2020 - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

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Prof. Roi Reichart

Suicide is a significant cause of death in Israel and around the world, with approximately one million suicides worldwide annually, of which about 500 occur in Israel. Although it is not a leading cause of death among the general population, it is the number one cause for young people under the age of 24.

Social, psychological, and psychiatric help are effective tools in preventing suicides, but are only applied in cases where the problem has been diagnosed and the person is receiving treatment. As a result, it is important to recognize suicidal tendencies in the general population. This is an extremely complex challenge since medical information related to mental health is protected by confidentiality protocols, and many at-risk people do not seek help.

In the last 50 years, a great deal of research has been devoted to developing models for early detection of people at a real risk of committing suicide. The problem is that until now these models were based on traditional statistical methods and provided predictions that were about as accurate as chance-level predictions.

A new study by researchers from Technion and Hebrew University portends a breakthrough in this field. Published in Scientific Reports, a Nature Publishing Group journal, the research was carried out by Technion scientists Professor Roi Reichart, who is an expert in natural language processing, Ph.D.student Refael Tikochinski (computational psychology), and postdoctoral researcher Dr. Yaakov Ophir (clinical psychology, a joint appointment with the Hebrew University) and, along with Hebrew University scientists Professor Christa Asterhan (Educational Psychology) and Dr. Itay Sisso (cognition and Big Data).

Refael Tikochinski

The tools developed by the group enable early detection of at-risk populations within the overall population so that the detection is not limited to people already being treated for mental health issues.

The system combines machine learning and natural language processing with theoretical and analytical tools from the realm of psychology and psychiatry and uses layered neural networks.

According to Prof. Reichart, “We now understand that detecting suicidal tendencies cannot depend only on explicit expressions of distress (such as: “I want to die”) or on official medical records such as physiological data from brain scans, psychiatric evaluations, and other data from medical files. Attempts to predict suicide attempts based on demographic, psychological, and medical data have not been particularly successful despite five decades of intensive research. Therefore, we realized that we had to approach the challenge from different directions simultaneously.”

According to Dr. Ophir, the idea for the research was born following the tragic death of David-El Mizrachi, a 16-year-old who committed suicide because he was bullied online and in person. “It quickly became apparent that detecting suicidal tendencies early enough requires interdisciplinary research that includes researchers from different fields. That is how this multi-university and the multi-disciplinary group was formed.”

Dr. Yaakov Ophir

The researchers discovered that people with real suicidal tendencies rarely use explicitly alarming words in their posts (such as “death,” “kill” or “suicide”). More often, they use negative descriptive words (”bad,” “worst”), curse words (“f***ing,” “b**ch”), expressions of emotional distress (“sad,” “hurt,” “cry,” “mad”), and descriptions of negative physiological states (“sick,” “pain,” “surgery,” “hospital”). People who do not have suicidal tendencies tend to express more positive emotions and experiences, and more references to religion and positive outlooks on life – a correlation that matches many studies that identified these factors as representing immunity to mental and emotional distress.

Altogether, the researchers analyzed more than 80,000 Facebook posts written by adults in the U.S., comparing their language usage patterns with their scores on a wide range of valid psychological indices. “The power of the natural language processing-based algorithm lies in its ability to analyze enormous quantities of linguistic clues – something that humans are not able to do,” explained Refael Tikochinski. “In this project, we integrated cutting-edge attention-based neural network modeling for text representation, with layered neural networks for classification.”

Prof. Christa Asterhan

Prof. Asterhan added that: “This research has very important applications for identifying people in distress and providing help on time. Furthermore, it demonstrates the strength of intensive multidisciplinary collaboration and of combining advanced knowledge from the social sciences and data sciences. On the one hand, using advanced computational techniques has opened up new research opportunities in the social sciences that were hitherto not possible. On the other hand, the substantial improvement in precision rates was obtained when psychopathological knowledge and data was embedded in the computational models.”

