2014 - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology > Articles by: 2014 > Page 10

Technion 3DS – Three Crazy Days of Innovation

What is Technion 3DS?

Technion3DS is the Technion’s version of the international organization 3 Day Startup. As the name suggest, it is a practical workshop during which participants experience the early stages of a startup: from picking an idea and “selling” it to potential teammates, through to building a team and defining a product amd pitching to investors. The workshop uses a format developed by students at the University of Austin, Texas, and has since organized more than 80 programs on four continents. The aim of the workshop is to give students of all degrees and backgrounds the opportunity to experience what it means to start a company.

Technion 3DS in numbers

After an application period and a marketing effort to the Technion community, more than 100 people applied to take part. Unlike other workshops, 3DS is always free for participants. Also, the acceptance bar is much higher and includes filling out an application form and going through an interview in order to insures a very high quality pool of participants. This year, 35 people were accepted representing undergraduates as well as MScs and PhDs from 15(!) different faculties including architecture, industrial engineering and management, computer science, electrical engineering, physics, and MBA.

Throughout the program participants receive guidance and advice from top notch mentors and industry leaders. This year’s mentors included Raanan Gewirtzman, ex CEO of Broadlight (acquired by Boradcom) and Shai Wininger, the CTO and Co-Foundre of Fiverr.

It is important to note that the workshop is not a competition, rather a platform to create strong diverse passionate teams that can rise to the challenge of a startup.

The event is enabled by the support of leading industry companies and Technion3DS is honored to have them. Supporters include GKH Law, one of the biggest law firms in Israel (handled the Waze deal), Microsoft Ventures (Gold sponsor), who is backing the event for the second year in a row and whose CTO Neta Haiby-Weiss participated as an invaluable mentor throughout the event. Also, this year’s Platinum sponsor was Cisco who supports this event as part of its effort in promoting the Arabic community within the job market and specifically with entrepreneurship within the student entrepreneurial community.

The Outcome

Seven ventures were created during the event and two of them are automatically advancing to the next Biztec competition stage:

DonkeyTrails

A new search experience for the travelers who are looking for the challenging adventures and would like to combine them with volunteering activity to get closer to the local community. Sounds like a niche? Well it is, however it is big enough to provide a service to millions of travelers worldwide. The team believes that with the their appealing and intuitive visualization platform, in combination with better search options, they can be the market leader in this category.

Team: Gili Keselman (Architecture), Noa Vishlitzky (Psychology, Haifa Uni), Dori Medini (CS), Gilad Resisi(CS), Evan Abel (StartUP MBA), Lisa Palmberger (Industrial Engineer exchange), Shai Rozenberg (EE+Physics)

RideOShpere

A new platform for carpooling. The group leader, Raphi Stein, has already operated a ride sharing group on Facebook and realized that the platform is just not up to par with the task. Raphi has already had one go at developing a platform to support this task outside Facebook and in this workshop he brought his experience and insights to a new leading platforms.

Team: Raphi Stein (CS), Tamar Apper (Architecture), Nathan Nacamuli (Civil Engineering), Elad Joseph (Material Engineering), and Gil Maman (an external developer)

Praxeum

Probably the geekiest name of all of the teams, named after the Jedi Academy in Starwars. The team aims to streamline technology and education methodologies to bring the 21st century into the classroom by allowing teacher to communicate with students and gain meaningful insights into the learning progress.

Team: Amit Raveh (EE), Inna Grijnevitch (EE), Ronen Abravanel (Physics), Ilan Mann (StartUP MBA), Tomer Batash (MD)

Fitter

Ever thought that the online clothing shopping experience is lagging by several years behind current technology? That is what the Fitter team thought. The team wants to give the online shpping consumer the option to see how a garment would look if they were able to try it on. With computer graphics, computer vision, and creative experts on the team, they are set out to make an impact and made it to Biztec’s next stage.

