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Three research groups have won a unique grant from the Technion’s Human Health Initiative (THHI). THHI is the brainchild of Technion President Professor Uri Sivan and was established last year with the aim of promoting interdisciplinary research related to the worlds of health and medicine.

“Human health is one of the main challenges facing humanity in the 21st century,” said Technion President Professor Uri Sivan. “Like other huge challenges, a significant revolution in human health requires multidisciplinary efforts. To take full advantage of the Technion’s capabilities, this initiative will encompass a full spectrum of science and technology. It will support human health research and the conversion of research discoveries into applications and products that will serve the medical system and medical teams on the front lines. The idea is to build a bridge between medicine and life sciences, exact sciences, engineering, data science, and design. The initiative brings together researchers from different faculties on the premise that removing boundaries between faculties and disciplines is essential to preserve the Technion’s world-class status and to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”

To this end, the THHI organized an internal competition to support multidisciplinary research groups and innovative research projects, and to advance new fields of knowledge in the interface between medicine, life sciences, engineering, data science, and other disciplines. Thirteen teams from various Technion faculties entered the competition, with just three teams being chosen as the winners.

The winning entries were:

Closing the Loop: Technion – Rambam Center for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (CAIH)

The group’s members are Assistant Professor Joachim Behar, who is the project leader, Assistant Professor Uri Shalit, Professor Shie Mannor, Professor Lior Gepstein, Professor Shai Shen-Orr, Dr. Danny Eytan, Dr. Ronit Almog, and Dr. Oren Caspi.

“The goal of the new center is to promote the development of new AI for basic medical and clinical research resulting in significant and actionable benefit to patient care,” said Dr. Behar. “We hope that the center will serve as an interface between medicine, health sciences, and AI, and create synergy between the two institutions.”

“The idea of the new center is to create a loop between the world of medicine and the worlds of data and artificial intelligence,” said Prof. Uri Shalit. “As data professionals, we need vast amounts of data – and the clinical world needs experts to analyze this same data and derive useful insights from it. The new center will remove bottlenecks such as researchers’ access to the data and will also encourage a real crossover between Rambam’s clinical expertise and our data and model expertise. We are confident that the new initiative will create an ecosystem that will enable us to present analyses to improve diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up in the medical world. Moreover, it is very important to us that this same loop is closed by applying data-based models in the field, that is, in Rambam. For us scientists it is an important connection to the field and a significant means of influencing human well-being.”

The center’s joint activities, which will operate with funding from the Technion, and Rambam Medical Center began this month (March 2022). The opening event was held at Rambam on March 9, in collaboration with MIT, and attended by the President of the Technion Prof. Uri Sivan and the CEO of Rambam Prof. Michael (Miki) Halberthal. This followed on the heels of the “Datathon” – a competition in the field of data sciences that took place on March 7-8.

Harnessing Synthetic Biology and Ultra-Low Power Electronics to Monitor Signals in the Gastrointestinal Tract

The group’s members are Associate Professor Ramez Daniel, the project leader, Assistant Professor Naama Geva-Zatorsky, Professor Hossam Haick, Professor Eilam Yalon and Associate Professor Shahar Kvatinsky.

The group will work on developing innovative systems for monitoring gastrointestinal diseases. These systems will contain engineered bacteria that will program ultra-low power electronic circuits based on different components such as memristive devices, and this combination of biology and electronics will allow future users to study the metabolic pathways in the gastrointestinal tract and intervene effectively where necessary.

“Using tools from the world of synthetic biology, we will create bacterial (E. coli) cells that identify biomarkers in the digestive tract, process this information, and program nano-electronics devices called memristors using biochemical reactions,” said Prof. Daniel. “The required calculations will be performed in the bacterial cells using DNA, proteins and enzymes that are characterized by at least 1,000 times less energy consumption than any electronics device (e.g., transistor) – the minimal energy required for their activity. The memristors’ activity will be programmed directly by the bacteria from the nutrients that are abundant in the digestive system, and therefore no external energy source will be required for this system.”

“These systems will be installed in tiny capsules less than a few centimeters in size,” said Prof. Geva-Zatorsky. “And through them we will be able to explore new diagnostic strategies in favor of applied research and the development of new treatments for gastrointestinal diseases. The systems will provide real-time focused molecular analysis – an essential tool for continuous diagnosis of diseases.”

Metabolic MRI – a new non-invasive approach in clinical diagnosis, treatment and real time investigation of human diseases

The group’s members are Professor Aharon Blank, who will lead the project, Assistant Professor Katriene Vandoorne, Professor Boaz Pokroy, Prof. Marcia Javitt, and Dr. Galit Saar.

The aim of the project is to develop a technology for the use of MRI for rapid, effective, and safe medical diagnosis of various diseases.

MRI is a common and effective imaging technology that provides a wealth of information about physiological conditions based on the physical properties of the tissue – proton density, tissue relaxation times, and diffusion coefficients. However, in many cases this physical information alone is not enough, and more detailed knowledge is needed about various metabolites and their activity in the examined tissue.

Unfortunately, due to sensitivity problems, even the most advanced MRI systems detect only the metabolites found in very high dose tissue and are not sensitive enough to detect most metabolites for medical diagnosis. This problem can be solved in part by a technology called PET-CT, but this involves the use of harmful ionizing radiation and expensive radio tracers.