“I have a problem with clichés,” concluded Dr. Ophir, “but in this case I believe that, at the end of the day, the breakthrough we achieved is capable of saving lives. I hope that this research is a harbinger of hope in the field of mental health.”

Link to the scientific article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73917-0

Rabbi Lord Johnathan Sacks, an international religious leader, philosopher, and award-winning author who served as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013 passed away at the age of 73.

In 2018, the Technion awarded Rabbi Sacks an honorary doctorate “In honor of his decades-long contribution to the preservation of traditional Jewish faith and to the enrichment of Jewish identity; in homage to his stature as an international religious leader and a respected moral voice in the world; and with feelings of gratitude for his steadfast devotion to the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”

Rabbi Sacks addresses the Honorary Doctorate Award Ceremony in 2018 {Click to view the full address).

At the Technion Honorary Doctorate Award Ceremony, Rabbi Sacks delivered an address on behalf of all of the honorary awardees. He referred to what a great honor it was to receive an honorary doctorate from the institute that developed a drug for Parkinson’s disease, achieved breakthroughs in information technology, and lead the development of the Iron Dome system. He continued that, Israel had demonstrated how to be 70 years old, or nearly 4,000 years old as was the case with the Jewish people, and remain young. He was of the view that part of Israel’s ability to remain young rested with the Technion, as it was a living exemplar of “social reformation”, of reconstituting a fragmented world. It did so he said, “by virtue of its position at the heart of Israel’s high-tech economy, the “start-up nation”. Every technological innovation that can be traced back to Israel – whether it be medical technology, nanotechnology, agricultural technology, or information technology – has enhanced peoples’ lives.”

Within the framework of the 2018 Board of Governors Meeting, Rabbi Sacks and Nobel Laureate Distinguished Professor Aaron Ciechanover from Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine held a public dialogue on the topic “Does G-d Play Dice?” – click here to view the event.

May his memory be for a blessing.

Prof. Erez Hasman

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed a new light source based on a single atomic layer. The discovery is based on the interaction of a single atomic layer with nano-antenna arrays in a silicon chip by creating defects in photonic crystals. Published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the development enables the control of the spin of emitted photons from two-dimensional matter and paves the way for new photonic devices based on “atomic scale spin-optics.”

The study was conducted in the research group of Professor Erez Hasman, head of the Atomic-Scale Photonics Laboratory, in collaboration with Professor Elad Koren, head of the Laboratory for Nanoscale Electronic Materials and Devices in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Both groups are associated with the Helen Diller Quantum Center and Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute. Dr. Kexiu Rong and Dr. Bo Wang conducted and led the research, and collaborated with Dr. Elhanan Magid, Dr. Vladimir Kleiner, Avi Reuven, Bar Cohn, and Shaul Katznelson.

What are two-dimensional materials? According to Prof. Koren, “In 2004, the possibility of creating a single atomic layer was first examined when physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, later Nobel Laureates in Physics (2010), developed a simple method for creating individual layers of carbon atoms. The two attached adhesive paper to a piece of graphite and peeled the material layer by layer until a single layer of atoms called graphene was obtained. They also showed that the atomic layer of matter is very different in its properties from the properties of matter in its three-dimensional form. This is a material 100 times stronger than steel and with exceptional electrical properties, and according to estimates it is expected to revolutionize conductors and semiconductors, monitors and screens, solar cells, and more. Following this discovery, atomic layers were developed from other materials, and they similarly exhibit surprising and unique properties.”

Dr. Bo Wang

Professor Hasman added and elucidated that, “As a result of the discovery of graphene, many two-dimensional materials have been discovered and studied, such as various semiconductors that make it possible to obtain interesting optical properties. Standard electronic chips are based on silicon, which severely limits the development of the next generation of computers that require a combination of electronics and photonics, partly due to a lack of an essential condition called ‘direct energy gap’ in silicon. To our surprise, direct energy gap was discovered in two-dimensional semiconductors, which makes it possible to combine photonics and electronics at the nanometric scale, use them to produce light sources and active photonic devices, and pave the way for future generations of chips.”