Team: Matan Sela (EE), Aaron Wetzler (EE), Daniel Mankowitz (CS), Gabi Vitale (Architecture), Miron Epshtein (Industrial Design), Thuong Tran (MBA)

NQ

Familiar with these small theme parks such as Disney Land where you stand in line for three or more hours out of a whole day’s activity? The NQ team has had enough and is set to bring a solution that will release visitors from this annoying experience and allow them to better spend their time while virtually waiting for their spot instead.

Team: Itay Rosenberg (Math+CS), Efi Shtain (Math+CS), Jona Pletzer (MBA exchange), Leeoz Avni (Mechanical Engineering), Yuval Borenstein (EE)

Jobee

Many students are familiar with the situation where all of a sudden they have some free time during which they’d be happy to earn some cash, but they lack a method of finding that job opportunity. Jobee is set to solve this by creating a the first marketplace for local in person microjobs, versus providing online virtual employment that other companies offer.

Team: Omar Massarwa (CS), Hasan Abo-Shaly (CS), Rotem Gabay (EE)

HearWize

Using a hearing aid? If you are not, you probably did not hear about the problem of tuning and servicing these devices. Currently, this is done in a special clinic in a controlled environment, very different from the everyday environment where you will actually be using the device. HearWize wants to change that and transform the hearing aids service market and will work on this further on Biztec’s next phase to which they have been passed.

Team: Oren Dvoskin (MBA), Eli Meirom (EE), David Bensadoun (MBA), Roman Kaplan (CS), Deborah Benguira (Biology)

Next event: January 2015!

To view more picture of the event press here

According to “Domus” – the Prestigious Magazine for Architecture, Art & Design:

Technion’s Faculty of Architecture & Town Planning Among the Top 50 in Europe

Dean of the Technion Faculty of Architecture & Town Planning, Prof. Yehuda Kalay.

The Faculty of Architecture & Town Planning at the Technion has been listed among the top 50 best schools in Europe, according to the prestigious “Domus” magazine for architecture art and design; “Domus” was founded in 1928 in Italy and read in over one-hundred countries.

“People ask us ‘So who is number one?’ Albeit in surveys of this kind it is customary to see rankings in this manner but since this is a very difficult question to answer, it may not be possible to provide a quantitative answer,” as written in the magazine, where instead of ranking the 50 selected Faculties, it states which are in the top 50 best schools. “This is because over the past few years we have seen that collaborative networks among institutes of higher learning have evolved into something more intricate given the rise of neo-liberalism, unprecedented technological advances and economic globalization. These factors have expanded the networks of higher education beyond the physical and virtual limits of the schools themselves. These collaborative networks are vital because they equip students with the skills needed to communicate with other people, with technology, and with broad technological infrastructures that are non-hierarchical. These conditions have become even more important in light of the global financial crisis.”

“The new graduate cannot depend on a guaranteed career ladder; he/she must operate ‘within the current economic system,’ characterized by its casual labor contracts, its just-in-time production and more. Designers, architects, and other actors in the creative fields must be multidisciplinary, open to collaboration, and motivated to find and initiate these often amorphous work arrangements. Many designers work as freelancers or at several part-time jobs, while some find classic, stable jobs; still, even those who follow a stable career path have probably gained access via their connection to a networked individual or institution.”

“The new economic condition therefore demands a new educational condition. If schools can no longer train students for traditional careers, neither can they function like traditional schools. The schools of the future are ranked first and foremost through their collaborative networks, and only after by traditional criteria of strong professors and exceptional student work. Schools that excel in these criteria function as laboratories that come into contact with businesses, creative studios, cultural institutions, research groups and other schools.”

On the Technion, the magazine wrote the following:

“Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is Israel’s oldest architectural school. Many of the most prominent Israeli architects attended the school and teach there today. Technion students learn to engage with the urban structure of the site and the broader context of the city. The program emphasizes building and spatial layout and design. The focus and strength of the program is in its physical engagement between architecture and the city.”