The technology developed by the group will provide important information about the metabolic properties of tissues and will expand our understanding in physiological processes, clinical diagnosis, and management of patient care.

The group aims to develop a method that increases the signal of metabolites of interest up to 1,000 times their normal intensity while maintaining this high intensity for several minutes, so that they can be mapped in common MRI systems.

The technology will be tested in pre-clinical trials at the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion and will then enter clinical trials. After efficacy and safety trials, the technology will be tested in various medical contexts, including in cancer and other diseases of the prostate, liver, and kidney; systemic inflammatory diseases; and brain tumors.

March 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic is casting terror on the whole world. In Israel, a strict lockdown is declared, leaving most of the country’s population stuck inside their homes.

In those crazy days, Sofia Segal was in her house in the Carmel with her husband and two children, watching children’s theater on television. Glancing at an online news site, she learned that Donald Trump, the then-President of the United States, announced that he takes hydroxychloroquine in order to alleviate the symptoms in the event that he is infected with COVID-19. As a doctoral student in the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Sofia was curious about the research potential in using this drug and decided to evaluate integrating it in her research on cardiac pacemakers.

“Hydroxychloroquine is a drug used for treating a variety of autoimmune diseases, and it is somewhat effective against COVID-19 symptoms,” Segal explains, “but it has side effects, including slowing down the heart rate (bradycardia). As a result, it is liable to endanger COVID patients suffering from damaged physiological functioning, and especially populations considered at risk.”

Trump’s announcement intrigued Segal, whose doctoral research focuses on natural cardiac pacemakers – the tissue that provides the heart its beating rate. In her words, “There are several compartments that set the pace for the heart’s pulse. If one of these natural pacemakers is harmed, another one can cover for it – but the beating rate will change accordingly. If the damage is extensive, cardiac disorders such as cardiac insufficiency, ventricular fibrillation, atrial fibrillation and others, may develop. In our lab, we study the biological, chemical and electrical processes involved in creating the heart’s natural beating rate, and the effect of various drugs on the heart’s function.”

Segal is conducting her doctoral research under the supervision of Prof. Yael Yaniv, director of the Bioelectrical and Bioenergetic Systems Laboratory. She shared her thoughts about Trump’s hydroxychloroquine statement with Prof. Yaniv and with her colleagues in the lab. That is how the idea of an original and fascinating research project was born, which hypothesized that if a patient receives hydroxychloroquine together with a drug that increases the heart rate, they will benefit from both worlds, curbing the disease and also preserving a healthy heart rate. This project led Segal to win a prize at the Faculty Research Day that year.

From Belarus to the Carmel Mountains

Sofia Segal was born in Minsk, Belarus, and made Aliyah in 1990 with her family, when she was one year old. When she was eight, she settled in Haifa with her mother, in the Ramat Remez neighborhood adjacent to the Technion campus. “The location wasn’t a coincidence. My mother was the captain who navigated my life, and from infancy she aspired for me to study at the Technion. My whole family consists of engineers who studied at the Technikum in Russia. I received a Soviet-style education which instilled in me a sense of striving for excellence. This attitude is also visible in my athletic activities, which are an integral part of my life.”

This same Soviet-style education, says Sofia, brought her to take piano lessons from the age of five, as well as to excel in her high school Scientific track, serve in 8200 Unit in the IDF and, of course, to pursue undergraduate, master and doctoral studies at the Technion, during which she achieved numerous successes. “I believe that this Soviet education with which I grew up molded my approach according to which there is nothing that stands in the way of one’s aspirations. Everything depends on oneself, and if you want to succeed you must know – mainly – how to get up again after falling down. Without this ability, one cannot pursue a career as a scientist, since failure is an inseparable part of the process.”

Thus, choosing the Technion was an obvious choice. “As a child I was attracted to science, especially chemistry, biology and electronics, and I looked for a way to connect these fields to the world of medicine. At the Technion’s Open Day, I found my calling at the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, which became my second home during the past decade.”

Today, as an outstanding doctoral student and teaching assistant, she is herself a star at the Open Days, during which the faculty hosts young candidates who are debating what to study. “Recruiting excellent students is a big honor,” she insists, “and our efforts are bearing fruit. In my undergraduate class, there were barely 30 students in the faculty, while now there are approximately 150 in each class. The faculty invests heavily in teaching, and this is very apparent in the level of studies and the students’ overall experience.”

At the end of her undergraduate studies, Sofia met Prof. Daphne Weihs, who is a faculty member, and she told her about a new addition to the faculty – Dr. Yael Yaniv (today, Prof. Yael Yaniv). Yael joined the conversation, and the rest is history. Sofia Segal was Prof. Yaniv’s second student in the Technion lab and Segal also conducted her PhD studies in Yaniv’s lab. She is set to complete her doctorate this year. “Yael is a huge inspiration,” says Sofia. “She is a true professional who believes in what she does. She believes in girl power and sweeps us along with her.”