To miniaturize the electronic chip and significantly increase the processing speed and information transfer rate, the currently accepted approach is spintronics – performing operations on a spin, an important property characterizing the intrinsic rotation of electrons – and not on the current of electrons. In 2001, Prof. Hasman established a new field called spin-optics, which makes it possible to utilize the spin of photons using meta-surfaces for the purpose of transmitting and processing information in photonic chips. The transfer of information is based on the control of photonic spin with the help of nano photonics, optics at the nanometer scale. The semiconductor materials, due to the broken inversion symmetry of their structures, possess electron energy levels, characterized by a new degree of freedom – valley – that can control spin-selective light emission. Technion researchers decided to take advantage of this feature, creating an interaction of a single atomic layer of Tungsten Selenide (WSe2) with nano antennas that allow symmetry in the photonic spin to be broken. This will result in an atomic scale chip that controls and processes valley information via the photonic spin.

Dr. Kexiu Rong

The researchers developed a two-dimensional photonic crystal structure made of silicon that creates an energy gap in the emission spectrum of the two-dimensional material so that the coupling of the atomic semiconductor to the photonic crystal blocks all optical emission channels from the two-dimensional material. By creating smart defects within the photonic crystal, controlling the phase of the defects with their geometry, and coupling between them, the researchers created a light source from a single atomic layer that separates and sorts the spins of the photons emitted from the two-dimensional semiconductor. This discovery will make it possible to combine spintronics and spin-optics to develop a wide range of devices on an atomic scale.

Prof. Hasman proudly noted that: “this prestigious publication shows the importance of multidisciplinary research that combines physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering.”

The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), the Israel Ministry of Science, Technology and Space, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and, in part, by the Technion via an Aly Kaufman Fellowship. The fabrication was performed at the Micro-Nano Fabrication & Printing Unit (MNF&PU) of the Technion.
Laboratory sites: https://hasman.technion.ac.il/ https://koren.net.technion.ac.il/

Image: The incorporation of a WSe2 monolayer into a photonic crystal slab with geometric phase defects enables spin-dependent manipulation of the emission from valley excitons of the WSe2, as well as from randomly placed quantum emitters.

Click here for the paper in Nature Nanotechnology

From left to right: Dr. Bo Wang, Avi Reuven, Professor Erez Hasman, Dr. Vladimir Kleiner, Dr. Kexiu Rong, Professor Elad Koren, Shaul Katznelson and Bar Cohn

A paper titled, “BebopNet: Deep Neural Models for Personalized Jazz Improvisation” was recently presented at the 21st International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2020) and received the Best Research Award. Authored by M.Sc. students Nadav Bhonker (already graduated) and Shunit Haviv Hakimi, and by their advisor, Professor Ran El-Yaniv at the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, the paper indicates that it is possible to model and optimize personalized jazz preferences.

l-r: Professor Ran El-Yaniv, Shunit Haviv Hakimi, Nadav Bhonker

Learning to generate music is an ongoing AI challenge. An even more difficult task is the creation of musical pieces that match human-specific preferences. In the BebopNet project, Bhonker and Haviv Hakimi, both amateur jazz musicians, focused on personalized, symbol-based, monophonic generation of harmony-constrained jazz improvisations. To tackle this objective, they introduced a pipeline consisting of several steps: supervised learning using a corpus of solos (a language model), high-resolution user preference metric learning, and optimized generation using planning (beam search). The corpus consisted of hundreds of original jazz solos performed by saxophone giants including Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, and Dexter Gordon. They presented an extensive empirical study in which they applied this pipeline to extract individual models as implicitly defined by several human listeners. This approach enables an objective examination of subjective personalized models whose performance is quantifiable.