“They have recently updated the school with new labs, extensive digital technologies, and plan further renovations. The school has guided the formation of robust personal and professional networks. The strength of the school is the students, as there is a rigorous admissions process. Students are helpful to each other and not hyper-competitive; they describe the Technion as a positive atmosphere for studying, with good personal and professional relationships with teachers. Visiting professors bring in further knowledge and networks from Israel and abroad. These encounters provide opportunities to make connections for collaboration and future employment.”

“The city of Haifa has many engineering schools, forming a strong technical knowledge base. Students call the city a good place to study and focus. Haifa is on the coast, providing a lively atmosphere in the summer. The facilities are good, open 24 hours, and include small studios and workshops for wood, metal and plastic. There is also a digital design lab with two lasercutters, two 3D printers, and a CNC machine. A new visualization lab houses a 9 meter screen, with three synchronized projectors that provide immersive, 3-dimentional visualization. The library is the best in Israel.”

“The school has a wealth of research labs, including the Climate and Energy Lab, the Visualization Center, the Center for Architectural Research and Development, the Architectural Heritage Research Center, the PeKA Gallery of Experimental Art and Architecture, and the Center for Urban and Regional Studies. This enhances the studies and capabilities for all students. The website for the school could be better; an improvement would help students showcase their work and present the school to an international audience.”

Prominent Alumni:

Zvi Hecker,
Yaacov Rechter,
Dan Eitan,
Avraham Wachman,
Michael Burt,
Moshe Zur.

Prof. Eliezer Shalev, Dean of the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine:

“Future Medicine will focus on prevention, prediction, and early diagnosis – and technology will have an important role to play in this transition”

Prof. Shalev made these remarks at the “Mobile-Social-Cloud Meets Medicine” conference held by the Faculty of Medicine and Technion Computer Engineering Center (TCE) – where special sensors for smart phones were presented, capable of monitoring various diseases using cloud computing and big data

“Future medicine will focus on prevention, prediction and early diagnosis – and technology will have an important role to play in this transition,” said Prof. Shalev, Dean of the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Mobile-Social-Cloud Meets Medicine conference. The event was held by the Technion’s Faculty of Medicine and Technion Computer Engineering Center (TCE) in conjunction with Cornell University, within the framework of the T2MED Program launched by the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, which aims to encourage research and development of medical technology.

The event, organized by Prof. Uri Rosenschein from the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Shie Mannor from the Technion’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Prof. Deborah Estrin from the Faculty of Computer Science at Cornell University, was attended by academics from the Technion and Cornell University, representatives of startup companies who presented interesting new developments in the field and representatives of venture capital funds.

“Today’s technology makes it possible to do many things that were never before possible. The smart phone is a device that can also detect location and is a movement, velocity and acceleration indicator. Its camera and voice recording capabilities makes these popular devices ideal medical sensors. We will also be able to predict and detect high risk populations according to genetic traits using data mining, medical records and information from pharmacies, big data management, sophisticated algorithms and by using personalized medicine through sequencing technology and bio-informative tools” summarized Prof. Shalev.

In the first part of the conference, systems using smart phones were featured as sensors of different diseases. Prof. Shie Mannor from the Technion’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering spoke about the way by which raw data picked up by smart phones can be turned into accessible and comprehensible information. The automatic translation of the machine’s language will allow us to understand human behavior from the data in a way that would also permit a search, aiming to improve diagnosis and treatment of many medical conditions.

Dr. Mor Peleg, from the Department of Information Systems at the University of Haifa, described her role in the large European Project MOBILGUIDE, which provides discharge patients a belt that can measure different variables in their body, particularly those that influence heart activity, and transmit it via smart phone to a service center enabling doctors to make immediate diagnosis and decisions.

Dr. Elad Yom Tov, from the Microsoft Research Lab in Israel presented a study based on queries sent to the company’s search engine on medical issues. The researchers examined the prevalence of particular queries about medical conditions and medications, and the links between them. It turned out that when people asked about a particular illness, it was very likely (88.4%) that they will also perform queries on medications related to that disease.

