Yearly Archives: 2012

Danny Yamin, CEO of Microsoft Israel, was appointed Chairman of the Technion Council, replacing Yoram Alster after nine years.

The Council serves as the guiding and deciding authority with regard to Technion matters, between meetings of the Board of Governors (the highest authority of the Technion). Among its authorities: supervision of the enactment of regulations and appointments, awarding of honorary titles, supervision of codes and procedures designed to ensure student discipline, administrative, financial and asset supervision, etc.

The Chairman of the Council is selected by the Council from among its members who are representatives of the public, including former members who have ended a maximum tenure, and as recommended by the committee appointed to search for the Chairman of the Council.

Danny Yamin, who is a Technion graduate, has been serving as CEO of Microsoft Israel since 2004. In recent years he has also served in various administrative positions in the Technion, including as member of the Council and as Chairman of the Technion alumni’s ‘100 Club’.

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie:  “Danny Yamin’s vast management experience in a global organization is essential at a time when the Technion itself is treading deeper into the global arena. The establishment of the Technion and Cornell research campus in New York is one type of the challenges we will be contending with in the coming years, as is the advancement of the Technion in Israel. I am looking forward to working with Danny Yamin in his new role, and believe that his vast experience will in fact contribute greatly to the way we contend with the new local and  global challenges”.

Danny Yamin, CEO of Microsoft Israel and Chairman of the Technion Council: “I am pleased to expand my activity in the Technion, an institute which plays a major role in the State of Israel. The relationship between industry and academy is essential to both sides, and it is my hope that together with Technion President Peretz Lavie, the Technion’s management and its Council members, we will continue to realize the Technion’s great potential in Israel and worldwide”.

In the picture (right to left): Yoram Alster, Prof. Peretz Laviem Danny Yamin. Photo: Shlomo Shoham, Technion Spokesman

According to the directed deterrence hypothesis, defensive chemicals (secondary metabolites) in ripe fruits deter seed predators, but have no or little effect on seed dispersers. Indeed, there is some evidence that birds (seed dispersers) and mammals (seed predators) differ in their responses to defensive chemicals. However, this mechanism was only demonstrated based on differences at the class level, namely differences in vanilloid receptors found in mammals but not in birds.

“Here we present the findings of physiological and behavioral experiments demonstrating the use of defensive chemicals of the mustard oil bomb to encourage broad-range, class-independent (e.g. mammals vs. birds) seed dispersal in sweet mignonette fruits, in order to force a behavioral change at an ecological timescale, converting rodents from seed predators to seed dispersers”.  Says researcher Michal Samuni-Blank, who has researched the subject under the guidance of Profs. Zeev Arad of the Technion and Ido Izhaki of Haifa University. “This change is achieved through the unique compartmentalization of the mustard oil bomb, which causes activation of the system only upon seed and pulp co-consumption. This ‘motivates’ seed dispersal which has led to the first ever documentation of a rodent dispersing seeds via seed spitting”. The research findings demonstrate the power of fruits defensive chemicals to shift the animal-plant relationships from predation to mutualism, and provide support for the directed deterrence hypothesis at the intraspecific level, in addition to the interspecific level.

A spiny mouse from Israel is shown spitting seeds from the desert shrub Ochradenus baccatus into its paws and onto the ground as it eats the berries. If the seeds are chewed simultaneously with the berry pulp, toxic chemicals are released. So the plant has made a normally seed-eating mouse become a seed-spitter that spreads the plant’s seeds, helping it reproduce, says a new study from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, University of Haifa, University of Utah, and University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Photo Credit: Michal Samuni-Blank, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

The Technion awarded yesterday eight honorary doctorates and has launched today Profs. Shlomo Maital and Amnon Frenkel’s book on the Institute’s contribution to the State of Israel. Their research shows that the investment in the creation of human capital in the Technion produces an annual return of at least 76-197 percent, or, in absolute terms, a return of 35-60 billion dollars over the 50 years of a graduate class.

