Yearly Archives: 2019

Winners of the Yanai Prize for Excellence in Academic Education – Role Models at Technion

Eight faculty members were awarded the Yanai Prize for Excellence in Academic Education and the Yanai Teaching Excellence Award.  The prize for Outstanding Faculty was awarded to the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering

Moshe Yanai (l) & Prof. Peretz Lavie (r)

The Yanai Prize for Excellence in Academic Education was awarded this week for the eighth consecutive time to five outstanding faculty members from different Technion faculties:  Assoc. Prof. Daniel Orenstein of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Assoc. Prof. Adi Salzberg of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Assoc. Prof. Keren Censor-Hillel of the Faculty of Computer Science, Assoc. Prof. Daniella Raveh of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, and Assoc. Prof. Avi Schroeder of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering. The Yanai Excellence in Teaching Prize was awarded to Assoc. Prof. Roee Amit of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Asst. Prof. Yael Yaniv of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, and Asst. Prof. Roi Reichart of the Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management. The prize for Outstanding Faculty was awarded to the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

The Yanai Prize for Excellence in Academic Education was designed to improve the level of teaching and the attitude towards students at Technion. It is awarded, “as a token of gratitude and appreciation to the faculty members, exemplifying their continued contribution to teaching and for their efforts to strengthen the students’ involvement and sense of belonging to Technion.” The ceremony was held in the presence of the donors Moshe and Rachel Yanai, President Prof. Peretz Lavie, and Chairman of the Technion Council Gideon Frank.

Moshe Yanai, a Technion graduate in Electrical Engineering, who donated $12 million to establish the prize together with his wife Rachel, said at the event: “I studied at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, which is receiving the prize today, and in my opinion, this is a tremendous revolution. When I was here in the early 70s, the attitude towards students was not the same as it is today. In those days we wanted the faculty to talk to us, to understand us, and it didn’t happen. In recent years, along with Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie, we have led a revolution in changing the relationship between faculty and students. And to you, the prizewinners, I say that the main reward is not prestige and money but your opportunity to change and influence people’s lives.”

“Soon I will end my tenure as president of the Technion,” Prof. Peretz Lavie said at the ceremony. “When I am asked about the important milestones during this period, I note the meeting with Moshe Yanai as one of them. We met for the first time nine and a half years ago, and that meeting led to the foundation of the Yanai Prize and a dramatic improvement in the level of teaching and the regard for students at Technion. The Yanai Prize, and the efforts of the management and faculty members, have catapulted the Technion from last place in the national student survey to first place regarding student satisfaction. We have kept first place for three years now. This is a real revolution that the Yanai Prize winners – who see teaching as a mission and not as a duty – contribute greatly to.”

Yanai Prize winners for 2018 together with Moshe and Rachel Yanai, Prof. Peretz and Dr. Lina Lavie, Chair of the Prize Committee Prof. Hagit Attiya, and Chair of the Students Assocation Amir David Nissan-Cohen

Prize Committee Chair Prof. Hagit Attiya, said that “the prize winners are role models on campus. Each one of them contributed deeply to the training of hundreds of students. When we read what their students wrote about them, they all noted the change that these lecturers made to their lives.”

Prof. Avi Schroeder, faculty member of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering, spoke on behalf of the laureates. He said that, “the Technion administration posed a tremendous challenge to the faculty when it decided that the Technion must lead not only in groundbreaking studies, but in every field in Israeli society, and especially in the quality of training and teaching of the next generation of engineers and engineers. Just as medicine needs to be precise and personalized to every person, so does teaching.

“The winners, together with many of Technion’s outstanding faculty members, have made it their goal to make the latest knowledge available to all students using the most innovative academic methods. Our role as a nation is to encourage the next generation to ask questions, to challenge, to doubt, to aspire, and to establish a new level of knowledge and understanding.  This is the goal of education and learning – to create a new generation of engineers who will dare, strive more and succeed.”

The prize for Outstanding Faculty was awarded to the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

The prize committee wrote that this is the largest faculty at Technion and the largest engineering in Israel, with more than 2,200 students. Over the course of its 80 years of existence, the faculty has trained some 15,000 graduates who have “led the transformation of Israel from an agricultural country to a high-tech nation, and who today comprise the backbone of the high-tech and defense industries. The teaching structure of the faculty is designed to fulfill two goals of its educational vision: training engineers for a long-term career in an evolving industry, and preparing the next generation of academic researchers.”

Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering Prof. Nahum Shimkin said that, “graduate of the faculty, Moshe Yanai, can look on with satisfaction at the study environment today, and today’s students can happily look forward to the professional challenges of tomorrow. The faculty educates a huge number of students and there is a high student-faculty ratio. This reality is challenging, but we manage to maintain the quality of teaching through a joint effort of faculty and staff. We will continue to advance teaching methods and strive to maintain our position in the top echelons of research and teaching.”

About Moshe Yanai:

Moshe Yanai, from Kfar Yechezkel and a graduate of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion (1975), has led several revolutions in the past 4 decades in the world of information storage. After joining EMC in 1987, he led a move that transformed the company from a mid-sized manufacturer of computer memory expansion into the world’s leading information storage company for large enterprises. He repeated his success when he returned to Israel, with the foundation in 2003 of XIV, which was acquired in 2007 by IBM. Yanai’s creativity led to the registration of 40 patents in his name. He has contributed greatly to the advancement of technological research at the Technion and has helped numerous Israeli start-up companies. Yanai won the prestigious status of EMC Fellow and IBM Fellow.

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This month’s issue includes: Technion student hackathon; the Technion sponsored “Destination: Deep Space”; cellular trickery; world-class awards and much more!

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Innovative Technology for Monitoring Metabolic Processes in Malignant Tumors at the Sub-Cellular Level

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

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.  

Prof. Tomer Shlomi

Now, in a study published in Nature Communications, Prof. Tomer Shlomi of the Technion’s 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 group 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,” Prof. Shlomi said. “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.

The laboratory of Prof. Tomer Shlomi in the Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science and Faculty of Biology studies the processes of metabolism in cancer through a combination of experimental and computational methods. His lab aims to understand how cancer cells adapt their metabolism and how this can be exploited for diagnostic and therapeutic means. The lab brings together researchers from experimental biology, analytical chemistry, and computer science. Prof. Shlomi is a co-founder of Metabomed Ltd., which develops anti-cancer drugs targeting metabolic enzymes.

To the article in Nature Communications, “Spatial-fluxomics provides a subcellular-compartmentalized view of reductive glutamine metabolism in cancer cells”  

Innovative Technion Technology Will Advance Research of Energy Production by Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration

Chemistry researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have discovered that processes related to producing energy by photosynthesis and cell respiration are affected by the composition of the cell membrane.

Assistant Professor Nadav Amdursky

Assistant Professor Nadav Amdursky of the Technion’s Schulich Faculty of Chemistry has developed a technology for the study of membrane proton transitions related to the production of energy in cellular respiration and photosynthesis processes. The study, conducted with collaborators from the UK and Finland, was recently published in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences (PNAS) with the title “Exploring fast proton transfer events associated with lateral proton diffusion on the surface of membranes.”

Energy is an essential resource in the animal world, without which there can be no life. All animals and plants use the same type of energy, the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecule – a nucleotide known in biochemistry as the “molecular currency”, able to store and transport chemical energy within cells. The synthesis of ATP takes place during the photosynthesis or the cellular respiration processes, where the energy of sunlight or chemical energy of nutrients, respectively, is used for the production of ATP. The molecular mechanism for ATP synthesis is based on a membrane protein. The protein’s activity can be linked to the action of a nanometer motor powered by protons. When the engine gets fuel – protons – the protein parts move.

The general action of this protein engine is to create ATP. But how do the protons reach the protein? This question has not yet been fully resolved, because the scope of the proton-movement process in time and space is tiny; a few nanometers every few nanoseconds.

The technology developed by Assistant Prof. Amdursky to study this tiny and fast process occurs on the surface of membranes, and is based on an original molecular probe that attaches to the membrane and releases a proton whenever light (photons) hits it. In other words, it is a technology that can produce the fuel to create the energy “currency” on the surface of membranes with the help of light.

The molecular probe developed at the Technion is based on a very intriguing chemical molecule called photo-acid. When this molecule absorbs light – and only then – its chemical properties change, and it becomes a strong acid. The main characteristic of any strong acid is the speedy release of a proton in an aqueous environment, and this is what happens here as well.

“We discovered that the movement of protons on the surface of the membrane and the interaction between protons on the membrane and protons in the solution are closely dependent on the type of lipids that make up the membrane,” said Prof. Amdursky. “This research is a key step in understanding one of the most important processes in nature.”

