develop tools with which to inject carbohydrates into the runner’s body effectively, and to provide him/her with intelligent sensing systems that monitor physiological variables and provide feedback on his/her condition in real time.”

Dr. Alison Sheets is a senior biomechanics researcher at Nike, whose research focuses on the biomechanical mechanisms that limit the performance of athletes through experimental and computational approaches. Her lecture addressed the contribution of equipment innovation in improving athletes’ sports performance.

“Why can’t I run faster, why can’t I jump higher? These questions keep me awake,” said Dr. Sheets, who seeks to improve the athletic performance of the super athlete. Established in 1980, Nike’s Biomechanics Laboratory’s goal is to develop ways to overcome existing limitations and enable athletes to improve their achievements while reducing injuries. “Since the 1980s, tremendous scientific developments have taken place, including the power of computing, data science and 3D printing, which give us new tools to combat sporting challenges.”

Prof. Wolf said that the research center was designed to promote Israeli sports on three levels: the physiology of the individual athlete, the technology of the equipment, and the interaction between the two. During the conference, Prof. Wolf and Mr. Epstein presented a fascinating talk about the history of scientific research in Olympic Sports and the current challenges in the field.

“With this joint cooperation between the Olympic Committee and Technion, a leading body in science and technology,” said Gili Lustig, CEO of the Olympic Committee of Israel, “I have no doubt that together, we can improve the training patterns and physiological tracking of our athletes and thus lead them to new heights.”

“The cooperation with Technion is at one with the quantum leap in the goals that we have set for ourselves,” said Yael Arad, Israel’s first athlete to win an Olympic silver medal and board member of the Olympic Committee of Israel and Chairman of the Sports Committee. “If we have so far aimed at returning from any Olympics with one or two medals, now we want to achieve more. Not only to be good but to be the best. And for that we have to focus on things that we are not good at, and to improve and bring measurable results, and in short – more medals. It is a long-term process whose benefits will be seen only at the 2024 Olympics and perhaps even later. But it will happen if we will be patient, determined and consistent.”

Following the conference, four Israeli Olympic trainers presented challenges from their respective fields to researchers at the new center. Niv Libner, coach of Israel’s women’s cycling team, is seeking to develop tools to improve training and decision-making in training and races. Rogel Nahum, who represented Israel three times in triple jumps in the Olympic Games, said that these areas are desperate for tools to improve the accuracy of running and hitting the jumping board. Sailing coach Gur Steinberg is seeking to develop precise methods for measuring distances and learning how world-champion sailors succeed. And Claudia Laciga, coach of the Israel Beach-Volleyball Team, said the players need tools that will improve their ability to read the opponent and his intentions.

By 2025, some 8 million consumer vehicles shipping from manufacturers will feature Level 3 and 4 technologies, where drivers are still necessary but able to completely shift safety-critical functions to the vehicle under certain conditions, and Level 5 technology, where no driver will be required at all. (Source: ABI Research)

Article by Kevin Hattori, published on American Technion Society on May 30, 2019.

The Technion is helping drive the development of the autonomous vehicles coming down the road in many ways.

The race to develop truly autonomous automobiles is in high gear, and car manufacturers around the globe are looking at Israel for the advances and brainpower that will help make those dreams a reality. And in a proof point of the Technion’s influence on Israeli industry, its researchers and alumni are right in the middle of autonomous vehicle-related partnerships with American, German, Japanese, and Korean car manufacturers. The collaborations don’t stop with the cars themselves, either. An automotive cybersecurity company led by a Technion alumnus is currently working with a Michigan-based company to create a holistic cybersecurity solution for connected and autonomous vehicles.

Toyota recently announced plans to commercially market an autonomous car in 2020 under its Lexus brand. It will have Level 4 autonomy, which means it will be able to drive independently, but only on specific routes and in specific conditions. The advancement is possible because of Toyota’s collaboration with AI vision company Cortica. Founded in 2007 by Professor Yehoshua (Josh) Zeevi and doctoral graduates Igal Raichelgauz and Karina Ordinaev, Cortica is based on brain research conducted at the Technion. An alumnus, Prof. Zeevi is a member of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and holds the Barbara and Norman Seiden Chair in Computer Science.

