2022 - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

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For the second year in a row, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is Europe’s top-ranked university in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), according to the prestigious international CSRankings. The consecutive win further establishes the Technion’s position as a leading institution in the field.

The Technion’s efforts to promote its activities and standing in the field of artificial intelligence continue to bear fruit. In addition to claiming the top spot for Europe and Israel, the Technion placed 16th in the world in AI, and 10th in the world in the subfield of learning systems.

The Technion’s in-depth and ongoing activity in the various fields of AI is reflected, among other things, in the recruitment of researchers and students from all Technion units to promote interdisciplinary AI research, and increasing the number of new programs and initiatives in its various fields with leading companies in knowledge-intensive industries, top universities and research institutions around the world.

Against this background, the Technion is establishing its own AI community that will empower its student body and researchers working in all fields of artificial intelligence and deepen the Technion’s many collaborations with industry and academia in these fields.

Some 150 Technion researchers are currently involved in Tech.AI, the Technion’s Center for Artificial Intelligence (formerly MLIS, the Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems). Tech.AI researchers apply advanced methodologies and tools at the forefront of artificial intelligence in various fields, including data science, medical research, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, architecture, and biology. The Tech.AI activity is led by Prof. Shie Mannor from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Prof. Assaf Schuster from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science; and Prof. Shai Shen-Orr from the Technion’s Rapaport Faculty of Medicine.

Prof. Shie Mannor

“The Technion continues to establish its position as the leading research institution in Israel and Europe in the core areas of artificial intelligence, thanks to the unique work environment in this field at the Technion,” said Prof. Mannor. “This environment currently comprises about 150 researchers from a variety of faculties, research centers with extensive activity, and a growing number of study programs in the field and research initiatives and programs that are the result of collaborations between the Technion and the leading companies and organizations in Israel and the world.”

“Solidifying the Technion’s position as a pioneer and world leader in the field of AI and spreading the knowledge acquired in this process to the commercial world in all its aspects, are very important national tasks,” added Prof. Schuster. “Tech.AI operates around the clock and through a variety of channels and activities to deepen Technion education that promotes AI research and its application in all faculties and research centers and to provide students and researchers dealing in all AI fields with the most supportive environment.”

Prof. Assaf Schuster

According to Prof. Shen-Orr, who leads the biomed activity and AI solutions for the health sector within the Tech.AI framework, “the Tech.AI center brings together all of the Technion’s biomed activity in the field of AI and positions it in a dominant place in the world, with extensive partnerships with leading companies such as Pfizer and IBM and leading medical institutions in Israel and the world, including the Rambam Health Care Campus and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Prof. Shai Shen-Orr

Recently, an agreement was signed to establish a Zimin Institute at the Technion for AI Solutions in Healthcare at the Technion that will operate as part of Tech.AI. The Institute will promote interdisciplinary projects and develop technologies based on Big Data and computational learning to improve human health. It will support selected projects, giving preference to proposals that have an applied component and with the intention of establishing startup companies.”

Companies in the AI industry and business are invited to contact Gady Paran, the institute’s marketing director, to establish relationships and cooperation in a variety of AI fields.

Prof. Peretz Lavie, former President of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, was on September 6^th bestowed with the highest honor of the French Order of Academic Palms (Ordre des Palmes Académiques). 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.

His Excellency, the French Ambassador to Israel, Eric Danon, conferring the commander necklet upon Prof. Peretz Lavie

The moving ceremony was held at the Tel Aviv residence of His Excellency, the French ambassador to Israel Eric Danon and his wife Marie-Christine Dupuy-Danon. The ambassador conferred the honor upon Prof. Lavie for his contribution to the spread of scientific knowledge around the world and his involvement in French-Israeli collaborations that influenced the course of the modern history of the two countries.

His Excellency, the French Ambassador to Israel, Eric Danon

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. Before his appointment as President of the Technion, he served in other Technion senior positions, including Dean of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Vice President for Public Relations and Resource Development.

In 2015, while serving as President of the Technion, Prof. Lavie was appointed chairman of the Committee of University Heads. Over the years, he has been a consultant and global expert in the field of sleep and was involved in several significant public decisions, including the cancellation of the early-morning “zero hour” classes in elementary schools, the introduction of Daylight Saving Time, the extension of the minimum sleep time in the Israel Defense Forces and the “Quiet Wave” radio station during the first Gulf War 31 years ago.

