New Visitors Centre Inaugurated. Rabbi Debates Nobel laureate. Technion Researchers Shrink Tumours. Students Reveal Security Breaches and more…..

Read here for the latest from the Technion.

800 High School Students participated in the annual Tech Women event at Technion

Tech Women encourages outstanding female students to continue their academic studies in science & engineering

[L-R] Rosalyn August, Donor of the GEM Initiative, Prof. Marcelle Machluf, Dean of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering

From Kiryat Shmona to Beer Sheva, Ashdod, and the Golan Heights, over 800 outstanding female high school students from all over Israel attended the Tech Women 2018 event (21^st November 2018), hosted by Technion to encourage outstanding female pupils to opt for science and engineering in their academic careers. This 4^th annual event was made possible through the generosity of the Rosalyn August GEM Initiative.

In honor of the event, Rosalyn August arrived at Technion with her eldest granddaughter, Lauren. Rosalyn was born in a small town in Virginia, USA. The daughter of immigrant parents who opened a small jewelry shop which in time turned into a prosperous business. As a young woman growing up during the ’60s, Rosalyn felt a dissonance between what she wanted to become and what society at large, and her own family, in particular, felt suitable for her.

Rosalyn shared with the students that her acquaintance with Technion began a decade ago.  She felt an instant bond with the quiet, underplayed vibe of the place. “There are many fields worthy of a donation, yet I chose Technion,” Rosalyn said. “Even though I don’t know much about technology, it is clear to me that technology is our future and it is our duty to help integrate women into this field. Trust yourselves, find what you love and love what you do.”

All of the students who were invited to participate in the event study mathematics and other science and technology related subjects, at the highest level of accreditation. During the event, they met with female researchers, faculty, and graduate students. They visited the laboratories and heard about the various fields of research and study.

Rosalyn August [center] with Dr Adi Hanuka and PhD graduate Sara Nagosa

When Technion was opened in 1924, female students comprised 6% of the student population, a ratio of 1 to 17. Gradually, and especially during the past decade, the number of female students at Technion has grown considerably, and today they account for 40% of the student population.

The students attended lectures and visited the labs of 10 engineering and science faculties:  Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry and the William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management.

In her opening remarks, Prof. Marcelle Machluf, Dean of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering said, “I have always had to prove myself and being the only woman in the room drives me even further in doing so. Women are the future and I encourage each and every one of you to come and study at the Technion. You all have talent and the ability to succeed, with or without affirmative action.”

Dr. Efrat Sabach who completed her doctoral thesis at Technion’s Faculty of Physics, said,  “When I said that I wanted to study physics I was told that I would be the only girl among many boys but that didn’t scare me, I always asked questions and I was always given a legitimacy for these questions.”

With regards to her thesis, under the guidance of Prof. Noam Soker, Dr. Sabach said, “I am an astrophysicist who studies processes in space and even though I am the only woman in my research team I have never felt unequal to the others.”

Students attending the Tech Women 2018 event

Sara Nagosa, a Ph.D. student at the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine said that she chose Technion because she wanted to study at the best academic institute. “At first I was scared, but then I understood that if I don’t try I will never know if I am capable and that is how I made it to today, the final year of my doctoral thesis. Technion gave me more than knowledge, it provided me with determination, perseverance, and tools for life.”

When you think of electrical engineers you probably do not have me in mind, but here I am, a woman with a doctoral degree, at the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, said Dr. Adi Hanuka.

Dr. Hanuka told the students about the two projects which she has been leading over the past years: the first, a miniature particle accelerator intended for use in X-ray and radiation equipment and the second, an Eyelid Motion Monitor (EMM) for diagnosing various diseases.

During my doctoral thesis, I traveled to the USA to continue my studies at Stanford University. The people in my research team were surprised that I was female, and someone even pointed out that girls are not supposed to study electrical engineering but rather psychology or economics. This leads me to say that it is not enough to strengthen only the girls and relay to them how capable they are, but also to ‘educate’ boys in a way that will make them see that girls do not fall short with regards to talent and ability.”