Segal’s colleagues in the lab include doctoral students Limor Arbel Ganon, whose field is pacemaker tissues in mice, Savyon Mazgaoker Samya, who researches human heart cells, and Noa Kirshner-Peretz, who studies rabbit atrial cells. “As part of our collaboration, we are developing an extensive and deep understanding of pacemaker activity and the possibilities of improving its function in the context of hydroxychloroquine use. In this research, we were able to map out the leading mechanisms for the drug’s side effects and demonstrate that using a different off-the-shelf drug cancels the slowing down of the heart rate.” They proved the efficiency of combining two drugs both in the live model and in the experiments in human cells, and these findings can be translated to clinical trials that will examine the efficacy of this combination in humans.

It’s worth noting that today, cardiac rhythm disturbances caused by damaged functioning of the natural pacemakers are treated through artificial pacemaker implants. “These pacemakers are invasive, require regular maintenance and expose the patient to various risks,” Sofia explains. In her research, she examines the possibility of rendering artificial pacemaker implants unnecessary by treating the natural pacemakers through drugs rather than in an invasive manner.

Segal’s master’s degree was devoted to developing a tissue culture technique for growing pacemaker cells in laboratory conditions. This technique proves that pacemaker cells from rabbits retain their properties in cultures by adding a material that slows down the heartbeat. “Based on this, it is possible to carry out tissue culture experiments and predict identical results in the live organism,” she explains.

“Prof. Yaniv is my supervisor, friend and sometimes like my mother,” Segal points out. “The women researchers in the lab work two complete shifts, each of which is very challenging. We are both full-time researchers in the lab and also mothers. The task of managing our families, especially bringing up our children, mainly falls on us women, and therefore we raise the banner of balancing these two jobs (do our best to balance these two jobs). For Prof. Yaniv, the family is of foremost importance, and therefore during times of crisis she encourages us to focus on our personal needs. However, it is clear to all of us that we must make up for the lost research time, and this requires – mainly – trust.”

The family is of foremost importance to Sofia as well – meaning her husband Zohar and their two children, 6.5-year-old Tevel and 3.5-year-old Lorel. “I met Zohar when I was 18, when he joined a special unit in the army. His background is completely different from mine: he grew up in Tzfat (Safed) in a traditional family. His mother is of Moroccan descent, and his father has roots in Romania, and he has two brothers and a sister. He completed a master’s degree and several other study programs, and today is a manager in a security and business intelligence company. I believe that something about his different culture attracted him to me – the extended family, the traditions, the freedom to choose what to study and do, the food, the warmth and the friendliness. To my delight, our children are growing up in a mix of cultures and are completely blind to these cultural differences.”

Helping the elderly

In addition to her success with teaching, research and her family, she is also proud of the social project she is involved with, together with her lab partner Limor Arbel-Ganon. The two women, who are both doctoral students and young mothers, take part in volunteer activities organized with the faculty – helping the elderly in Haifa and the vicinity together with the local welfare Department. A strong friendship was born between Limor, Sofia and an elderly Holocaust survivor who escaped from Poland to Ukraine when he was five, was imprisoned in Siberia and arrived in Israel in 1948. The two women succeeded in collecting warm clothes and food for him for the winter and even cooked for him special Polish dishes that he missed so much.

Segal will soon complete 12 years of studying at the Technion, and will continue on to conquer her next goals in the biomedical industry. “Most of my years at the Technion were devoted to researching the heart using a range of research methods. I am so grateful to the Technion for being my professional home, and especially to the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. Thanks to them, I acquired a great deal of engineering knowledge, expertise in ‘wet’ lab research, and autodidactic abilities. Moreover, I was exposed to a platform that connects science, technology and medical applications. For me, International Women’s Day is a significant milestone for all women, and especially for women in science whose work often contributes to humankind as a whole.”

Noa Zilberman, who is 28 and from Haifa, was always attracted to exploring the universe that surrounds her. “Ever since I can remember, I looked up at the sky in awe. The desire to grasp something from this universe, with its inconceivable dimensions and complexity, and to understand my place in it as a tiny speck floating on a speck that revolves around another speck – this is one of the forces that guides my life.”

Remembering her childhood, she says: “I was very shy and insecure. In class, I didn’t dare raise my hand, even if I knew the answer and nobody else raised their hand… But it was important for me to confront my fears. I would play the piano in school ceremonies even if my hands trembled, and I would recite texts even if I stuttered terribly. Today, I thank young Noa for choosing to grow from these challenges rather than giving in to them. In my military service I had the privilege of teaching high school students with learning difficulties. I tried to stir their sense of curiosity and passion to learn, and to make them feel capable. There is nothing more fulfilling than a girl telling me, eyes shining, that thanks to me, she now loves math, or a boy revealing that he completed his matriculation exams owing to the fact that I believed in him.”

In 2017, Noa finished her undergraduate studies in Physics and Mathematics with distinction, as part of the Physics Department Honors Program at the Technion. “Physics gave me a new lens through which to observe the world. And I simply fell in love with Math – it has an abstract beauty with which I was previously unfamiliar. During my undergraduate studies, I also experienced research for the first time, along with the huge privilege that comes with it: while in the lecture hall, we acquire the knowledge that has been accrued so far, something different and exciting happens during research – an opportunity to expand, if only by a little, the boundaries of human knowledge.”