Offer Fabian, co-CEO and co-founder of Medical Research, described a big data project conducted by his company together with Maccabi Healthcare Services, where the organization attempted to check variables in blood tests of people who were diagnosed with colorectal cancer. It turned out that before cancer was detected, the scan revealed a decrease in hemoglobin, even if it remains within the normal threshold. Although this test scan, which is not particularly pleasant, is highly recommended to people above the age of 50, the response level is not high. An electronic scan – one which is in addition to the numerous blood tests performed here in Israel for different reasons, may help identify people at risk and contact them with a request to take a scan in order to detect the disease at an early stage when it is still possible to operate with reasonable recovery prognosis.

The winners of the Hacking Health 3Day Startup competition, recently held by the Technion’s Faculty of Medicine, presented their project. Oren Fuerst from Dario LabStyle, a company that ordinarily develops an all-in-one device containing everything needed by diabetes patients (such as blood glucose meter, test strips and piercers, whereby the glucose meter continually reports to the cloud), demonstrated a project that is geared towards children with diabetes – the Gluco-Gotchi game. This is a type of Tamagoochi for diabetics, helping children understand the importance of meal times, time for insulin injections and more. Children take care of their “Gluco-Gotchi and as its condition improves, so does theirs. According to Fuerst, this is an attractive application, where children are able to identify with a virtual character. “The bottom line is that we are improving the cooperation of these young patients, by teaching and encouraging good habits to minimize complications. In the future we will attempt to do the same for other illnesses such as hypertension and obesity,” he said.

Omer Shor, the founder of MEDISAFE, introduced a new application that develops videos providing an explanation of a medication to replace the printed instructions attached to all medications. Every clip is tailored to a specific group of patients with similar characteristics, and each patient receives only the relevant video relating to the drug he/she is taking, along with reminders via relevant means including mobile devices. According to Shor, the system helps prevent double doses of medication from accidentally occurring, which is one of the most significant factors leading to death.

Arthur Wechsler, CEO of Healarium, presented an application that allows patients to access his/her medical file documents (applicable primarily in the U.S., where a decentralized health system is in effect), and grant doctors of their choosing access to the la tests, x-rays, medical summaries, etc. Additionally, the company created a modeling intervention system so that doctors could intervene as necessary.

Ziv Yekutiel, CEO of the MON4T, demonstrated a self-testing brain functioning system. The system is designed to improve the health and safety of patients suffering from neurological disorders. “After neurological surgery it is important to monitor discharged patients regularly, but currently, only random checks are done and at extended intervals, and there is no one to respond to a sudden worsening of a patient’s condition.”

To view lectures and slides from the event click: http://www.youtube.com/course?list=EC290778372A24464D

President Shimon Peres at his Visit to the Technion:

“Today our most urgent task is to make peace with the Palestinians.”

“I prefer an imperfect peace over a lack of a perfect peace; luckily the Technion was founded 24 years before the establishment of the State of Israel – and laid the foundations for the future of the nation.”

The President of Israel, Shimon Peres, said at his visit to the Technion that the most urgent task today is to make peace with the Palestinians. “This would be the greatest revolution made since the founding of the state. I prefer an imperfect peace over a lack of perfect peace,” said Peres at a special panel discussion with Technion’s three Nobel Laureates, led by Dr. Yossi Vardi.

The President’s visit began with a presentation of the Formula racing car, which was built at the Technion. The car, created by a group of students from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering under the guidance of Professor Reuven Katz, placed the team in 19th place out of 57 in the Formula Student Competition – and first place among teams participating in the competition for the first time. Students Ahmed Omari and Doris Fitilon, who presented the car to the President, explained that the team is a mixture of Jewish and Arab students. “So that’s basically a car for two nations,” the President replied with a smile.