A plagiarism analysis was also performed to ensure that the generated solos are genuine rather than a concatenation of phrases previously seen in the corpus. “While our computer-generated solos are locally coherent and often interesting or pleasing, they lack the qualities of professional jazz solos related to general structure such as motif development and variations,” said the authors.

Prof. El-Yaniv hopes to overcome this challenge in future research. Preliminary models based on a smaller dataset were substantially weaker, and it is possible that a larger dataset would make a substantially better model. In order to obtain such a large corpus, it might be necessary to abandon the symbolic approach and rely on audio recordings which can be gathered in much larger quantities.

“Perhaps one of the main bottlenecks in AI art generation, including jazz improvisation, is how to evaluate quality meaningfully. Our work emphasizes the need to develop effective methodologies and techniques to extract and distill noisy human feedback that will be required for effective quality evaluation of personalized AI art. Such techniques are key to developing many cool applications,” noted Prof. El-Yaniv.

Click here for the paper

Click here for Audio Samples

The academic year opened with a 20 percent increase in students and a leap in the number of female students. Studies are currently online for safety, but hope runs high for a return to campus life soon!

The European Federation of Food Science and Technology (EFFoST) will be holding its 34^th International Conference this week, hosted by the Technion, marking the first time that the event is held under the leadership of an Israeli team of researchers

The European Federation of Food Science and Technology, EFFoST, will be holding its annual conference this week, exploring the theme, “Bridging high-tech, food-tech and health: Consumer-oriented innovations”. The conference will be held online on November 10-12, 2020, and will be attended by over 400 researchers, industry people and students, and hosted by Technion researchers.

The conference will discuss a broad variety of topics at the forefront of food, nutrition, and sustainability science and technology, and will feature the world’s leading experts as well as three Israeli startups: Redefine Meat, winner of the Technion’s EIT Food Accelerator Network Program in 2018, which has developed a proprietary 3D meat and meat substitute printing technology; Amai Proteins, which is working to create a new type of artificial sweetener; and Solutum, pioneers in breakthrough food packaging technology.

Day 1 of the conference will be broadcasted live and will feature nine top experts from industry and the academic world, including speakers from the Technion, the U.S., Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as experts from Nestle (Switzerland) and the Good Food Institute (U.S.). Day 2 and Day 3 will include 5 tracks of parallel sessions with over 90 pre-recorded lectures as well as live broadcasts of plenary speakers, plus Q&A.

This is the first time that this important international conference, which has taken place since 1986, is to be hosted by researchers from institutions outside of Europe. Last year EFFoST decided to hold the conference, for the first time, in Israel under the leadership of the Technion, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated health concerns, this year the conference will be held online.

The EFFoST2020 Conference was organized by researchers from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Assoc. Prof. Uri Lesmes (conference chair), Prof. Esther Segal, Dr. Maya Davidovich-Pinhas and Dr. Avi Shpigelman, together with Dr. Zvika Hayouka of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

According to Prof. Lesmes: “Population growth, the COVID-19 pandemic and growing awareness of human health and environmental quality have created new challenges for the food industry, and only through collaboration between industry and academia will we be able to devise innovative, creative science-backed robust solutions. This is precisely the goal of the conference – to share scientific and technological knowledge and forge partnerships that will enhance the food sector’s ability to deliver healthy, tasty and varied solutions that are aligned with environmental awareness and human diversity.”

The conference will be opened by EFFoST President, Prof. Olga Martin Belloso, and this year’s Conference Chair Prof. Uri Lesmes, followed by three successive sessions. The first will focus on science, food-tech and health in the 21^st century, the second on innovation and entrepreneurship in the food sector, and the third – on challenges and opportunities to feed the world, today and in the future. Sessions will include lectures by world-class experts on a variety of topics, including eating habits, a balanced diet and processed foods (Prof. David Raubenheimer, Australia); smart food packaging, prevention of food contamination and shelf life extension (Prof. Esther Segal of the Technion); use of artificial intelligence in food product development (Prof. Christoph Hartmann, Switzerland); intelligent planning of decentralized food production and food personalization (Prof. Alejandro Marangoni, University of Guelph, Canada); science-based innovation in the food world (Prof. Julian McClements, University of Massachusetts, U.S.); and nonthermal food processing (Prof. Indrawati Oey, University of Otago, New Zealand).