Link to the article: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/7/2443

The research was supported by the Chaya Career Advancing Chair, the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, and the Grand Technion Energy Program.

A computer simulation (molecular dynamics) showing the location of the molecular probe on the surface of different membranes with different lipid compositions

Technion hosts t-hack – Israel’s largest student hackathon

The PneuMonitor team developed a system for monitoring life-threatening situations on the battlefield and won first place and a NIS 50,000 prize

PneuMonitor is the team that won the NIS 50,000 first-place prize at t-hack – the largest student hackathon in Israel, which was held at Technion. The four group members: Noy Mark, Anat Lyubin Haimov, Rafi Gerasi, and Eran Sasha developed an innovative technology that detects a dangerous medical condition known as pneumothorax also known as a collapsed lung.

t-hack – Israel’s largest student hackathon

More than 600 students throughout the country and across 150 teams participated in t-hack, winning cumulative prizes totaling NIS 100,000. In the final stage of the hackathon, 10 groups with outstanding ideas presented their projects to a panel of judges which included, Prof. Adam Shwartz,  Technion’s Senior Executive Vice President ; Dr. Irit Idan, Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems ; Dov Moran, a serial entrepreneur, investor and inventor of the disk-on-key; and Eden Shochat, a venture capitalist, equal partner at Aleph VC, and  co-founder of Face.com, a world leader in facial recognition for social networks.

T-hack, initiated by Technion’s Student Union (ASAT) and t-hub, Technion’s new Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, focuses on three main areas:  autonomous systems, smart cities and accident and emergency medicine. Leading entrepreneurs from Israel’s industry and participating companies served as mentors for the students. The event was funded by Technion and supported by Intel, Facebook, Noble Energy and other technology companies.

At the opening of the event, Prof. Adam Shwartz, said that:

“The event was born out of the understanding that entrepreneurship is a worldview and a way of life, and   Technion must provide entrepreneurial education to its students.” Prof. Schwartz is also the Chairman of t-hub, Technion’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, which recently won a NIS 10 million grant from the Council for Higher Education. He added, “We are committed to providing all interested students with the tools to solve engineering, technological and scientific challenges during their professional careers, whether they work in academia, start-up companies, industrial, civilian or security companies, or in any other companies that benefit the public.”

Amir David Nissan Cohen, Chairman of Technion Student Union (ASAT)

Amir David Nissan Cohen, ASAT’s Chairman told the participants that, “In just 30 hours you will be required to solve difficult problems in a creative way in one of three fields: smart cities, autonomous transportation, and emergency medicine. We expect interesting solutions to interesting problems, and you will be judged by your measure of originality, creativity, business applicability, and presentation skills.”

The keynote speech at the event, “How to Kill Innovation” was given by Technion graduate Mooly (Shmuel) Eden, former President of Intel Israel and Senior VP at Intel Corporation. In 2012, Eden was chosen by Forbes magazine as one of the ten most brilliant minds in the field of technology. In his lecture, Eden said that, “The technological revolution does not pertain only to the technological world, but permeates to all areas of life; the Arab Spring, the rise of USA President Donald Trump, the success and crash of ISIS- all of these were heavily influenced by technology – and in this crazy world, our lives as engineers are less comfortable and pleasant.  Anyone who does not run fast enough ceases to be relevant. We must be innovative, that is to try the unknown, to challenge the status quo. The fear of change, success, lack of competition and the saying ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ are things that kill innovation.”

1st Place Winners: PneuMonitor team members with the judges in the competition

The students in the winning team, PneuMonitor, all serve in IDF’s Medical Corps. Noy Mark and Anat Lyubin Haimov are graduates of the Faculty of Bio-Medical Engineering at Technion, and Mark is currently studying towards her MSc under the supervision of the faculty’s Prof. Emeritus Dan Adam. Eran Sasha is a student in the Mathematics Department at Tel Aviv University and Rafi Gerasi is an electrical engineer from the University of Ariel and holds an MHA in Health Systems Management from Ben Gurion University.

The team developed an innovative technology for the rapid identification of pneumothorax – collapsed lung. This is the second leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield. In this medical condition, air penetrates into the flora – the two-layer membrane surrounding the lung – and interferes with the normal expansion of the lung and the transfer of oxygen to the blood. This can lead to tracheal obstruction and heart problems, and early diagnosis may save lives.