Article originally published on Technion.ac.il

Prof. Hossam Haick was handed the EU Innovation Award on Behalf of the SNIFFPHONE Project

Professor Hossam Haick from the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering receives the “European Commission Innovation Prize” on behalf of the SNIFFPHONE project and partners. The award was handed in Lisbon on November 21, at The European Forum of Electronic Components and Systems (EFECS). This is a great honor rewarding the excellent concept and work that has been done in this project.

The SNIFFPHONE project was established and coordinated by Professor Hossam Haick under the auspicious support of the Horizon 2020 ICT-02a-2014 Program for Smart System Integration, in collaboration with additional 8 partners from additional five countries.

The SNIFFPHONE project aims to reach a diagnostic test that has high-accuracy, low-cost, non-invasive, easily repeatable, effortlessly operated by a lay-person and has minimal impact on the person’s daily activities.

In the SNIFFPHONE project, the partners achieved these requirements by integrating heterogeneous micro- and nano-technologies into an autonomous smart system that can be connected with smart devices and analyze disease markers from exhaled breath. In this approach, an interaction between the breath sample and a miniaturized array of highly sensitive nanomaterial-based chemical sensors can be recorded, stored and pre-processed by integrated miniature on-chip microfluidics and electronics. The relevant electrical signals are then transferred wirelessly via the smart device’s internet to an external server. Statistical pattern recognition methods are applied on the received data and a clinical report including the screening results is sent back to the designated receiver (e.g., specialist, family doctor) when results are positive.

The SNIFFPHONE represents a new concept that addresses major societal challenges in the health and well-being of the general population while accounting for ethical and security doctors. The end-product integrates functionalities that are relevant to the health screening applications with decreased size (x30-40), decreased costs (x150), and increased predictive and cognitive functions. The system provides full autonomy with energy management as well as with operation/use management.

The idea was realized in collaboration with nine partners from six countries. The core technology, containing breakthrough nanosensors for breath analysis, was developed and supported by the Technion team. Nanosensors for defining the breathing protocol were developed and provided by NanoVation-SG Ltd. – a spin-off company from the Technion. The micropump was developed by Cellix in Ireland, fluidics by Microfluidic ChipShop in Germany, and the cloud platform by VTT in Finland. The clinical studies were carried out at the University of Latvia in Riga, with further testing and technical experimentation is done in Austria at the University of Innsbruck. Siemens has taken part in the testing and validation phase of the SNIFFPHONE project and conducted usability studies. JLM Innovation, Germany provides system integration, the device software, the SNIFFPHONE App and algorithms for the measurement system.

The 2018 Innovation Award was granted on the 21st of November in Lisbon, at the European Forum for Electronic Components and System (EFECS) in presence of EU top-level leadership figures and the Israeli Ambassador in Portugal Rafi Gamzo. Dr. Jan Mitrovics – CEO JLM Innovation GmbH and SNIFFPHONE Partner – who presented in the ceremony was called on stage to join receiving the honor.

Professor Haick serves as a consultant to several commercial companies that spun out of his laboratories at the Technion, and leads three EU consortia, with dozens of contributors from the industry, academia and medical system.  He holds dozens of patents and made it into many lists, including the World’s 35 leading young scientists (MIT, 2008) and the list of 100 most influential inventors by several international agencies between 2015-2018. He won an array of prizes and medals, including “Knight in Order of the Academic Palms” granted by the French Government, The Humboldt Award, The Bill and Melinda Gates Prize and the Herschel Ritz Innovation Award.

Article originally published on Technion.ac.il

Haifa’s Technion Institute of Technology is Israel in a nutshell, bursting with energy and ambition. Richard Ferrer enrols for an afternoon.

Article written by Richard Ferrer, published in The Jewish News.

Dah da da, dah da da, dah da, da-da, dah da da da, da, da!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to visit the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa without humming the theme tune from Mission: Impossible.

On the leafy slopes of Mount Carmel lies the Middle East’s most celebrated campus, a place that’s buzzed with brilliant ideas for more than a century.