Technion President, Professor Perez Lavie, presented President Peres with a plaque which had a picture from his first visit to the Technion alongside a picture of Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, of one of his first visits to the Technion. “There is no doubt that the vision of your teacher and predecessor Ben Gurion, to establish a global scientific center in Israel, has really taken shape,” said Professor Peretz Lavie. “The sense of mission which led to the establishment of the Technion is still with us today. Thank you for the opportunity you have given us to show you some of our scientific and engineering achievements.”

A series of breakthrough research originating from the Technion was presented to the President: landing drones on unmanned vessels (Professor Ehud Rivlin from the Faculty of Computer Science), a formation of three miniature satellites (Professor Pini Gurfil from the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering), a novel method for treating tumors (Professor Emeritus Yoram Palti), advanced membranes for water treatment (Professor Raphael Semiat from the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Professor Moris Eisen from the Faculty of Chemistry), and prediction of future events using artificial intelligence (Professor Shaul Markovitch from the Faculty of Computer Science and Dr. Kira Radinsky).

Later, President Peres met with the university’s future generation of scientists. Sarah Katzir, the Head of the Unit for the Advancement of Students at the Office of the Dean of Students, introduced him to the young men and women enrolled in the varied Technion programs – “Nitzanei HaTechnion” (initiated by the President himself – an excellence program for young students from the Druze community conducted under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and “Atidim” organization), “Future Scientists and Inventors” (also initiated by President Peres, this is a youth program providing talented students with pre-university education and laboratory experience), the Program for Ultra-Orthodox Students (this year 80 ultra-orthodox students are studying at Technion’s “Mechina” – pre-university program), and “Atidim in Industry” (a program for discharged soldiers from the country’s periphery – they are provided with pre-university studies supported by the “Atidim” organization).

Dana Maklada, a sixteen year old from Daliyat al-Carmel, told the President that she and her friends come to the Technion once a week for an enrichment program.

Matar Rozen, a fifteen year old from Moshav Abirim in the Galilee, said that she very much enjoys coming to the Technion. “If wanting to learn and invest is geeky then I have no problem being a nerd,” she said to a cheering crowd.

Chen Asher, aged twenty-six from Acre, said that he came to the Technion thanks to the “Atidim in Industry” program.

Yehuda Morgenstein, from the “Halamish” (Ultra-orthodox learn practical professions) program, spoke about the initial shock of transitioning from the Yeshiva world to the Technion. “We sat and studied between 12-15 hours a day to catch up on the material,” he said. “We were different. When we would go to the cafeteria they told us that the Kashrut inspectors had already visited today,” he added as sounds of laughter were heard from the audience.

At the panel discussion with three of Technion’s Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, Professors Avram Hershko, Aaron Ciechanover and Dan Shechtman, the President told them about how David Ben Gurion once asked him to set up a world champion soccer team. “I didn’t succeed in this task, but the Technion may very well become the Technionite world champions,” he said. “Ben Gurion used to dream big dreams and would let me dream as well,” he added. “I am proud of the Technion. Science is vital to our existence. The world is barely functioning and whole countries around us are falling apart. The future is in innovation, but if we don’t find a way to control fanatics or teach them to contain themselves – this world will be a dangerous place. The State of Israel must build ties with large global companies as well, not only with other countries. We are a small country and we are left with no choice but to have a great vision.”

Professor Aaron Ciechanover spoke about the personalized medicine revolution and said that it will change the face of medicine in the coming years. “We are currently setting up in Israel, medical institutes for personalized medicine,” he emphasized. “There is a need to improve science and technology education, but we mustn’t forget about the humanities.”

Professor Dan Shechtman said that the idea to eliminate the psychometric exam was a good one and recommended changing the name of the Ministry of Education to “The Ministry for Future Infrastructure.” He added that, “Universities need more young men and women to teach science and engineering.”

Professor Avram Hershko talked about the importance of basic research. “The more we understand about the workings of the human body, the better the drugs we’ll be able to develop,” he said.

“I saw at my visit to the Technion fascinating research and an impressive representation of Israel’s young people,” summarized President Shimon Peres on his visit to the Technion.

View the album of pictures from the festive visit.