The problem is that pneumothorax does not express external symptoms, especially in its early stages, and therefore it is difficult to identify via manual examination. The device developed by the team is based on an automatic analysis of the patient’s breathing sounds, filtering out background noises. The sounds are obtained from a simple stethoscope and are analyzed by an algorithm developed by the team. The result: a small, easy and automatic tool for the immediate objective detection of pneumothorax. This means that the device can be used by paramedics on the field.

2nd Place Winners: ICPupil with the judges in the competition

In second place, with a NIS 15,000 prize, was ICPupil. The team developed a system for non-invasive monitoring of a patient’s neurological status and warning of dangerous situations. Using image processing and algorithmics, the team members produce a neurological score that accompanies the patient prior to and during a stay in the emergency room, and even at home. The score provides the caregiver critical information about the patient’s condition in real time.

All of the team members are Technion students. Roy Francis is a doctoral student at the Department of Computer Science, Yehuda Wexler and Yonatan Prat are completing a dual degree in medicine and biomedical engineering, and Shani Glatstein and Michal Landesberg completed a double bachelor’s degree and are MD PhD students at Technion.

3rd Place winners: Cyclmate team members, with the judges in the competition

In third place, with a NIS 10,000 prize was Cyclmate. The team developed a smart electronic system designed to prevent children and youth from riding a bicycle without a helmet. The team members are Christian Shakur, a student at Technion’s e Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering ; Nir Altman, Co-Founder of Cyberty AB, a  business cyber security company; Tal Shahnovsky , a student at Haifa University’s Department of Computer Science ‘Etgar’ Program and a researcher at the university’s Robotics and Big Data Laboratory (RBD); Benny Rein is a graduate of Tel Aviv University’s School of Electrical Engineering  ; and George Kasayev, is a graduate student at the University of Haifa’s Department of Computer Science.

Technion Professor Receives STEM Grant from Johnson & Johnson

In a ceremony held in New Jersey last week, Professor Naama Geva-Zatorsky, of the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, has been named a winner of the Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM²D (WiSTEM²D) Scholars Award. She is the first researcher from outside the United States to be selected for the honor, and one of just six winners selected this year from more than 400 qualified applications.

Professor Naama Geva-Zatorsky

Prof. Geva-Zatorsky was selected for her research about how the billions of bacteria teeming in our intestines interact with the body’s immune system. These bacteria were previously invisible to researchers, but Geva-Zatorsky has developed a tool that labels them with fluorescent markers. Now that she can see them in action in their natural environment, she’s one step closer to discovering the signaling process between the bacteria and immune systems.

“I am interested in understanding the mechanisms,” said Prof. Geva-Zatorsky. “How do the microbes regulate certain immune cells, and which molecules are important for this interaction?” Once she and her team discover the answers, they may be able to develop more precise treatments for chronic conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, targeted to people’s individual gut bacteria.

Launched in June 2017, the Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM²D Scholars Award aims to fuel development of female STEM²D leaders and feed the STEM²D talent pipeline by awarding and sponsoring women at critical points in their careers, in each of the STEM²D disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Manufacturing, and Design.

“Through this Award and other programs, Johnson & Johnson is hoping to increase the participation of women in STEM²D fields worldwide,” said Cat Oyler, Vice President, Global Public Health, Tuberculosis, Johnson & Johnson and WiSTEM²D University Sponsor. “We want to nourish the development of women leaders building a larger pool of highly-trained, female researchers so that they can lead STEM²D breakthroughs in the future.”

Ruach Tova: Israel’s First Interprofessional Student-run Community Health Center

The Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion has established a social-community health center, the first of its kind in Israel, to be run by students

Professor Ruti Margalit

The Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology has established “Ruach Tova” (Hebrew for “Good Spirit”), an interprofessional student-run community health center in the City of Haifa. The center offers services free of charge, catering to a local urban population that has difficulty obtaining medical treatment, whether due to lack of means or special status, including at-risk, homeless, and LGBTQ youth.

The first educational-social initiative of its kind in Israel, the center connects medical students at the Technion to the urban fabric and to the population it will serve in the future.

The center is operated by medical students from the Technion under the close supervision of volunteer doctors and in collaboration with various health professions: nurses, social workers, and various caregivers. Student participation is anchored in the curriculum of the Faculty of Medicine and other faculties involved.