It’s where Dov Moran invented the USB memory stick, Rafi Mehoudar devised drip irrigation and Rafi Yoeli is making a flying car.

It’s where Dr Gavriel Iddan launched the Pillcam, making internal exams as simple as swallowing.

It’s where Professor Hossam Haick dreamed up the SniffPhone, which detects cancer on the user’s breath.

Had Technion been around during the Bronze Age, one of its boffins would have invented the wheel.

An image from the Art of Science exhibition on campus, celebrating the university’s innovations.

An astounding 70 percent of Israel’s high-tech industry managers are Technion graduates, responsible for creating more than 100,000 jobs and contributing countless millions to the economy. Step into the New York City High School for the Performing Arts in the 1980s and you’d expect to see the kids from Fame dancing on canteen tables during lunch breaks.

It’s much the same at Technion, with undergraduates joyfully flexing their grey matter in their downtime.

For instance, on the lawn outside the library during my visit, students were taking part in a challenge to drop a raw egg 40 metres without it breaking. Teams were judged according to number of eggs landing intact, speed, design and proximity to target.

The device that poached top prize was a UFO-like saucer made of sponges, empty water bottles and the sort of tiny parachute that comes with an Action Man. Three of its four eggs survived the fall. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs but you can win a Technion challenge.

This place is Israel in a nutshell – oozing energy, ambition and aspiration. Or as Gil Lainer, the amiable of head communications, proudly calls it: “The birthplace of the start-up nation.”

Surrounded by Star Wars memorabilia in his airy, first-floor office, Gil smiles. “From the moment I saw Han Solo [being] put into carbon freeze in Empire Strikes Back, I was hooked on science and technology. From that day I knew what I wanted to do.”

Gil speaks proudly and personally about his university, recalling a request from the late Shimon Peres to put the entire Bible on a nanochip as a gift for Pope Benedict. “We’ve come a long way from tablets of stone,” he says.

“Benjamin Netanyahu liked this idea so much he asked for the American constitution to be put on a nanochip as a gift for Barack Obama. It looks like a tiny grain of rice on your finger.”

On the leafy slopes of Mount Carmel lies the Middle East’s most celebrated campus, a place that’s buzzed with brilliant ideas for more than a century.

Technion’s innovations are getting smaller as its campus gets larger, thanks to a recent £50million donation from The Helen Diller Family Foundation.

It’s also inspiring the Chinese, where many of the world’s tech giants are based. The Guangdong-Technion Israel Institute of Technology opened last year (“Guangdong is one of those small Chinese villages of six million people no one’s ever heard of,” smiles Gil).

A Chinese businessman donated the small matter of £100million to ensure the entire campus was built in two years flat.

Alongside its 18 academic departments, Technion’s next generation of innovators are hard at work in the Drive Accelerator incubator.

The university invests up to £100,000 in promising start-ups and gives them nine months to fly or flop. Out of last year’s intake of 15, nine have succeeded in getting off the ground. Among this year’s group is a shopping website called Pikwise, launched by Nathan Weinberger, who grew up in Stamford Hill. “I’m that annoying friend with a crazy idea he won’t shut up about,” the 29-year-old smiles.

Robot dogs made by real human beings.

His big idea gives consumers the freedom to find products in their own words. Using his unique “natural language processor”, Nathan’s website finds product that fits a shopper’s exact needs and price range.

He elaborates: “If you want to buy anything from toothpaste to a new iPhone, there is Amazon one side and Google on the other and the results of every search are pretty standard. We’re trying to get in the middle, delivering results that are perfect for specific needs.”

He adds: “Start-ups cannot compete with the big guys when it comes to PR and marketing, so Technion’s brand and brains are a big help. It validates what we do and helps us get a foot in the door. Last week we met with Walmart.”

My departure from the Drive Accelerator is delayed by a dodgy sensor, causing the electric doors to open and shut randomly like wonky windscreen wipers. I time my escape to avoid being wiped, as a student shuffles past me tutting under his breath: “Infrared triangulation would fix that.”