Prof. Peretz Lavie

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

The Technion and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have signed a partnership agreement with IBM Research to advance artificial intelligence capabilities and applications in Israel. The collaboration was announced this week at a conference held by IBM in Tel Aviv to mark 50 years since the establishment of the IBM Research Lab in Israel.

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a role in our daily lives and is now a central growth engine in the business sector. The rapidly growing amount of data that needs to be handled demand that organizations develop advanced technological capabilities and apply AI on a large scale—a challenge that requires significant investment in R&D. In light of the fact that Israel has a severe shortage of people with advanced degrees in computer science, and given higher education’s need for funding and skills from the business world, IBM Research has decided to launch a collaboration with the Technion and the Hebrew University.

Under the terms of the three-year agreement, research will be conducted to search for new solutions in AI in the following three areas: natural language processing, accelerating discoveries for new drugs, and multi-cloud computing to support decentralized AI computation. IBM will fund these studies, which will be carried out by doctoral students at the Technion and Hebrew University, totaling several million NIS.

Pictured left to right: Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research, Dr. Dario Gil; Executive Vice President for Research of the Technion, Prof. Koby Rubinstein; Vice President AI and Director of IBM Research Lab in Israel, Dr. Aya Soffer; and President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Prof. Asher Cohen Credit : Daniel Elior

Prof. Asher Cohen, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: “The combination of IBM, one of the world’s leading technological companies, and our top-notch researchers offers an optimal edge to the knowledge and computing revolutions. With growing demand for experts specializing in machine learning, algorithms, and computer science, the relationship with IBM, even from the earliest stages of research, will lead to outstanding breakthroughs in both science and medicine.”

Prof. Koby Rubinstein, Executive Vice President for Research at the Technion: “The Technion and the IBM Research Lab in Israel have had a very close relationship for years, ever since the lab was founded. In recent years, the Technion has been home to a wide range of intensive research activities in AI. This partnership with IBM, which will be led by researchers in the field, will have a multiplier effect on AI research and development. We are delighted by this research collaboration, which will contribute much to both organizations.”

Dr. Aya Soffer, Vice President of AI Technologies and Director of IBM Research: “The Israeli high-tech industry is receiving a significant boost to its continued success. The collaboration with the Technion and Hebrew University will give rise to groundbreaking research aimed at leveraging artificial intelligence and improving our lives. I am proud that IBM Research has decided to invest in this important undertaking we have initiated here in Israel.”

A large delegation of presidents from the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities visited the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa at the end of August. They were accompanied by Israel’s Ambassador to Canada Dr. Ronen Hoffman.

The guests were welcomed by Technion President, Professor Uri Sivan and Vice President for Foreign Relations and Resource Development Professor Alon Wolf. Prof. Sivan presented the Technion’s history and the Technion’s significant contributions to the development of the State of Israel.

The presidents’ delegation with the Technion management

The U15 presidents delegation with the Technion management

“The Technion is undergoing a significant change from a field-oriented approach to a challenge-oriented approach,” Prof. Sivan told the guests. “In this process, we lower the walls between the faculties to promote fruitful and useful interdisciplinary research.”

The Technion President added “we are also working to lower the barriers between industry and academia so we can help industry in carrying out long-term research and connect through it to the main challenges facing humanity. We are proactively working to commercialize our research to impact society and the economy. This year, the Technion will establish 16 new startups based on the work of our researchers. We are also undergoing a fundamental change in the pedagogical aspect that will introduce humanistic subjects into training programs, so that students leave the Technion with a worldview that will help them understand the consequences of their professional decisions.”

Technion President, Professor Uri Sivan and Vice President for Foreign Relations and Resource Development Professor Alon Wolf with the guests

The visitors met with the management of the Technion, including Rona Samler, General Manager of T3 – Technion Technology Transfer Office, Distinguished Professor Ilan Marek, head of the Center for Sustainable Processes and Catalysis, Professor Noam Ziv, head of the Technion Human Health Initiative, Prof. Ezri Tarazi, Head of the t-Hub and Professor Shai Shen-Orr, Director at the Tech AI center. They also visited the modern Mehoudar Center for Inventors, which was inaugurated this summer.