“These are difficult times, and certainly very challenging when it comes to holding international conferences, and it’s no wonder that this is one of the only prominent food conferences taking place these days”, Prof. Lesmes said. “Despite the numerous difficulties, we insisted not only on holding the conference, but also on the high level of our featured speakers and the many lectures. The current pandemic, which has led to product shortages and caused shoppers to raid the supermarket chains, has emphasized the importance of food in modern life and raised the need for efficient production, local production and a shift in the prevailing perceptions of supply chains in the food industry. I am in no doubt that the EFFoST2020 Conference will lead to a better understanding of the challenges we face, and to the formulation of solutions that promote variety in the food world, the availability of products, and their impacts on our lifestyle, our health and the environment.”

Click here for the complete conference program.

Click here to watch pre-conference interviews with the plenary speakers

Please confirm attendance in advance

Technology for detecting the coronavirus in the sewage system will provide information about outbreaks of the pandemic in near real-time.

1. The researchers and representatives from Kando install the sampling system at Technion

Technology developed by Technion – Israel Institute of Technology researchers will make it possible for students, faculty, and staff to safely return to campus. As part of the “Creating an open and safe campus” initiative, which was launched this week, Technion’s management decided to implement a technology that samples the campus’s sewage system and detects COVID-19 outbreaks on campus at an early stage. As a result, the further spread of the virus can be avoided.

The technology was developed by a research group led by Professor Eran Friedler of the Environmental and Water Engineering Department of the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with researchers from the Ministry of Health, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and the Kando company. The system monitors SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and provides data on outbreaks and their geographic dispersal on campus – information essential for early warning and for blocking the virus’ spread.

“It is extremely important to bring students, faculty members, and staff back to campus in order to return to a healthy and safe routine of teaching and researching on campus alongside the virus,” said Technion President Professor Uri Sivan. “Until a vaccine or treatment is found, we must break the chain of transmission through early detection of outbreak locations, and monitoring the virus in the sewage system will help us in this mission. The Technion campus is one of the first places to implement this innovative technology for constant monitoring of the coronavirus, and we will receive up-to-date information in near-real-time regarding coronavirus outbreaks and their locations on campus. As a result, we will be able to deal with them at an early stage and block the spread.”

One of the important advantages of monitoring the coronavirus through the sewage system is the rapid and early mapping of a large population, including asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19. Because the virus is present in human excreta, it finds its way to the sewage system naturally through defecation. Continuous monitoring is expected to make it possible to prevent recurrences of the virus at an early stage. Wastewater-based epidemiology that monitors bacteria and viruses already exists in the world, and in Israel, polio viruses were discovered in the sewage in 2013 – which led to a vaccination campaign that blocked its spread and prevented an outbreak.

2. Part of the research team from the Environmental and Water Engineering Department at Technion. From left: Dr. Yonatan Sharabi, Prof. Eran Friedler, Dr. Yuval Alfiya

“The sewage system is designed in a hierarchical manner, making it possible to divide each zone into smaller areas,” explains Prof. Friedler. “Consequently, we can monitor the wastewater at specific points and determine the coronavirus concentrations in that area. In this way, we can focus on areas with high infection rates without testing the population itself and without needing to reach many individuals, at least until the location of the outbreak is identified.”

The Technion campus project will take samples from 10 manholes via the Kando company’s smart, automatic sampling system, and will detect outbreaks according to the concentration of virus RNA in the wastewater. The samples undergo a chemical and microbial-molecular analysis: they are transferred to a special lab, where the virus RNA undergoes a process of concentration and extraction from the sewage, followed by detection and quantification using qPCR. The tests will be carried out at the end of each sampling day and the findings will be used for evaluating ongoing vulnerabilities and determining priorities for extensive surveys of people coming to the campus.