Like I said. Dah da da, dah da da…

Find out more about the Technion Israel Institute of Technology HERE

Technion researchers have made immeasurable contributions to benefit the world.

The t-hub will become a focal point for all entrepreneurial activities of the various Technion faculties, encouraging entrepreneurial thinking.

Article written by Shoshanna Solomon, published in The Times of Israel.

Researchers at the Technion successfully shrank malignant tumors in mice by manipulating the brain’s reward system.

Artificially activating the “reward system” in the brains of mice with two types of cancer led to a dramatic reduction in the size of their tumors, according to authors of a study conducted at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

“The relationship between a person’s emotional state and cancer has been demonstrated in the past, but mainly in relation to negative feelings such as stress and depression and without a physiological map of the action mechanism,” said Assoc. Prof. Asya Rolls of the Technion Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, who supervised the study.

“Several researchers, for example Prof. David Spiegel of the Stanford University School of Medicine, showed that an improvement in the patient’s emotional state may affect the course of the disease, but it was not clear how this happened. We are now presenting a physiological model that can explain at least part of this effect,” she said.

The results were published in the journal Nature Communications by Rolls along with doctoral students Tamar Ben-Shaanan and Maya Schiller, as well as Hilla Azulay-Debby, Ben Korin, Nadia Boshnak, Tamar Koren, Maria Krot, Jivan Shakya and Michal A. Rahat, and Technion Asst. Prof. Fahed Hakim, medical director of the Scottish EMMS Hospital in Nazareth.

From left, Technion researchers Hilla Azulay-Debby, Prof. Asya Rolls, Prof. Hakim and doctoral student Maya Schiller. Photo by Rami Shlush, Technion Spokesperson’s office.

According to Hakim, “Understanding the brain’s influence on the immune system and its ability to fight cancer will enable us to use this mechanism in medical treatments. Different people react differently, and we’ll be able to take advantage of this tremendous potential for healing only if we gain a thorough understanding of the mechanisms.”

The authors emphasized that the study is preclinical and that they tested only two cancer models (melanoma and lung cancer) and only two developmental aspects – tumor volume and weight.

However, this breakthrough may allow doctors to realize the physiological role the patients’ mental state plays in the development of malignant diseases. By artificially activating different parts of the brain, in the future it might be possible to encourage the immune system to block development of cancerous tumors more effectively.

Rolls explained that although the immune system has been proven able to fight cancer effectively if given the right tools, “the immune cells’ involvement in cancerous processes is a double-edged sword, because certain components in these cells support tumor growth. This is done by blocking the immune response and creating an environment that is beneficial to growth.”

Rolls has been studying the brain’s effect on the immune system for several years. In a study she published in 2016 in Nature Medicine, she showed how the immune system can be stimulated to work more effectively by manipulating the brain’s reward system – which operates in positive emotional states and in anticipation of the positive.

The main breakthrough in the present study is the dramatic contraction of cancerous tumors in response to the activation of the brain’s reward system.

Rolls cautioned, however, that the findings are not necessarily applicable to all types of cancer and that the experiments have not been done on humans at this point.

The artificial manipulation that worked on mice “most probably works differently” in humans, she said, “especially because other systems are also involved. For example, stress may counteract these reward system effects.”

Rolls said it’s not as simple as thinking positively to get better. “People are very different in their reactions, and until we fully understand how this works, it merely offers a potential.”

The study was supported by the Adelis Brain Research Award, a $100,000 research grant won by Rolls in June 2017. The prize is intended to encourage excellence in the field of brain research in Israel and to translate the research into global impact for the benefit of all humanity.

Article published on Israel21c.

In 2000, Shoham approached the Technion’s incubator and started a company, today known as Mazor Robotics.

By Avi Jorisch, published in JPost on 28 September, 2018

Medtronic, an Irish-American medical device company, announced last Friday that it was purchasing Israel’s Mazor Robotics for a hefty $1.64 billion, the biggest exit ever for an Israeli biotech company. Mazor’s signature piece of technology, a robotic-assisted procedure, represents the future gold standard of spine surgery, which is now poised to be implemented globally. Israeli innovations are improving the lives of millions of Americans and other people around the world, and this technology’s proven track record should encourage more American hospitals to adopt it.