Rona Samler, General Manager of T3 – Technion Technology Transfer Office

The heads of the following universities participated in the visit: McGill, British Columbia, Waterloo, Calgary, Montreal, Simon Fraser, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Western, York, Ottawa, Carleton, Concordia, Laval, and Dalhousie, as well as a representative of the Canadian Research Universities group.

The delegation in the Mehoudar Center with Prof. Ezri Tarazi, Head of the T-Hub and Mr. Boaz Drori, Director of the Mehoudar Center

“It is basically a ‘therapeutic cancer vaccine’,” Prof. Arie Admon from the Technion Faculty of Biology explains the mechanism behind the immunotherapy cancer treatment that is the focus of his lab. “It activates the body’s own immune system against the tumor.” Immunotherapy treatments are coming to prominence in recent years, surpassing traditional chemotherapy in its ability to treat more than one type of cancer. Prof. Admon aims to increase the scope of cancers that can be treated by immunotherapy, and to reduce the treatment’s cost. The work of his Ph.D. student Sofia Khazan-Kost, recently published in Journal for Immunotherapy in Cancer (JITC) does just that.

Khazan-Kost’s study, an initiative of Dr. Michael Peled, senior physician at Sheba Medical Center, focused on lung cancer patients. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death in both men and women, killing over 1.5 million people around the world annually. Khazan-Kost developed and proved the effectiveness of a simple technique to collect patient-specific tumor peptides that would improve matching the precise treatment to each individual patient. The peptides, which are short bits of protein, were collected from the pleural effusion of lung cancer patients – from liquid discharge that amasses in the patients’ chest and needs to be routinely removed, as it restricts breathing. This liquid would normally be disposed of. Khazan-Kost’s technique, therefore, doesn’t subject the patient to any additional tests, but makes use of “trash”.

Prof. Arie Admon

Our cells routinely present on their surface, with the help of molecules called HLA, bits and pieces of the proteins (peptides) degraded inside. It is one of the ways each cell communicates to its environment what goes on inside it. This communication becomes important when the cell is infected by a virus, in which case it will display small pieces of viral proteins; or, if the cell turns cancerous, in which case various peptides from aberrant proteins will be displayed. The immune system, seeing these, is supposed to attack and destroy the cell, protecting the body from the disease.

A vaccine, such as the Coronavirus vaccine we’ve become familiar with, induces the immune system to peptides from the bacteria or virus it’s supposed to protect against, in this way “training” it and improving its response. A cancer vaccine is intended to work similarly, training the immune system to attack cancer cells. However, unlike bacteria and viruses, cancer is not an intruder in the body that can be easily “shown” to the immune system. It is an abnormality that occurs within the cells of the body. The aberrant peptides that the diseased cell presents can thus be as different between patients as one patient is from another. This makes generating a vaccine to help multiple patients an extremely complicated task.

Sofia Khazan-Kost

The key to Khazan-Kost’s technique are the HLA molecules that present the aforementioned peptides on the cell surface. These molecules, have some variation between people, and are in fact key to transplant organ matching. They are located in the outer membrane of almost every cell in the body, and are also, together with the peptide cargo they carry, released by the cells into the different body fluids, such as blood and the lymph. In advanced stage lung cancer patients, they also find their way into the pleural effusion. Researchers have tried to use HLA molecules isolated from the cancer cells to acquire tumor-specific peptides for immunotherapy development. However, the quantity of such molecules in a tumor needle biopsy was found to be insufficient. Pleural effusions, which need to be removed from the patient’s lungs as part of treatment, provided the needed access point.

Prof. Admon’s team were able to filter out a large amount of HLA molecules from patients’ pleural effusions, and then used mass spectrometry analysis to identify the peptides that the HLA molecules presented. Using this information, they were able to reconstruct the aberrant tumor-specific proteins. These, they showed, can be used for research, for matching existing treatments to patients, and in the future – to initiate the kind of immune response one would want in a vaccine.

Dr. Michael Peled

“Patients who suffer from pleural effusions secondary to cancer are in late stages of the disease,” Dr. Peled explains. “In those stages, the tumor is inoperable due to metastasis. This is the reason there’s no sufficient tissue to analyze. We hope that our ability to obtain tumor peptides from pleural effusions can lead to novel avenues of treatment for late-stage cancer.”

This is the first time that pleural effusions are put to the scientific use of identifying their repertoires of HLA-bound peptides. The same method used by Khazan-Kost and her colleagues, who focused on cancer, could also be used to diagnose and study other diseases that produce such effusions.