Last May, Prof. Friedler’s research group was a partner together with researchers from Ben Gurion University, Israel Ministry of Health, and Kando company in the first city-scale pilot project of its kind in Israel, which took place in Ashkelon – a city of 150,000 residents. Ashkelon is divided into neighborhoods and sampling was carried out in selected sewage manholes. The virus was detected in the city’s wastewater and the researchers successfully identified different concentrations of the virus, which indicated different levels of infection in different neighborhoods. Moreover, they succeeded in detecting the outbreak of a second wave in the city before it was discovered through traditional testing methods.

A comprehensive nationwide study is currently underway in partnership with the Ministry of Health B.G. University and Kando involving sampling of sewage systems of 14 Israeli cities. The goal is to obtain a clear picture as to which cities and neighborhoods have COVID-19 patients and to improve the methodology. In the future, this technology will provide a more precise image and will detect COVID-19 outbreaks at early stages, so that general lockdowns can be avoided.

According to Prof. Friedler, “Our experiments show that the system we developed is effective in identifying hotspots of coronavirus outbreaks, and in the future, we will also be able to use it for early detection of other diseases.”

In order to maximize the monitoring of coronavirus outbreaks at Technion, protect the health of the dorm residents, and reduce the spread of the virus as much as possible, Technion has put a coronavirus PCR testing site at the disposal of students, in collaboration with the Rambam Health Care Center. The tests are carried out under strict privacy protocols and will complete the overall picture on campus.

The first of its kind in Israel: Technion summer school program ‘Introduction to Practical Quantum Computing’ attracts over 570 registrations.

Ph.D. student Tasneem Biadsy

Technion opened Israel’s first summer school in practical quantum computing on Sunday, October 11, 2020. The intensive online course continued until October 16th with over 220 students taking part.

Prof. Joseph Avron

The participants were introduced to the foundations of quantum computing theory and to practical programming on the IBM quantum mini-computer. The program did not assume prior knowledge of quantum mechanics or programming. This allowed a wide student body from universities and the high-tech industries to dive into the world of quantum computing.

In recent years, quantum computing has evolved dramatically, from a purely academic field to a range of emerging technology. In this school, the Helen Diller Quantum Center has opened the doors to those interested in being part of the quantum computing revolution.

According to the course’s organizers, major multinationals such as IBM, Google, Daimler, and Pfizer, as well as large investment houses, are currently building infrastructure and human resources to prepare for the quantum age. As a leading science and technology institution, Technion encourages its students to master quantum computing in order to meet the demands of the high-tech industry of tomorrow. It also offers the opportunity to continue to advanced degrees and participate in the ongoing research in this exciting, pioneering field.

“Quantum computers are expected to revolutionize the world of computing,” said Prof. Netanel Lindner, Director of the “Quantum Computing Primer” school at the Technion. “In certain tasks, they will most likely account for a significant improvement compared to the computers with which we are currently familiar. Although we can’t predict the scope of its impact, some members of the scientific community believe that the effect of quantum computing on research, industry, and business will be enormous.”

The School for Quantum Computing is supported by Robert Magid, who has been supporting quantum research at Technion for many years. It is a part of the Technion’s Helen Diller Quantum Center.

According to the Center’s director Prof. Joseph Avron: “The quantum computers that exist today are still at the fledgling stage and do not yet have practical applications. They serve as platforms for experiments and games of quantum computing scientists and are reminiscent of the first Atari computer game console that was the precursor of the personal computer.”