After completing her B.Sc., Noa continued to a direct doctoral track in the Department of Physics under the supervision of Prof. Amos Ori. Her field of research is general relativity – the physical theory devised by Albert Einstein whereby gravity is embodied in the space-time curvature. “My research is very theoretical – the least applicable that I could find,” she laughs. Her doctoral thesis deals with semi-classical general relativity, which is the study of quantum fields on a classical (that is, non-quantum) curved spacetime background.

“We are studying the question of how quantum effects may modify the classical, well-known space-time picture in which the inner horizon of a black hole serves as a bridge to other universes. I realize this sounds like science fiction, but it is what the mathematics of general relativity tell us. Still, one must remember that general relativity is not a complete theory of nature, since it does not fit together with another successful theory, quantum physics. In most situations, one of the theories is sufficient to describe the physics, but it appears that a black hole is a special and extreme playground where the two theories play side by side. So, we are actually asking how the effects of the quantum vacuum will change the picture we obtained when we ignored the universe’s quantum nature. What do I mean by ‘quantum vacuum’? In a quantum reality, the vacuum is not an empty state that doesn’t contain anything. On the contrary – Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle tells us that a quantum field cannot ‘stay still.’ The vacuum state is teeming with fields that move and change all the time. Therefore, even in the absence of matter, the quantum effects related to the vacuum itself may dramatically change the space-time picture. Using analytic and numerical tools, we calculate the different expectation values that are essential for understanding the internal geometry of a black hole in the presence of a quantum vacuum.”

In addition to her demanding research work, Noa volunteers with the organization “Little Big Science,” an NGO aiming to make science more accessible for the general public. There, she writes, hosts panels and is a member of its scientific steering committee. She is also a member of the NGO “Robin Food” for the prevention of food waste, lectures at the Icon Festival for Science Fiction and Fantasy, and enjoys academic teaching as a teaching assistant for the course “Introduction to General Relativity.”

The rest of the time, you will probably find her wandering around the forest, foraging mushrooms, or waxing poetic about some insect. “In addition to research and writing articles, I try to spend a lot of time in nature, play the piano and take part in different types of athletic and creative activities.”

Besides academic writing and writing for laymen in “Little Big Science,” Noa also writes poetry. Her poems, which are unsurprisingly full of ideas from the world of physics, were published in “The Poetry of Science” in 2020 by the Weizmann Institute Publishing House.

For more, you can watch Noa’s lecture at the Icon festival and read articles she wrote for the general public (in Hebrew).

At the age of eight, Tamar Koren began playing the violin. “I fell in love with the sound of this instrument, a sound full of depth and expression. Over the years, playing the violin became a central part of my life: concerts, courses, master classes, auditions, hours of practice every day. I guess anyone who has been involved in the arts or in sports knows how consuming it is, because every hour of the day counts and there is no such thing as a day without training. Even though it was a lot of pressure, it was a magical world. Through it I met a lot of likeminded musicians, I learned how to keep improving, and how to get up and keep going even when I was told I hadn’t played well enough.”

Tamar graduated from the Thelma Yellin High School with honors in both music and the core subjects, and enlisted in the IDF as an “outstanding musician.” After being discharged, she graduated with a B.Mus. Honors in instrumental performance from the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at the Tel Aviv University.

And that’s where the plot took a twist: Tamar decided to make a dramatic change in her professional life and apply to medical school. “I was always fascinated by doctors’ ability to treat patients from a place of knowledge, intellect, and understanding of ‘how the body works’. At some point, I decided that even if I did not continue to be a professional violinist, the music would remain with me, and that maybe, thanks to the perseverance and discipline that I’d learned through my practice, I could continue to pursue another dream.” A year later, she began her medical studies at the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion.

After three years of pre-clinical studies, Tamar was accepted into the M.D./Ph.D track, a dual doctorate in research and medicine. She carries out her research under Professor Asya Rolls’ supervision, in her lab. “I remember when Asya asked me to start the project that later became my doctoral project, she warned me that it was ‘high-risk high-gain’ – a choice that involved a high-risk gamble. How did that not put me off? The subject, encoding immune information in the brain, sounded both fascinating and abstract, and Asya was infectiously enthusiastic for exploring the subject. I was excited to accept the challenge.”

In their study, carried out on mice, Asya and Tamar tried to find out if the brain could monitor and remember inflammatory events. They found several brain areas that were more reactive during inflammation, and by activating one of them, the insula, were able to reproduce the same inflammatory event from which the mice had already recovered. “We were surprised at how specific the recapitulation of the immune information could be – just by reactivating specific neuronal ensembles in the brain, we could induce inflammation at the exact same site in the body where it initially appeared. Furthermore, we discovered that not only could we produce a recurrent inflammatory event but also alleviate inflammation –if instead of activating the relevant brain region we inhibited it. The study clarified how much of an effect the brain has on gastrointestinal diseases that supposedly have nothing to do with the central nervous system.”

Last November, their findings were published in Cell. “It was very exciting to see the interest the article sparkled in the scientific and medical community. Basically, we made progress towards a better understanding of what are now considered psychosomatic phenomena. Though these phenomena have been known for years, their underlying mechanism remains unclear. Our research provided a physiological basis for the psychosomatic phenomenon through finding immune memories in the brain, a discovery that we hope will lead to new therapeutic avenues and better clinical outcomes in certain diseases.”