This study was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the Israel Cancer Association.

L-R: Lung cancer causes the development of pleural effusions; HLA molecules drawn from the pleural effusions, which need to be routinely removed for the patient’s welfare; the relevant peptides are separated for mass spectrometry analysis.

Prof. Hossam Haick of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has won three prestigious European research grants totaling 4.2 million euros for his research group. He will also serve as chairman and coordinator of one of the projects that has 22 partners and a total funding of 14 million euros. Winning the grants was preceded by intensive work by the members of Prof. Haick’s research group — the administrative manager of the group Liat Tsuri, and Dr. Rotem Vishinkin, a scientific researcher and project manager.

This is an unprecedented achievement by Prof. Haick, a faculty member at the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI). Prof. Haick also currently serves as the Dean of Undergraduate studies at the Technion and is an expert in the field of nanotechnology and non-invasive disease diagnosis.

The grants are awarded within the framework of the Horizon Europe program, which supports consortia that produce cooperation among many entities in the European Union while focusing on practical solutions to the challenges of the time – all based on innovative technologies whose development demands extensive international cooperation.

“This is an extraordinary achievement by Prof. Hossam Haick,” said Dr. Asi Cohen-Dotan, Head of the Technion R&D Foundation’s Research Promotion Unit. “Prof. Haick continues to lead successes in very competitive tracks in the European research programs, while performing a significant organizational role.” This year, the Technion succeeded in increasing both the number of grants it receives from this program and their financial range, which has made it a noteworthy player in European activity in applied research.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas R. Nides visited the Technion as part of a tour of Haifa. The ambassador arrived on campus via the new cable car and, following a short tour of the Technion’s David and Janet Polak Visitors Center, met with Technion President Professor Uri Sivan and other senior members of the Technion’s management.

“It’s a big honor to be here,” said Ambassador Nides at the meeting with President Sivan. “The Technion’s reputation precedes it. I first heard about the Technion when I was 14 – the fact that it was built before the country was founded, its extensive contribution to Israel’s development, and its role as the cradle of the Start-Up Nation. Moreover, the establishment of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute in New York together with Cornell University generated a very positive attitude toward Israel and towards the Technion’s contribution to New York City’s economic development.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas R. Nides (left) with Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan

The visit focused on research collaborations with partners in the U.S. and the importance of human diversity in academia – a subject close to the ambassador’s heart. President Sivan and Professor Adi Salzberg, VP for Diversity and Inclusion at the Technion, told the ambassador about the ways that the Technion is expanding diversity and promoting an inclusive and safe atmosphere for everyone on campus regardless of their social, national, religious, or gender identities.

President Uri Sivan emphasized the importance of opening the doors of the Technion to every talented young man and woman regardless of their financial situation. “With the help of the Friends of the Technion in Israel and around the world, the Technion offers students an extensive support network through special scholarships and loans, since we are committed to ensuring that no student will stop studying due to financial difficulties. The Technion is the leading university in Israel when it comes to providing student housing and we will continue building additional dormitories for our students.”

U.S. Ambassador Nides looking at the nano-bible at the David and Janet Polak Visitors Center

President Sivan also said that “in the distant past, our research collaborations mainly involved partners in the United States, but this changed when Israel joined European research programs. To expand the scope of our collaborations with American institutions, it is important to expand the U.S. – Israel Binational Science Foundation.”

Ambassador Nides holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. He served as the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources and other senior positions in the public and business sectors. He was appointed to his current position at the end of 2021.

U.S. Ambassador Nides with the Technion’s management

The unique hardware hackathon that recently took place at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology offered participating students a complex technological challenge: to develop an artificial intelligence-based accelerator combined with a RISC-V processor. The Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) hackathon, which took place in the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, provided students with the opportunity to work on an important technological challenge in the field of hardware, under the guidance of mentors from both the Technion and from industry.

Professor Shahar Kvatinsky, who is a member of the Faculty of Electrical and computer Engineering, said “we constantly ask ourselves what the role of academia in the 21st century should be, since it no longer has a monopoly on knowledge. Although students have access to information, academia is still very relevant in its ability to teach the students to analyze and solve difficult problems and to introduce them to friends and partners for the journey ahead. This is precisely the goal of the hackathon: to challenge the students with a complicated problem that doesn’t have a single solution, and to encourage them to be creative, to innovate and to work in a team.”