Prof. Netanel Lindner

The practical portion of the course, which is meant to train the participants and provide them with the knowledge required for writing software for quantum computers, was taught by Ph.D. student Tasneem Biadsy and Dr. Yossi Weinstein. “This software makes it possible to implement a wide range of quantum applications, experiments, and algorithms, and the course will give participants an opportunity to research and discover by themselves the possibilities that are hidden in the world of quantum computing,” explained Biadsy. “The participants learnt to use IBM’s graphical interface, which is available as a web browser interface. This user-friendly platform makes it possible to build quantum circuits in a graphic manner and to run them remotely on IBM’s quantum computers. Moreover, participants had in-depth practice sessions on the use of the Qiskit library, which was also developed by IBM. This library is written in the Python programming language and includes structured tools and functions that are used for building complex quantum circuits. Qiskit contains a large variety of whole quantum algorithms. One interesting example that can be found in the library is a relatively new algorithm for calculating the ground state of molecules through combined computation using both classic and quantum computers.”

The 2020-21 academic year opens at the Technion today (Wednesday) in the remote classroom, with a 20 percent rise in the number of students and an increase in the percentage of female students

The new academic year opened at the Technion in Israel, on Wednesday, October 21, 2020. This year is marked by a 20 percent increase in new students. Of the 9,300 students studying for their bachelor’s degree, over 40 percent are women. This year, 4,558 students will be studying at the Technion Irwin and Joan Jacobs Graduate School, of which 1,263 are for a Ph.D. and the rest for a Master’s degree.

Among the faculties and study tracks that saw a strong increase in admissions of undergraduate students are the Data Science and Engineering track at the William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management; the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering; the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

In alignment with current guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health, Technion was obliged to continue online learning through virtual portals. Technion management has nevertheless defined the return to campus as a central goal, in the understanding that live activity, teaching, and research on campus are an essential component of the academic spirit.

17th Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan welcomed new and returning students and celebrated the opening of the new academic year. “The return of us all to campus is of vital importance, which far transcends our formal presence in the classroom and laboratory,” he said. “The direct encounter among students and between students and faculty is a substantial part of the academic experience. The various technological means, no matter how sophisticated, are helpful, but they cannot replace the direct interpersonal encounter on campus. Until we are able to return to the classroom, the lab, the learning environment, and campus life, we will continue to use remote learning platforms. We have made good use of the summer months to prepare for the resumption of studies, and have invested considerably in furnishing classrooms with advanced filming equipment and in preparing for the integration of on-campus studies and remote learning. We have also increased financial support for students through scholarships and special loans, and we are determined to make sure that the COVID-19 crisis does not disrupt the learning continuum of any of the Technion’s students.”

“I would like to welcome each and every one of you, and I wish you success and satisfaction in your studies”, said Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Prof. Hossam Haick. “Our primary goal here at the Technion is to equip you with the best tools to deal with the unknown by crafting your knowledge and developing your talents. The Technion has recently enhanced its teaching and learning approaches through the integration of remote learning technologies and face-to-face learning in classrooms on campus, to ensure that all students benefit from high-quality, fascinating classes, whether or not they are on campus.”

“We are here to help you realize your personal potential in your chosen field of study, particularly at this challenging time”, said Dean of Students, Prof. Ayelet Fishman. “The Dean’s office provides Technion students with broad support, including a variety of housing solutions in dormitories, economic aid, guidance, and help with studies through the Unit for the Advancement of Students, psychological services, career guidance, and a variety of culture and leisure activities.”

Prof. Fishman added that during the week, students will be returning to the dorms and that on-campus housing is in high demand. To protect the health of dorm residents and limit the spread of COVID-19 as much as possible, the Technion has made PCR swab testing stations available to students living in the dorms, where they can be tested free of charge and without a doctor’s referral.

“The Technion is an island of sanity in Israeli society, a model of coexistence”, said Chair of the Technion Student Association, Linoy Nagar Shaul. “A variety of services are available to students to help them accomplish their studies easily and successfully. The Student Association is doing everything to reconcile learning via Zoom with hybrid learning. I hope and believe that as soon as possible, all the great services that are offered to you on campus will reopen.”