With a wonderful team, the center is headed by Faculty of Medicine Professor Ruti Margalit, a physician with extensive experience in community medicine who knows the model and has led influential academic and medical initiatives in the United States, India and Africa.

“Health is a basic human right. We  are working to make it accessible to all,” said Prof. Margalit. “When a person is provided with basic needs – food, shelter, health, personal security – she is able to look beyond, be productive, and contribute to the surrounding community and its development. Participating students experience empowerment, enrichment, and first hand leadership opportunity as they take part in the development and management of this significant project.”

“Such centers have been operating for the past decade in the United States, Canada, and Europe but in Israel this is the first center of its kind, and we hope to give it a unique Israeli character and help establish similar centers around the country,” she continued. “Hundreds of doctors, nurses, social workers, artists, and of course medical and other students joined the project.”

The “Ruach Tova” Center is located in the Hadar neighborhood of Haifa, a city known for its openness and co-existence. The center operates in coordination with the City of Haifa, HMOs, local health and welfare offices, hospitals, non-profit organizations, and other entities operating in the field.

As part of the interprofessional work that characterizes it, Ruach Tova will be redesigned and renovated by students from the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, in the framework of a community involvement course led by architects Dafna Fisher-Gewirtzman, Dan Price and Michal Bleicher.

‘The Technion is the best ticket to realize your dreams’

Some 200 outstanding students from the Ethiopian community visited the Technion as part of the “Excellence” event

Some 200 high school students from the Ethiopian community visited the Technion last week as part of the “Excellence” event. The happening was designed to expose students to the possibilities of being accepted to and studying at the Technion, and the new horizons this can open for them. The event was held in cooperation with the Leaders of the Future Association and the Ethiopian National Project in Israel (ENP).

Jonathan David, founder of Leaders of the Future, which works to realize the full potential of youth from the Ethiopian community in Israel, said: “I am here because I want to invest in you and promote students from the Ethiopian community, and I expect you to come to the Technion and invest in your studies.”

Roni Akale, director-general of ENP, presented the achievements of the Ethiopian community in Israel, which in “30 years has minimized a 2,500-year gap.” He told the students that, “for some of you, this day will be remembered as the day that changed your life, because it is the day that connected dreams and their realization. It doesn’t matter if you want to be entrepreneurs or cancer researchers or anything else – the statistics prove that the Technion is the best ticket to realize your dreams. We cannot progress through complaints. We must believe in ourselves, work hard and remember that the only barrier to success is within us. I hope that in the future you will represent not only the Ethiopian community but rather the entire State of Israel.”

Prof. Noam Soker, head of the Technion Mechina, or preparatory academy, told the students that, “the Technion deals with the training of scientists and engineers, but no less important, in promoting research that expands human knowledge and benefits people. Most of the research is conducted by graduate students, but in the undergraduate degree students also have the opportunity to engage in research.”

He added that youth who do not have a matriculation certificate, or whose certificate is insufficient, can still pass a preparatory program at the Technion that prepares them for studies at the institution.  “The Technion has always promoted the integration of all sectors of Israeli society, especially in the context of higher education in science and technology. We are happy to have the opportunity to host Ethiopian youth in the hope that many of you will come to the Technion.”

Sarah Nagosa, who is completing her Ph.D. at the Ruth & Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, talked about her path to the Technion and her years on campus. Nagosa immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel at the age of three and grew up in Kiryat Malachi. She heard about the Technion for the first time at the age of 17, when American donors Joel and Joan Kushan visited a program she was involved with – the Youth Council Kiryat Malachi. After completing her bachelor’s degree in biology at the Technion, she worked for two years with Pluristem, which develops stem-cell based treatments. From there, she returned to the Technion for a master’s degree, which turned into a fast track for a doctorate under the direction of Prof. Ruby Shalom Feuerstein.

She told the students about the difficulties, failing her organic chemistry test, and the encouragement she received from her family and from the Technion itself. “The Technion is tough academically but gentle in every other way. They never let me compromise academically, but they always helped me in every other aspect, and here I learned that if you work hard, you succeed,” she said.

At the end of the event, a panel of students was held with the participation of Keren Yitzhak, Itamar Ordani, Shai Avig, Aviel Itzhak and Yamserts Dasta.