Until about 15 years ago, spinal surgery was a lot like grasping in the dark. In order to even understand what procedure was necessary, doctors had to open up the spine. But a leading Israeli robotics professor, in conjunction with the Cleveland Clinic, developed a procedure that uses advanced artificial intelligence to help doctors perform previously unthinkable surgeries.

Prof. Moshe Shoham teaches at the Technion, the so-called MIT of Israel. In the late 1990s, Shoham began studying the spine because of its critical role in human mechanics, with the idea that the latest robotic technology could help doctors in the operating room. One of the first things he learned about spinal surgery is that it can be a nerve-racking experience not only for patients, but also for doctors, who often place large screws into small slots in the vertebrae by hand. If the doctor is slightly off, there is a high risk that the patient will be paralyzed for life. These types of procedures often require extensive tissue dissection and can result in blood loss and infection.

But Shoham believed that if a more accurate procedure could be developed, the probability of swift recovery would increase. While researching the issue, he was shocked to discover that during about two to three percent of spinal surgeries patients suffered nerve damage, which can result in weakness, muscle atrophy, twitching and paralysis. To his mind, that was unacceptably high.

In 2000, Shoham approached the Technion’s incubator – whose mission is to provide startups with operational support, management training and office space – and started a company, today known as Mazor Robotics. After four years of research and development, he began testing a robot capable of assisting surgeons in the operating room. He started with cadavers at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel and the Cleveland Clinic in the United States. Shoham and his team set out to prove that their invention could reduce operating-room time, minimize invasive surgeries, reduce the risk of infection and blood loss, and expedite recovery. The system wasn’t meant to replace surgeons, but to help them achieve better results.

By the end of 2004, not only did Mazor have a fully working product called SpineAssist, but it had been approved for sale by health authorities in Europe and the United States. “I was really astonished,” says Sho – ham. “We got it quite early.”

SHOHAM AND HIS PARTNERS created a unique imaging system. Prior to surgery, the patient undergoes a CT scan of the spine. On the day of the procedure, doctors take another two X-rays of the spinal column, one from the back and another from the side. A technician then merges the two sets of images using SpineAssist’s algorithms to create a three-dimensional blueprint. This allows surgeons to accurately see the spine in a way that was never possible before. After examining and approving the system’s recommendations, the doctor implants the screws using Shoham’s robot, which can accurately insert a spinal implant and reduce the danger of damaging nerves and vital organs. Finally, the system directs surgeons to the exact spot where they need to operate.

The holes for the screws can be placed within one millimeter of the desired location – about one-fifth the width of a human hair. This accuracy enables surgeons to reduce the chances of damage to the spinal cord and blood vessels during the operation. “With the robot we can be very precise,” says Dr. Andrew Cannestra, a neurosurgeon at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida, who specializes in minimally invasive procedures. “It’s difficult to get the screws into the bone because there’s just not that much real estate… The robot allows us to put the largest screw possible into the smallest space.”

The system also has the added benefit of lowering radiation exposure during surgery for both patients and surgical teams. According to Mazor, use of the robot means that surgeons can now carry out procedures they would previously never have attempted – from spinal fusion to biopsies for suspected tumors. Medical procedures will never be the same.

Mazor has continued to win over doctors and patients, one procedure at a time. More than a decade after it received permission to sell its product in the United States and Europe, surgeons around the world are performing over a hundred operations a week using its technology. And not one patient who has undergone a procedure with Mazor’s robot has been crippled or experienced any kind of nerve damage.

There are currently just under 100 US hospitals utilizing Mazor’s artificial intelligence. The robot’s success speaks for itself, and every major medical center that performs spine surgery would be wise to integrate the technology as quickly as possible.

Avi Jorisch is the author of Thou Shalt Innovate: How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World (Gefen Publishing). He is also a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and the Israel Project.