Innoviz Technologies of Israel is supplying its solid-state Lidar, short for light detection and ranging, sensing to the BMW Group for its autonomous vehicle production platforms. Innoviz Co-founders Zohar Zisapel and Oren Rozenzweig are Technion alumni. The solid-state high-resolution technology enables autonomous vehicles to sense their surroundings even at long distances, in varying weather and light conditions, and in multi-LiDAR environments.

The benefits of the collaboration between Hyundai, the Technion and Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology on artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, and cyber security are multi-fold. In addition to helping automotive firms and startups in Israel launch their products with Hyundai’s vehicle product line, the alliance will also help Hyundai Motors establish itself as a leader in automotive robotics market.

In a partnership with Volkswagen and Champion Motors, Israeli startup Mobileye plans to bring autonomous electric vehicle taxi service to Israel in 2019. Mobileye’s research and development is headed by Technion alumnus Dr. Gaby Hayon.

Ford is developing a decision-making system in Israel for driving autonomous cars. Such a system is a critical challenge in the development of driverless cars, since difficult decisions must be made within a fraction of a second in a car surrounded by moving traffic. Professor Shie Mannor, of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion, will lead Ford’s new activity. He is also the head of the Technion and Intel Corporation’s new Center for Artificial Intelligence.

SafeRide, an Israeli automotive cybersecurity company, has formed a strategic partnership with Irdeto of Michigan to provide original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and tier-1 suppliers with a holistic cybersecurity solution for connected and autonomous vehicles. Saferide CEO Yossi Vardi is a Technion alumnus.

The car of the future may be available at your local dealership sooner than you think. Autonomous vehicles, once a notion of pure fiction, will soon to be a reality and part of everyday life. Just as breakthroughs like seat belts, anti lock brakes, and self-parking capabilities irreversibly changed automobiles and our experience of them, autonomous cars will revolutionize how we drive, live, and travel.

The president of Technion, Israel’s leading high tech university, tells Science|Business how a sense of precariousness feeds the country’s technology edge.

Article by Éanna Kelly, published on NoCamels on June 13, 2019.

Technion President Peretz Lavie (Credit Nitzan Zohar: Office of the Spokesperson, Technion).

Peretz Lavie, president of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, was standing on a volcano in Iceland waiting for an urgent call.

It was August 2013, and ostensibly Lavie was on holiday. Instead, he was desperately seeking reassurance from security staff back home that all his students had gasmasks – just in case. Bashar al-Assad, Syrian president and Israel’s erratic neighbour, had just deployed chemical weapons on his people, shocking the world.

Israelis are accustomed to a certain sense of precariousness in their normal day-to-day lives, but this stands out as a particularly harrowing event for Lavie. “Tell me which other head of a major university faces these issues? I don’t think anyone in their wildest nightmare could think of such a scenario,” Lavie told Science|Business.

Yet in keeping with the general attitude of a country that is good at adapting to new situations, Lavie doesn’t dwell long on the issue: he moves forward. “You must be optimistic to live in this part of the world,” he said.

Looking to the future is something researchers and students at Technion, Israel’s oldest university, are famed for doing. Graduates have translated their ideas, skills and ambition into the USB memory stick, drip irrigation, instant messaging and rasagiline, a drug for treating early-stage Parkinson’s disease.

Campus entrepreneurship fever has made Technion, founded in 1912 in the hilly port city of Haifa, one of the main fuses for the country’s roaring tech sector. “Many of our graduates are running the economy,” Lavie said.

Technion students have created over 2,000 companies. The record for a single student is 21. Lavie, a pioneering researcher in sleep disorders, has himself founded or co-founded five medical device companies.

In a country known as start-up nation, people take failure on the chin, Lavie says.

“Israelis don’t stop asking questions,” he said. “Shimon Peres [former Israeli president and prime minister] said the most typical character of an Israeli is someone who is dissatisfied – it makes us bad at politics, but good at science.”

The same fiercely entrepreneurial streak is not apparent in many other pockets of the world. “In some countries if you fail, that’s the end of it. I know people here who succeeded on their 10th attempt,” Lavie said.

“In Japan, there is the same level of ambition as here but it’s the failures that they cannot tolerate,” he said. “In Brazil, if you have a failed start-up, you can’t apply for more grants.”

This drive is absent in much of Europe too, he says. “I feel parents there don’t push their kids to be top of their class. In Israel, parents push their kids to excel. But I have the feeling that, when I go to other places like Australia or Canada, the attitude of many people there is to find a job with a good pension, and then enjoy time down the pub on the weekend,” he said.