Keren Yitzhak, 25, is about to graduate from the Computer Science Department and in parallel to her studies works at Mellanox. She said that at the time of her discharge from the IDF, she attended a conference at the Technion. “Five years ago, I came just like you, to the Churchill Hall at the Technion and I heard a lecture about the preparatory academy at the Technion. They told us that there were scholarships for living expenses, studies, and for the dormitories, but I did not believe it and asked if they would really help me with all this. When I was released, I immediately began to study in the preparatory program, and for me, it is very exciting to sit here, this time on stage, and tell you how worth it is to study at the Technion.”

Aviel Yitzhak, 22 from Ashdod, received an offer to enroll in the preparatory program at the Technion within the framework of the Atidim program. He said arrived with mediocre grades [from high school] but graduated from the preparatory program with honors and was accepted to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering where he currently studies. “The road was hard, and on my first exam, I received such a low score that I was sure this was not the place for me. But I was encouraged and received help, and eventually, I saw that when you invest, you succeed.”

Shay Agiv, 22, grew up in Yavne; he also arrived at the Technion unprepared but completed the preparatory program with honors. “First, I thought that only the sons and daughters of engineers, doctors, and scientists came to the Technion, but when I arrived, I saw other Ethiopians here. It’s true that we come from difficult homes, with parents who do not even know Hebrew, but with time you learn to study hard and this process at the Technion also makes you a more serious and better person.”

Itamar Ordani, who studies in the Computer Science faculty, said that in the neighborhood where he grew up there are not a lot of students. “When I return to my neighborhood, everyone says, ‘the student has come home.’ They are proud of me and are also proud that I am trying to show other youth that they can also come study here.”

Yamserts Dasta, who is completing her degree in information systems in the Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, successfully passed the Technion preparatory program and from there continued to pursue her undergraduate degree. “In my family and in my environment, there are no engineers, so that I had to learn many things on my own. Now I am nearing the end of my studies and I hope to find work in this field – something that will be interesting and satisfying.”

European Research Council Advanced Grants Won by Technion Professors Ashraf Brik and Amit Meller

Profs. Ashraf Brik and Amit Meller of Technion-Israel Institute for Technology in Haifa have won prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grants from the European Union’s Framework Research Program Horizon 2020.

The grants for breakthrough innovation in research are in the Advanced Grant category — a maximum grant of € 2.5 million each, awarded to leading researchers with unprecedented research achievements over the past decade.

Prof. Ashraf Brik

Prof. Ashraf Brik of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry will receive his grant for the development of innovative technology for the synthesis, delivery, and activation of synthetic proteins in the living cell. He completed his MSc and Ph.D. degrees at Technion. After an impressive career at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, he joined Technion’s Chemistry Faculty.

Prof. Brik has won numerous awards including the Humboldt Prize (Germany), the Yoshimasa Hirata Award (Japan), the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award, the Eli Hurvitz Prize (Israel) and the Israel Chemical Society Prize for Outstanding Young Scientist. He was recently elected a member of the Israel Young Academy.

Prof. Brik has developed innovative methods for creating (synthesizing) artificial proteins with desirable characteristics. These proteins are used in structural, biochemical, biophysical and functional analyses.

Prof. Amit Meller of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering received his gran

Prof. Amit Meller

t for the development of an innovative system for mapping the proteome – the complex repertoire of proteins in the cell – at the level of the single protein molecule. Prof. Meller joined the Technion following an illustrious academic career at Harvard and Boston Universities. He is a member of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) and the Lokey Center for Life Sciences and Engineering at Technion. Prof. Meller received and directed a multi-year grant from the Israeli Centers of Research Excellence (I-Core) in the field of living-cells physics. He has won numerous awards including the Diane Sherman Prize for Medical Innovations and the Mérieux Grant for the Advancement of Medical Research.

Prof. Meller is among the first developers of single DNA molecule sequencing technology using nanopores – a technology relevant to a range of essential medical applications. The grant is expected to promote its use for mapping all proteins in the cell.

ERC grants are awarded under Horizon 2020 – the EU Framework Research Program, which supports outstanding research activities, especially interdisciplinary research, and allocates grants in three categories – the ERC Starting Grant, the ERC Consolidator Grant, and the ERC Advanced Grant.

ERC representative Carlos Moedas said the grant was given to researchers, “for their pioneering work, which has the potential to change our daily lives and provide solutions to some of the important challenges we face.”