“During my years in academia, I discovered that the search for creative solutions, whether in research or medical studies, strengthened my confidence in my ability to deal with different situations and challenges, although it took me a while to figure that out. I remember that at school there was an emphasis on showing proficiency and knowledge, being encouraged mostly to answer questions, and less to ask them. This emphasis brought up feelings of insecurity, because in only answering questions, either you were right or wrong. And if you were wrong, maybe next time you would avoid answering even if you knew the answer, and so the vicious circle continued. Curiosity, however, is neither right nor wrong. And as long as curiosity exists, knowledge will follow. What’s so beautiful about academia and science is that you’re constantly motivated to think, be creative and understand that mistakes are an integral part of the process. Through this I discovered that encouraging questions allows your confidence and your own ideas to flourish, while the fear of being wrong decreases. I believe that this is a way to encourage any young girl, however quiet and insecure, to achieve things she only dreamed of.”

Rongying Huang came to the Technion in the summer of 2016 as an international student from China. Today, she is a Ph.D. student in the biotechnology lab, and lives in Haifa with her husband Yang and their two kids – Yuanyi (Yoni) and Miya. She sat down with us to talk about her journey and why she decided to stay.

Why did you decide to come and study at the Technion?

The reason I came to Israel was to take a one-month summer “ulpan” (Hebrew school) as part of my bachelor’s degree. I came in the summer of 2016 to study Hebrew, visited different universities and traveled around, and then decided to come back and study. I was introduced to the universities, research, and innovation companies through the ulpan. For me, the most interesting part was the cutting-edge research.

For me, the most interesting part was the cutting-edge research

How did you find the cultural differences between China and Israel?

As you know, China is a very large country, with huge differences between the north and south, east and the west. I lived in Beijing, which is a junction that connects all the points, and my home was very close to the embassy district and the Lama Temple. It’s common to see some religious people in my neighborhood, which gave me a familiar feeling in the religious neighborhoods in Haifa. I also feel different from other Chinese students and identify more with city people – I don’t see such a big difference between Haifa and Beijing. People here like to socialize in the streets – in cafes, listening to live music – the same as in Beijing. Though I think that Chinese people eat more street food.

I don’t see such a big difference between Haifa and Beijing

Tell me about some your challenges here

The biggest challenge I faced at the beginning of my life in Israel was the gap between my academic knowledge and my life skills. If I did it all over again, I would rely more on others for help. Regarding academic studies, I didn’t think deeply enough about the topics or try to solve problems creatively. I had no idea about life here, and practical skills.

I needed to learn how to solve the problem, not only know how to pass the exam

For my bachelor’s degree in Beijing, I only needed to do my homework and submit it. We weren’t encouraged to ask open questions or carry out research. For my master’s degree at the Technion, my professor always encouraged me to learn how to solve the problem and not only know how to pass the exam. At the time, this was a huge challenge for me and very tough. Luckily, I got a lot of help from my professor, lab colleagues, and other students. It’s no longer a challenge.

I am an only child, as is common in China. I grew up in a loving household with my parents and grandparents. I didn’t need to do housework or learn to cook or take care of other siblings. I never needed to share. When I came to study in Israel, it was my first time living alone. I learned to cook from the internet, and in the beginning, it was hard! But this is something that comes with practice and is easily learned. It’s no longer a challenge for me. Sometimes I make shakshuka for my kids.

Can you tell me about your Ph.D. research?

Today, I’m a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Program for Biotechnology. My research, supervised by Professor Daniel Ramez from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, is on genetically modifying bacteria to fight cancer. We engineer the bacteria gene into a smart agent and design it to deliver the immunotherapeutic drug to the solid tumor area in a local and controlled way.

Why did you decide to stay in Israel?

After my husband’s master’s degree, he continued with his Ph.D. so we could afford to stay here. Then I also found a Ph.D. position at the Technion, so it made sense to stay in Israel.

What’s it like, bringing up children in Israel?

Israel gave me a chance to bring up kids while studying at the same time.

In Israel, there are many differences in bringing up children compared to China. In Beijing, kids go to the hospital whenever they have fever, a cough, a runny nose, or even loss of appetite. We don’t need to make an appointment or go to the local clinic.

In Israel, there are many daycare options, where kids can go starting when they are 3 months old. This has given me the support to go back to work. In Beijing, kindergartens mostly start from 3 years old. They are bigger institutions, and more like schools. Before the age of 3, most kids stay at home, and are looked after by their grandparents, or one of their parents. This means that I wouldn’t have been able to work had I been in Beijing. Many parents (mostly, moms) need to sacrifice their career to stay with their kids. Israel gave me a chance to bring up kids while studying at the same time.

What is special about the Technion, and would you recommend it to others back in China?

After so many years studying in Israel, I don’t have much contact with master’s and Ph.D. students in China. But I have to say, I’ve met and talked to some famous professors who are more like idols or legends in China. Collaboration between China and Israel can really advance progress in science and technology: the Technion has some of the most intelligent people in the world and so many innovative ideas. In China, there is the potential to make these ideas come true. For the Technion, this means expanding the range of research, accelerating startups, and attracting more Chinese students to Israel.