Students Ido Bleiberg and Assaf Klein won first place for coming up with the fastest and most precise solution. Second place went to Chris Shakkour and Laama Huary for the most creative solution. The audience choice award was presented to Zeev Zuckerman and Ari Rozov.

Laama Huary, from the team that won second place, said that “after 30 hours of staring at a screen in order to accelerate the same code, I should have been tired, bored, and indifferent. Yet, somehow, moving back and forth between the processor, the memory and the accelerator, and returning again and again to the same chain of thought gave me energy to continue until the last minute. I would like to thank my partner, Chris, for an amazing experience, the Technion and the Faculty on the motivation we received, and the mentors who generously shared their knowledge with us and didn’t allow our optimism to wane.”

The event was initiated by Professors Freddy Gabbay and Shahar Kvatinsky and was produced by Tami Sasporta and Dolly Gitzis from the Faculty’s Industry Club as well as Maayan Hagar from the Technion’s Entrepreneurship Center. During the hackathon, the students heard short lectures from representatives of the main sponsors: Intel, Elbit, Apple, Mobileye, and Speedata.

This year’s Annual Project Presentation Conference at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering was awarded to students Maya Almagor and Roni Baron. Under the supervision of Professor Yuval Garini, the two developed a technology for spectral imaging of cancer biopsies for precision medicine. According to the students, “Personalized medicine is a developing trend that is driving a revolution in the treatment of cancer. To develop personalized treatment protocols, biomarkers that indicate the presence of specific proteins in the tissue must be detected. In our project, we developed a novel method to efficiently identify multiple biomarkers using a spectral imaging optical system to generate a molecular profile of pathological biopsies labeled with different fluorescent dyes.” As mentioned, the technology will help to analyze cancer cells in support of personalized treatment.

Roni Baron (L) and Maya Almagor

Dean of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Professor Haim Azhari, said “The Project Presentation Conference is the culmination of yearlong research. While working on their projects, the students were required to carry out all stages of the process from concept to realization, starting with a particular medical problem, using their imagination and creative thinking skills to ultimately craft a practical solution. To achieve this, they had to apply the knowledge they acquired here at the Technion during their studies in all aspects of biomedical engineering. We are in no doubt that this hands-on experience exposes them to the biomedical industry as it prepares them for their career.”

Conference participants included 61 fourth-year students. They presented 30 projects to the judges – 40 faculty staff members and alumni now working in the industry. The project course was administered by staff members Dr. Firas Mawase and Associate Professor Nati Korin, and teaching assistants Merav Belenkovich and Rotem Shapira. As is the custom every year, the prizes awarded to the winning projects were donated by Dr. Doron and Liat Adler of Sanolla Medical Devices.

Second prize was presented to Gal Carmely and Noam Shalem, supervised by Dr. Alon Sinai, Assistant Professor Firas Mawase, and Dr. Lior Lev Tov – a faculty alumnus who holds a dual degree in medicine and biomedical engineering and is currently a neurosurgeon and biomedical engineer. One of the state-of-the-art methods for treating tremor in Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor patients is using noninvasive focused ultrasound that induces ablation of a specific target area in the brain. However, identifying the treatment target in the current method lacks a high spatial precision. In this project, the students used advanced methods in imaging, signal processing, and machine learning in MRI data. Then, they developed a novel and more precise method for detecting the target location.

Third prize went to Ofri Vizenblit and Noga Erez, under the supervision of Assistant Professor Assaf Zinger (who is also a faculty alumnus and presently a member of the Technion staff), for the development of nanometric particles for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer – a disease which has no present effective treatment. Baraah Baryhe and Belal Awaad, supervised by Gili Kamara and Dr. Firas Mawase, took fourth place for their development of an alternative keyboard for patients with myopathic disease (myopathies are neuromuscular disorders). Fifth place was given to Ido Rachbuch and Perla Namour, supervised by Moran Levi and Prof. Nati Korin, for their investigation of microparticles for targeted treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms. The Audience Favorite prize was won by Mais Hadid and Sabry Assaf, under the supervision of Noam Keidar, Galya Segal, and Associate Professor Yael Yaniv, for their development of a wearable device for epileptic seizure detection and prediction.

For the booklet of abstracts from the Conference, click here.