The total annual product of engineers who are Technion graduates in the high-tech, computer services, communications and research and development industries is estimated at a minimum of 21 billion dollars; the median income of Technion graduates is the salary group of NIS 20-25 thousand gross per month, which is significantly higher than both the average salary in the Israeli economy and the salary of employees with 16+ years of education. Moreover, the investment in the creation of human capital in the Technion, and specifically the training of engineering and science students, is entirely risk-free. These engineers also contribute to the creation of 78,000 high-tech, high-wage supporting jobs in the economy. The Technion graduates’ contribution is also expressed in the annual taxation income they generate for the government, estimated at about NIS 16.6 billion, or about 13% of the total income of the State from direct and indirect taxes.

Processing of Dun & Bradstreet data shows that from among the 125 leading business leaders in Israel, 41 (about one-third) are Technion graduates. 28 of them have established firms that are traded on the stock exchange, and 13 have established private companies.

Technion graduates lead the 11 largest Israeli companies in terms of export volumes, which employ about 80,000 workers and export about 19.5 billion dollars out of a total of 45 billion dollars.

121 Israel companies are traded on the NASDAQ, and represent 41% of a total of 298 foreign companies traded on NASDAQ. About half of these (59 companies) are led or were established by Technion graduates. The market value of these companies is estimated at about 28 billion dollars (as of November 2010).

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said in the festive ceremony held at the Technion’s historic building at Hadar HaCarmel (today the Madatech Museum, the Israel National Museum of Science) that “nowadays we would have thought of the founders of the Technion as brave entrepreneurs who established a start-up company” and that it is unlikely that when they laid its cornerstone one hundred years ago, they imagined that the day will come when it would become a leading science and technology university worldwide.

The recipients of the honorary doctorates yesterday are: Prof. Srulik Cederbaum, Prof. Francois Diederich, Gary Goldberg, Itzhak Nissan, Dr. Eli Opper, Joan Seidel, Prof. Gunter Spur and Moshe Yanai.

Above: Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie (on the right) with one of the recipients – Moshe Yanai, pioneer of the computerized storage systems revolution. Photo: Moshe Shoham, Technion Spokesman

The exhibition is part of the events of the annual meeting of the Board of Governors

“I’m a frustrated auto mechanic, which is why I turned to making jewelry”, says Prof. Shechtman. “I understood the materials from which I was making the jewelry better than my teacher, Audrey Crey, did, but she knew art better than I did. She taught me that esthetics is not an exact science.  Jewelry is created with love and feeling, slowly and patiently. This was in 1972, in Dayton, Ohio.  Zippi, my wife, was busy in the evenings studying for a Master’s Degree in Sociology, and I, a postdoctoral fellow, found myself studying stone polishing in the arts center during my free evening hours”.

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said that the meeting of the Board of Governors will be held with a focus on the Technion’s cornerstone centennial and “today we just might have laid the cornerstone to a Technion faculty of arts”.

“The artistic creation itself is integrated and encompassed within the knowledge Prof. Shechtman already possesses”, says Anat Har-Gil, curator of the exhibition.  “He works with metal as a routine since he is a metallurgist by trade. He understands metal well, and it is as clay in his hands, to shape and create his jewels as he wishes. The enamel is sealed, at times melting in his hands to transparency. The metal expands and contracts. Enamel, metal and stone merge in a melting pot of matter and spirit.  Scientific thinking has a severity in it.  It is that which he clings to. It is where he draws the form from.  And yet at the same time, the making of jewelry is an excuse for him to escape it, a reason to loosen his grip on the laboratory. The thought is now visual and it begs to raise awareness of latent by existing legitimacy.  Professional knowledge is translated into plastic values, and the true occurrence is the transformation of sketches and technical ability into a product of beauty.  And behind it all is the moment, the story. A jewel as an expression of emotion, in its own sake.  Or to mark an event, perhaps. The process is fed, fertilized, and observed by an ‘audience’ that is but one woman. His wife. Zippi. When this journey comes to an end, it is not yet completed. It is then that a ceremony begins, authentic, modest. The jewel is presented to her as a surprise. Since although she was present even before it was made, she was not party to its making”.

The exhibition presents 15 jewels and is open to the public throughout the days on which the meeting of the Board of Governors is held, June 10-14, 2012, 10:00-16:00, on the 4^th floor of the Ullman Teaching Center.

Above (right to left): the curator Anat Har-Gil, Technion President Professor Peretz Lavie, Prof. Dan Shechtman and his wife, Prof. Zippi Shechtman.  Photo: Yossi Shrem, Technion Spokesman