Right now, the combination of my research work and looking after two kids takes up a lot of my time. Before I had kids, I used WeChat and Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Facebook) to introduce Israel and the Technion to Chinese students. People always ask if it is safe here. I would love to help to introduce more people to the Technion – a peaceful place with cutting-edge research.

A peaceful place with cutting-edge research

What advice would you give to another international student who was thinking of coming?

Enjoy the pressure and the challenge. Even though it’s hard, try and embrace the experience.

Two Technion professors will receive the prestigious Israel Prize in May 2022: Prof. Emeritus Joshua Zak of the Faculty of Physics will be awarded the 2022 Israel Prize for Physics and Chemistry Research. Known for the Zak Transform and the Zak Phase, Prof. Zak is awarded for his contribution to the understanding of condensed matter physics. Prof. Emeritus Yoram Palti of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine will receive the 2022 Israel Prize in the Field of Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation. Prof. Palti developed groundbreaking cancer treatments that fight malignant brain tumors using electric pulses in a non-invasive manner.

The prizes were recently announced by Israel’s Minister of Educationת Dr. Yifat Shasha-Biton.

Prof. Emeritus Joshua Zak (left), Prof. Emeritus Yoram Palti (right)

His scientific contributions serve, and will continue to serve, in gaining an understanding of the chemistry and physics of material

According to the Israel Prize Committee, Prof. Zak will be awarded the prize for “the development of mathematical tools such as the ‘Zak Transform’ and the ‘Zak Phase’ for the study of quantum phenomena in crystalline solids. These tools allow for the prediction of materials with unique properties to build electronic devices.” The Committee further emphasized that “…his scientific contributions serve, and will continue to serve, in gaining an understanding of the chemistry and physics of material.”

Technion President Professor Uri Sivan commented: “We are honored and exceptionally proud to congratulate Prof. Joshua Zak on being awarded the Israel Prize, and of this important recognition of his contribution to science. Prof. Zak’s research has led to breakthroughs in an understanding of fundamental phenomena that are presented at the forefront of research into quantum mechanics, while contributing greatly to practical engineering applications. Prof. Zak is a member of the generation of giants that founded the Department of Physics at the Technion, laying the foundations for theoretical physics in Israel. This is the second Israel Prize awarded to Technion researchers within a week, and we are literally bursting with pride.”

Joshua Zak, 93, was born in Vilna in 1929. At the age of 12, he and his family were sent to the ghetto, and later, he was deported to forced labor camps and a concentration camp, during which time he lost both parents. As an adolescent, Zak was forced to join the Death March to the west and was released by and immediately recruited to the Red Army – all before he had reached the age of 16. Following his discharge in 1948 he returned to Vilna and began to attend high school, graduating with honors despite having missed many years of schooling due to the war and his military service. When the Korean War broke out, he was again recruited to the Red Army, but was immediately discharged thanks to his brother, Ben-Zion, who persuaded the authorities to permit Joshua to attend university.

He completed his studies in Physics with distinction at Vilnius University in 1955, while simultaneously earning the title of Lithuanian kayak champion. In the same year, he was accepted to further studies in Leningrad and began studying there, but in 1957 was presented with the opportunity to immigrate to Israel, an opportunity he refused to pass up. Within a short time, he was accepted by the Technion, where he completed his doctoral studies under the supervision of Technion Professor Nathan Rosen, who was Albert Einstein’s student and assistant, and Professor Yoel Racah of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1960, Zak received his D.Sc., spent some time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and then returned to the Technion, where he began studying in the Department of Physics. Ten years later, he founded, and headed, the Solid State Institute at the Technion.

Professor Emeritus Joseph Avron, staff member at the Technion’s Department of Physics, who studied for his doctorate under Prof. Zak, said, “Prof. Zak’s story is one of the meteoric rise of a boy who was almost completely unschooled, and it was only thanks to his phenomenal talent that in just a couple of years he succeeded in catching up, completing the entire curriculum imparted to children by the educational system over a 12-year period”.

Prof. Zak has many achievements in physics to his credit, two of which are named after him: the Zak Transform, which is presently used in signal processing, and the Zak Phase – a unique 1D crystal phase, which he described in an article in Physical Review Letters in 1989. This prediction has been verified in numerous recent experiments and is widely cited.

As mentioned, this is the second Israel Prize awarded to Technion researchers within a week. Last week, the Committee announced that the 2022 Israel Prize for Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation had been awarded to Novocure founder Professor Emeritus Yoram Palti of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion. Novocure has developed an innovative technology for the treatment of cancer, which is currently applied in some 250 medical centers worldwide.

Prof. Yoram Palti developed a groundbreaking method for electrical treatment of several types of cancer

Professor Emeritus Yoram Palti of the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine is the winner of this year’s Israel Prize in the Field of Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation.

The Israel Prize committee, explained its decision: “Prof. Yoram Palti developed a groundbreaking method for electrical treatment of several types of cancer. The treatment is non-invasive and highly selective. His personal story is an inspiration, since this type of breakthrough requires thinking outside of the box and a deep conviction, requiring Prof. Palti to challenge and change existing approaches in this field.” The committee added that, “Prof. Palti is working to expand the use of this technology in order to treat additional types of cancer.”