Military experience, mandated in Israel, also instils leadership, Lavie says. His theory is that pilots make the best entrepreneurs. “I think when someone is given responsibility for a piece of equipment worth maybe €100,000, running a company afterwards becomes something of a third or fourth order of difficulty,” he said.

Global fundraising

Lavie is stepping down as president in October after serving 12 years. His successor will be Uri Sivan, a physicist famous for creating a tiny transistor based on strands of gold wire and DNA.

“I’m the first president who did more than two terms,” said Lavie. They said, ‘you didn’t learn enough, we’d like to go on for one more term’. I negotiated to 10 years, instead of 12.” He is undecided, as yet, about what to do afterwards.

After his sleep research training in Florida and San Diego, and a stint as a professor in Harvard, Lavie joined the Faculty of Medicine at Technion in 1975, and founded the Sleep Research Laboratory and the Centre for Sleep Medicine. He was the dean of medicine and vice president for resource development before being elected for a four-year term as president in 2009. Four years later, he was re-elected for another term.

One of Lavie’s last actions as president is steering the university’s $1.8 billion global fundraising campaign. Government money for research in Israel is above the EU average, but he said, “Without philanthropy, we’re a small university in the Middle East.”

A new cutting-edge artificial intelligence lab is on the shopping list, but the really “hot stuff” is quantum computing, said Lavie. “Those universities that do not develop it will stay behind. We don’t have enough in quantum right now,” he said. “The country is playing catch up a little.” There is a new government strategy for quantum, although, “The start-up nation doesn’t typically wait for governments,” Lavie said.

Big tech and research firms keep arriving in Israel, but for a country boiling with cash for technology investment, industry contributions to Technion’s coffers are relatively low – 11 per cent of revenue comes from company collaboration, with the rest coming from competitive funds.

“We have lots of giants close by, such as Intel, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo, but they [answer to] their HQs in the US, where the money is decided. We have research agreements with industry, and they give scholarships to students, but they don’t give us new buildings, or sponsor research chairs,” said Lavie.

In Israel, students gain a foundation in industrial technology early. From their fourth semester onwards, Technion students are allowed to work part-time in companies. “They can do 20 hours a week – it’s a double edged sword for us. Students get experience, but it often stretches the student degree from four to five years. We pay a penalty with extra cost,” Lavie said.

All universities in Israel are facing the same challenge of recruiting and retaining good staff. Astronomical private sector salaries in buzzy fields like AI and cybersecurity have made academia a harder sell. “We have a rough time competing with industry,” Lavie said. The average recruitment package for an assistant professor at Technion is $1 million, with this entire amount having to come through philanthropy.

Restricted borders

An unusual aspect of the Technion story is that, despite the world-renowned reputation, there are fierce restrictions on who can attend the university.

“The immigration laws in Israel are very tough,” Lavie said. “Take the percentage of faculty members in US universities who come from outside America – you’re at 40 per cent. Here, we have a handful.”

Whereas the best universities draw students from around the world, cross-border collaboration with neighbours is almost impossible. “We rely on nine million people, that’s it. Just imagine what would happen if I could attract the best minds in the world here? I wish I could open the Technion,” Lavie said. “It’s a matter of prestige; it’s about being a world class university.” He would like to attract Chinese students to Israel. “Right now, the US is getting the most benefit here,” he said.

Lavie says he needs civil engineers, but can’t find anyone with the right qualifications in Israel.

Academic staff numbers are controlled by the government. “The ratio of faculty to students in Technion is ridiculous: it’s about 1:25,” he said. “Government cuts sent us down from 640 to 540 faculty, but we could possibly go back up again to 600. However, we cannot go to 1,200, like at the MIT. I wish we could,” he said.

The university has found routes to open up internationally. In 2017, Lavie engineered a joint venture with Cornell University to create a new university on Manhattan’s Roosevelt Island, initiated by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He also set up a new science and technology university in Shantou, China, funded by the Guangdong provincial government with the support of the billionaire Li Ka Shing.

The Chinese base has 1,500 students and 15 Israeli staff. In the future, the plan is to grow the campus to 5,000 students and 300 faculty, and teach subjects in English. Lavie says there are no plans to explore an outpost in Europe, despite offers.

Protests

On trips abroad, Lavie has occasionally been made aware of certain negative perceptions of Technion. “We are considered by some student unions as an apartheid university, and a wing of the defence ministry,” he said.