Wishing you a good, productive, and successful school year!

Technion Harvey Prize as a predictor of the Nobel.

In early October 2020, the Nobel Prize Committee announced the winners for this year’s prestigious international prize. Three of the new Nobel laureates were also awarded the Harvey Prize at Technion in recent years, thereby boosting the stature of the Harvey Prize as a “predictor of the Nobel.” Indeed, more than 30% of Harvey Prize winners since 1986 have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

Born in Lithuania in 1887, Leo Harvey was the son of a small factory owner in the Vilna ghetto. Threatened with imprisonment because of his political activism, Harvey fled Czarist Russia in 1905, and arrived in Berlin, where he got a job as a toolmaker in a large company. Two years later Harvey immigrated to the US, attended the Cooper Union School, and found employment in 1910 with the Hot Point Electric Company in Ontario, California. While in California, Leo married Lena Brody in 1911 and the couple had three children. Possessed of unusual talent and ambition, Leo Harvey was destined to be his own boss. In 1914 he hired two men and set up shop in downtown Los Angeles. Thus began the Harvey Machine Company. By 1920 the company had more than 300 employees.

The Harvey Prize rewards excellence by recognizing breakthroughs in science and technology. The monetary Prize is a banner of recognition for men and women who have truly contributed to the progress of humanity. No less, however, the Prize is a source of inspiration. Serving as a stimulus, the award urges scientists and scholars forward to further accomplishment.

Leo M. Harvey (1887-1973) was a pioneer industrialist and inventor and an ardent friend and supporter of the State of Israel, particularly of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

The Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry for 2020 are Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, and Prof. Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley. Both women received the Harvey Prize less than a year ago, on November 3, 2019, together with Prof. Feng Zhang. In December, they will receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing “a tool for rewriting the code of life” and for CRISPR-Cas9, a revolutionary technology for genome editing.

Prof. Charpentier and Prof. Doudna published their historic article in 2012 in the journal Science. Here, they describe how the bacterial protein CRISPR-Cas9 can identify targets in the DNA and can easily be programmed to edit a broad range of DNA targets. These discoveries generated a revolution in life sciences and are expected to spark the development of a range of treatments for diseases.

At the Harvey Prize ceremony at Technion, Prof. Charpentier said: “It is a great honor for me to receive this prize, and I thank Technion for acknowledging the importance of our research.” Prof. Doudna added in a taped video clip (as she was unable to attend in person): “Today, CRISPR-Cas9 is used by scientists around the world to develop treatments for genetic diseases and to repair agricultural damage caused by global warming.”

During her visit to Technion, Prof. Charpentier also gave a lecture at the Technion Faculty of Biology. “Unfortunately, basic science does not receive the same attention as applied research,” she told the audience. “These days, scientists are under pressure to devote their time to applications, while basic science requires time and depth. Therefore, it is important for governments and foundations to also provide proper support for basic science.”

(l-r) Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan with Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier; Prof. Jennifer Doudna; Prof. Reinhard Genzel.

Prof. Reinhard Genzel, who will receive the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics this December, is a faculty member of the University of California, Berkeley, and is Director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. Prof. Genzel received the Harvey Prize at Technion in 2014 along with Prof. James P. Allison, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine two years ago. Prof. Genzel will share the Nobel Prize in Physics with Prof. Andrea Ghez of the University of California, Los Angeles for discovering “the darkest secret in the universe” – an enormous black hole in the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics is shared with Prof. Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford for breakthroughs in different fields of Physics, including the theory of relativity, the Big Bang theory and the creation of black holes. Prof. Penrose is also involved in the field of Geometry, where he has a connection with Distinguished Prof. Dan Shechtman of the Technion Department of Materials Science and Engineering who himself became a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 2011. The “Penrose tiles” that Prof. Penrose developed paved the way for the discovery of the quasiperiodic crystals – a whole new class of matter – for which Prof. Shechtman won the Nobel Prize.