Technion President Professor Uri Sivan said: “We are proud and absolutely delighted by this important recognition and the prestigious prize awarded to Prof. Palti, who not only developed a new technology, but a groundbreaking new approach to the treatment of cancer – an approach that does not involve chemotherapy or other drugs. Prof. Palti’s work is an excellent example of the integration of engineering and medicine – integration that is among the Technion’s most distinctive hallmarks. Prof. Palti is an outstanding model of the rare ability to translate science into applications that are beneficial to people by combining profound research with an entrepreneurial spirit. Congratulations and well done!”

Prof. Palti was born in Haifa in 1937. As a child, he moved to Tiberias, and later to the U.S. When his family returned to Israel, they settled in Jerusalem, where he completed his schooling at the Beit HaKerem High School (now called Hebrew University High School). In 1955, Yoram Palti began studying at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. At the army’s request, he took a break from his studies to conduct a research project, and then completed a combined M.D. and Ph.D. degree in Medicine. His thesis focused on a subject that would become his life’s work: the effect of electric fields on live tissue.

He was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship from the National Institutes of Health in the United States, and conducted his post-doctoral research at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. Within one year, he was appointed to the university’s faculty. In 1969, he returned to the Hebrew University, but two years later, was asked to help establish the Technion’s Medical School. Since then, he has linked his fate to that of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion.

Alongside his original research work and management positions at the Faculty of Medicine and at the Rappaport Research Institute, Prof. Palti dedicated himself to translating his innovative research to the clinical field. As a result, he became a serial entrepreneurial – founding a succession of companies, including Carmel Biosensors (monitoring glucose among diabetes patients), EchoSense (diagnosing heart disease), O2Cure (respiratory assistance and artificial lungs), and BetaVive (treatment for diabetes).

The highlight of Prof. Palti’s research and entrepreneurial activities is NovoCure, the company that he founded in 2000, which developed an innovative treatment for cancer patients. The treatment is based on special electric fields (Tumor Treating Fields) that attack the cancerous cells without harming surrounding healthy cells, and therefore do not produce side effects or other risks. Clinical trials began in 2004, and their success led to FDA approval for NovoCure’s technology for the treatment of three types of cancer. Later, the technology received CE approval (the European equivalent of the FDA) for treating all types of solid cancer. Treatments for six additional types of cancer, including pancreatic, liver, ovarian, and lung cancer, are currently at various stages of clinical trials. To date, approximately 20,000 patients have been treated with NovoCure’s technology in around 250 medical centers around the world. The company’s CEO is Asaf Danziger and its Executive Chairperson is Bill Doyle.

Professor Emeritus Peretz Lavie, President of the Technion from 2009 to 2019, has been bestowed with the Commander’s Medal – the highest award in the French “Ordre des Palmes Academiques” (Palm Order). The Order, founded by Napoleon in 1808, is conferred upon prominent figures from academia and the worlds of culture and education for academic excellence and significant contributions to science, education, and the academic world.

Prof. Peretz Lavie

Prof. Lavie, a world-renowned expert in sleep research, is an entrepreneur and one of the founders of Itamar Medical and other biomedical engineering companies. Prior to his appointment as President of the Technion, he served in other senior positions, including as Dean of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and as Vice President of the Technion for Public Relations and Resource Development. In 2015, while serving as President of the Technion, he was appointed Chairman of the Committee of University Heads. Over the years, Prof. Lavie has been a consultant and global expert in the field of sleep, and was involved in several significant public decisions, including the cancellation of “zero hour” classes in elementary schools, the introduction of daylight-saving time, the extension of the minimum sleep time in the IDF, and the “Quiet Wave” radio station during the first Gulf War.

Prof. Lavie currently serves as Chairman of the Israel Friends of the Technion and Chairman of the National Council for Civil Research and Development.

עיטורי מסדר הדקלים של האקדמאים שמעניקה ממשלת צרפת

Ordre des Palmes Academiques medals

We recently released the February edition of our e-newsletter, Technion ‘LIVE,’ which includes a special interview with Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan, a story about a possible cure for ALS, an algorithm that fights antibiotic resistance, scientific experiments in far-away galaxies, and breaking news on two Technion professors who will receive the prestigious Israel Prize in May 2022.

Prof. Emeritus Joshua Zak (pictured, left) of the Faculty of Physics will be awarded the 2022 Israel Prize in the Field of Physics and Chemistry Research. Known for the Zak Transform and the Zak Phase, Prof. Zak is awarded for his contribution to the understanding of condensed matter physics.

Prof. Emeritus Yoram Palti (pictured, right) of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine will receive the 2022 Israel Prize in the Field of Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation. Prof. Palti developed groundbreaking cancer treatments that fight malignant brain tumors using electric pulses in a non-invasive manner.

To read the latest edition of ‘Technion LIVE,’ click here. To get our e-newsletter straight to your inbox, click here.