The new home on Roosevelt Island drew criticism from some New Yorkers, who argued that the university’s research and development has helped sustain Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.

Technion’s back catalogue of innovations includes the remote-controlled D-9 bulldozer for the Israeli military, which has been used to demolish buildings in Palestinian territories (The UN and much of the world refer to these as the occupied territories, whereas Israel calls them disputed territories.)

Lavie has faced protests during trips to foreign universities, and calls to boycott Technion because of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. “They have demonstrated against me in several countries. It’s awkward but I say to them, come on our campus and you’ll hear as much Arabic as Hebrew,” he said.

Twenty per cent of the Technion student body is Arab, and Lavie says there is extra effort to help these students integrate.

Only about 1 per cent of Israel’s Arab population serve in the army, with the majority going straight from secondary school to university. “We provide them with big brother and sister groups. We recruit Arab faculty members. Our first (online) MOOC (course) was in Arabic,” he said.

On campus, politics doesn’t penetrate in the same way it does in ordinary life, said Lavie. “The students probably don’t have the time,” he said.

Israeli companies specializing in artificial intelligence raised nearly 40 percent of the total venture capital funds raised by the Israeli tech ecosystem for 2018, despite accounting for just 17 percent of the total number of innovative technology companies in the country, according to a report this month by Start-Up Nation Central (SNC).

Article by NoCamels Team, published on NoCamels on March 17, 2019.

The amount of equity investments in Israel in 2018, according to a Start-Up Nation figure.

Israel is home to over 1,000 companies, academic research centers, and multinational R&D centers specializing in AI, including those that develop core AI technologies, as well as those that utilize AI technologies for their vertical-related products such as in healthcare, cybersecurity, automotive, and manufacturing among others, SNC noted.

Over the course of 2018, Israeli startups and companies raised over $6 billion in 681 funding rounds, marking a 15 percent increase from 2017 ($5.2B) and a 140 percent jump from 2014, according to the report. Of this sum, $2.24 billion went to AI-focused companies, accounting for 37 percent of the total capital raised and representing a threefold increase from 2014. In addition, 32 percent of all funding rounds for the year went to AI firms, according to the report.

Prominent funding rounds raised by companies utilizing AI in 2018 included DevOps firm JFrog, a company that automates software updates which closed a $165 million Series D round, Trax Image Recognition which raised $125 million, eToro with $100 million, and Habana Labs, which develops AI processors, with a $75 million round led by Intel Capital.

The biggest acquisition of the year was that of Datorama, which developed an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform, by SalesForce for $850 million. Other significant AI-related acquisitions in 2018 were of Nutrino for $100 million by Medtronic, and video synopsis solutions company Briefcam for $90 million by Canon.

The SNC report noted that a number of events in 2018 boosted the AI ecosystem in Israel, including the launch of a new Center for Artificial Intelligence by Intel and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and the announcement by US tech giant Nvidia (which acquired Israel’s Mellanox Technologies last week for $6.9 billion) that it too was opening a new AI research center.

A number of high-profile AI products developed by Israeli teams working for multinationals were also unveiled this year. In May, Google came out with Google Duplex, a system for conducting natural sounding conversations developed by Yaniv Leviathan, principal engineer, and Yossi Matias, vice president of engineering and the managing director of Google’s R&D Center in Tel Aviv. And in July 2018, IBM unveiled Project Debater, a system powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that can debate humans, developed over six years in IBM’s Haifa research division in Israel.

Earlier this year, the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) warned that despite industry achievements, Israel was lagging behind other countries regarding investment in AI infrastructures and urgently needed a national AI strategy to keep its edge. The IIA called for the consolidation of all sectors – government, academia, and industry – to establish a vision and a strategy on AI for the Israeli economy.

Other sectors with significant funding include cybersecurity, a field in which Israel thrives. The year ended with $1.19 billion in investments for cybersecurity companies, a 47 percent increase from 2017, in 117 investment rounds (39 percent more deals than 2017).

In healthcare, Israeli companies raised almost $900 million in investments in 2018. Israeli healthcare-related technologies accounted for 24 percent of the companies in the ecosystem, and the same share of the total number of funding rounds and capital raised.

In financial tech, some $832 million in investments were raised in 82 deals, almost double the total amount raised during 2017.

Israel’s blockchain industry also saw some growth, with 155 active companies in the field, and $107 million in venture-backed capital raised in 2018 (a significant increase from the $8.5 million raised in 2014), and $295M through initial coin offerings (ICOs).

The State Of The Israeli Ecosystem

The SNC report, released last week, gives a comprehensive overview of the Israeli high-tech ecosystem, which according to SNC’s Finder database had over 6,600 active companies by the end of 2018, having grown by 27 percent since 2014. The year also saw some 600 companies closed their doors.

The number of active companies in Israel in 2018, according to a Start-Up Nation figure.

The number of funding rounds also increased in 2018, at 681, just two from 2017, but still six percent below the 2016 peak of 721 rounds. At the same time, the median size of all round types rose from $1.5 million in 2014 to $4 million in 2018, as the median size of early-stage rounds more than doubled from $1 million to $2.3 million, while late-stage median size grew from $12 million to $18 million.

According to the report, more than 430 professional investors have a permanent presence in Israel, almost a quarter of which are non-Israeli. Some 1,500 investors, from more than 30 countries, invested in Israeli companies over 2018.

While a majority of deals had at least one Israeli investor, 43 percent had at least one American investor. British investors followed US investors, while German investors were fourth as their participation rose steadily from two percent in 2014 to five percent in 2018.

The report also said that there were 320 multinational companies with a direct presence in Israel, more than 300 with R&D activities across 360 different offices. The majority are based in the United States (246), followed by the UK, Germany, France, and Canada.

Over the course of the year, exits totaled $3.28 billion spanning 97 Israeli high-tech companies, marking a nine percent decline in the number and a 49 percent decline in the total amount, compared to 2014, (a peak year for exits over the last five years). This trend is largely due to companies staying private for longer, since they are able to raise large private rounds, SNC noted.

US companies were the largest acquirers of Israeli start-ups with 49 percent of all deals.

Three researchers, from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and Weizmann Institute of Science, will each be awarded $100,000, one of the largest unrestricted prizes ever created for early-career researchers in Israel.

Article by Israil Institute of Technology, published on Technion.ac.il on April 8, 2019.

(l-r) Associate Professor Moran Bercovici, of the Technion, Drs. Michal Rivlin and Erez Berg of the Weizmann Institute of Science. (Photo courtesy of Israil Institute of Technology)

HAIFA, ISRAEL (April 8, 2019) – Associate Professor Moran Bercovici, of the Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, is one of three Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in Israel Laureates for 2019. The honor, bestowed by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, New York Academy of Sciences, and Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (IASH), was announced in Jerusalem on Sunday, April 7. Also awarded were Drs. Michal Rivlin and Erez Berg of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

The Blavatnik Awards recognize outstanding, innovative early-career scientists and engineers for both their extraordinary achievements and promise for future discoveries. The prizes are awarded to promising scientists and engineers aged 42 and younger for breakthrough research in the disciplines of chemistry, life sciences, and physical sciences and engineering.

In 2019, 33 nominations were received from seven universities Israeli universities. Members of the Awards’ Scientific Advisory Council, including IASH President Professor Nili Cohen; Co-chair and Nobel Prize Laureate Distinguished Professor Aaron Ciechanover; and President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Academy of Sciences Mr. Ellis Rubinstein were also invited to submit nominations. A distinguished jury of leading senior scientists and engineers from throughout the country selected the laureates.

Prof. Bercovici (36) was selected for his innovative research in microfluidics, contributing to fundamental understanding of the chemical and physical behavior of fluids at extremely small scales, as well as to the invention of cutting-edge technologies in this field. His highly multidisciplinary research, which couples fluid mechanics, electric fields, heat transfer, chemical reactions, and biology, has the potential to not only miniaturize existing large-scale processes but also to create new capabilities that are not possible at large scale. For example, Dr. Bercovici and his team at Technion have developed a series of lab-on-a-chip technologies that significantly shorten the time and improve the sensitivity of traditional molecular analysis techniques, enabling rapid and early disease diagnostics and offering new research tools to scientists. Innovations coming from his lab also have potential use in many other fields, including soft actuators, adaptive optics, single cell analysis, and microscale 3D printing.

The Laureates will join more than 250 of their peers as fellow members of the Blavatnik Science Scholars community. They will also be invited to attend the annual Blavatnik Science Symposium each summer in New York City, where members come together to collaborate on cross-disciplinary research and share new ideas.