Two Technion faculty members have won Proof of Concept (PoC) grants from the European Commission for Research (ERC). The prestigious grants, each worth €150,000, are intended to promote the application and commercialization of academic research, including the establishment of a start-up company. They are awarded only to researchers who have won an ERC grant in the past. In the current round, 348 applications were submitted of which 166 research proposals were selected. Eighteen of the winning proposals were from Israelis, two of whom are faculty members at the Technion: Professor Shulamit Levenberg from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, and Professor Shahar Kvatinsky from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Prof. Shulamit Levenberg from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering won an award for her innovative development for 3D bioprinting and post-printing tissue growth: Print and Grow

Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting is one of the most promising technologies in the world for tissue engineering, and its corresponding leading technology is bioprinting using suspended hydrogels. In this method, hydrogel living cells are incorporated within bioinks extruded layer by layer onto a granular support material which undergo gelation through diverse cross-linking mechanisms. This technology provides precise fabrication of complex structures but turning the resulting structure into quasi-natural tissue requires additional steps after printing, including cell growth in those structures. At these stages a significant problem arises: the printed structures undergo various structural changes, including contraction and deformation, and the result is a gap between the desired engineered tissue and that actually obtained.

The solution developed at the Levenberg Laboratory is the Print and Grow concept. “With this technology,” explained Prof. Levenberg, “we achieve long-term structural stability of the printed structures, through a unique microwave, improved structural support and continuous real-time monitoring of tissue growth. The first experiments we did with the method led to a high life of the engineered tissue, while maintaining its desired structural properties (shape and size). We intend to improve the properties of the support materials and develop techniques suitable for different sizes, different tissue types, and production on a large scale. And the efficiency of bio-printing for tissue engineering, discovery of new drugs, and the civilized meat industry.”

Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received a grant for the development of Real Processing in Phase Change Memory (PCM). One of the bottlenecks in computer performance today is the communication between the two “brains” of the traditional computer – the processor and the memory. Although the capabilities of processors are improving at a rapid pace, the “dialogue” between the processor and memory requires a relatively long time that prolongs the performance of tasks on the computer. Based on the previous ERC grant he received (Starting Grants category), Prof. Kvatinsky developed an innovative unit called mMPU that combines processing and storage in the same cell. As part of the new grant, he intends to connect this to the “Phase Change Memory” (PCM) technology, which is based on monitoring changes in the electrical resistance of the material. This technology is already commercially available, and according to Prof. Kvatinsky, “A successful demonstration of a mMPU unit based on phase change memory may lead to the design and construction of fast and energy efficient computers, that are cheaper than existing computers. Such a breakthrough will dramatically affect different applications such as artificial intelligence, databases, and genomics.”

For the announcements of the ERC grants:

https://erc.europa.eu/news/erc-2021-proof-of-concept-grants-results

Machine Learning Antibiotic Prescriptions Can Help Minimize Resistance

Antibiotics are a double-edged sword: on the one hand, antibiotics are essential to curing bacterial infections. On the other, their use promotes the appearance and proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Using genomic sequencing techniques and machine learning analysis of patient records, the researchers have developed an antibiotic prescribing algorithm which cuts the risk of emergence of antibiotic resistance by half.

The paper, published earlier this month in Science, is a collaboration between the research groups of Professor Roy Kishony from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Biology and the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, and Professors Varda Shalev, Gabriel Chodick, and Jacob Kuint at Maccabi KSM Research and Innovation Center headed by Dr. Tal Patalon. Focusing on two very common bacterial infections, urinary tract infections and wound infections, the paper describes how each patient’s past infection history can be used to choose the best antibiotic to prescribe them to reduce the chances of antibiotic resistance emerging.

Prof. Roy Kishony

Clinical treatment of infections focuses on correctly matching an antibiotic to the resistance profile of the pathogen, but even such correctly matched treatments can fail as resistance can emergence during treatment itself. “We wanted to understand how antibiotic resistance emerges during treatment and find ways to better tailor antibiotic treatment for each patient to not only correctly match the patient’s current infection susceptibility, but also to minimize their risk of infection recurrence and gain of resistance to treatment”, said Prof. Kishony.

The key to the success of the approach was understanding that the emergence of antibiotic resistance could be predicted in individual patients’ infections. Bacteria can evolve by randomly acquiring mutations that makes them resistant, but the randomness of the process makes it hard to predict and to avoid. However, the researchers discovered that in most patients’ infections resistance was not acquired by random mutations. Instead, resistance emerged due to reinfection by existing resistant bacteria from the patient’s own microbiome. The researchers turned these findings into an advantage: they proposed matching an antibiotic not only to the susceptibility of the bacteria causing the patient’s current infection, but also to the bacteria in their microbiome that could replace it.

“We found that the antibiotic susceptibility of the patient’s past infections could be used to predict their risk of returning with a resistant infection following antibiotic treatment’ explained Dr. Mathew Stracy, the first author of the paper. “Using this data, together with the patient’s demographics like age and gender, allowed us to develop the algorithm.”

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Israel Science Foundation within the Israel Precision Medicine Partnership program, the Ernest and Bonnie Beutler Research Program of Excellence in Genomic Medicine, the European Research Council (ERC), the Wellcome Trust, and the D. Dan & Betty Kahn Foundation.

“I hope to see the algorithm applied at the point of care, providing doctors with better tools to personalize antibiotic treatments to improve treatment and minimize the spread of resistance,” said Dr. Tal Patalon.

Click here for the paper in Science.