2022 - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

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The Technion was ranked in 83^rd place on the list of the world’s top 100 universities according to the Shanghai Ranking, the foremost index in the world for ranking institutions of higher education. The new ranking, published today (August 15, 2022), reveals that the Technion improved by 11 places compared to last year, where it was listed in 94^th place.

Since 2012, the Technion has consistently appeared on the Shanghai Ranking Top 100 list (aside from 2020), and this year’s ranking is the highest that the Technion has received in the last four years.

Moreover, the Technion is ranked among the Top 50 institutions in the world in three categories: Aerospace Engineering (Technion is #22), Telecommunication Engineering (#40) and Automation & Control (#49). The index also places the Technion in the #51-75 range for Chemistry and for Transportation Science & Technology.

“The Technion’s presence on the list of the world’s top 100 universities and its improved ranking for two years in a row are a significant and important achievement,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “It signifies international recognition of the Technion’s academic and research excellence, and I am very proud of our outstanding faculty. The Technion will continue to invest resources and effort in order to continue to improve in upcoming years. Our strength and success lie in our excellent human capital, which spearheads the numerous achievements and breakthroughs in research and teaching. These successes are the result of hard work and diligence by the academic and administrative faculty, faculty deans and the Technion’s management.

“The Technion’s placement in the Shanghai Ranking and others is not the be-all and end-all, and we will continue to strive for excellence using all the tools at our disposal,” the Technion President emphasized. “The global academic competition is rapidly intensifying, and while many governments around the world are constantly increasing their investments in academia and research, academic development in Israel largely relies on donations, and these are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain.

“In order for Israel to continue to improve its standing at the forefront of global research and to ensure the future of its universities, economy and security, the government must significantly increase its financial investment in research and teaching and adopt a friendlier approach toward admitting foreign students and faculty members. I am delighted that three Israeli academic institutions are listed among the world’s Top 100 universities, but it’s important to remember that without government support and globalization of research institutes, it will be hard for us to remain on the list.”

The Shanghai Ranking, which has been published annually since 2003, evaluates the level of academic institutions around the world according to objective criteria that include the number of Nobel Prize laureates and winners of other prestigious prizes, the number of scientific articles published in leading journals such as Nature and Science, and other indicators relative to the university’s size. The scrupulous Chinese survey examines 1,200 universities, of which 500 are designated leading universities.

This year’s list of the world’s best universities is once again headed by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge and Berkeley.

Click here for the complete Shanghai Rankings for 2022.

Researchers in the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology will present the decryption of Siemens’ programmable logic controller (PLC) firmware at the prestigious Black Hat Hacker Convention in Las Vegas. The findings of the study were forwarded to the company.

Black Hat is an internationally recognized cybersecurity event series providing the information security community with the latest cutting-edge research, developments and trends in the field.

The research project was led by the Head of the Technion Hiroshi Fujiwara Cyber Security Research Center, Professor Eli Biham, along with Dr. Sara Bitan and M.Sc. students Maxim Barsky, Alon Dankner and Idan Raz.

Prof. Eli Biham

The group succeeded in hacking the ET200 SP Open Controller, CPU 1515sp, of Siemens’ Simatic S7 series, which represents a new concept in controller planning among numerous vendors. The concept is based on the integration of a standard operating system. In this case, the Windows 10 operating system was integrated into the CPU 1515sp. These controllers are used in various civil and military applications, including transportation systems, factories, power stations, smart buildings, traffic lights, and more. Their purpose is to provide automated process controls that delivers an optimal, fast response to variations in environmental conditions.

Attacks against PLCs have posed a challenge for Siemens, which is considered a vendor that meets the highest security standards in the industry. The S7 PLC series is perceived as innovative and highly secure, largely thanks to the integration of built-in cryptographic mechanisms.

Dr. Sara Bitan

The Technion researchers attacked the CPU 1515sp and, for the first time, decrypted the firmware, which is common to all PLCs in the series. The successful attack enabled the researchers to study the software characteristics. They say that the attack exposed possible vulnerabilities in this PLC and in other controllers in the series, intensifying the need for improved security of these devices. Considering that they are deployed in critical infrastructure and systems such as power plants, water facilities, transportation systems, etc., attacks by hostile elements could pose a danger to everyday life and critical functions.

Dr. Sara Bitan and Alon Dankner will be presenting the research at the Black Hat Convention in Las Vegas.

M.Sc. student Alon Dankner

This year, one of Israel’s most prestigious and poignant educational programs, the Israel Scholarship Education Foundation (ISEF) mark 45 years since its establishment, unfortunately coinciding with the passing of Lily Safra, one of its key founders and the former Honorary Chair of the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation.

The ISEF Foundation was founded in 1977 by Edmond J. Safra z”l and his wife Lily Safra, together with Nina Weiner, cofounder and Chairwoman Emerita of the philanthropic organization. Madame Safra, a renowned philanthropist for educational, cultural, and social causes in Israel and aboard, unfortunately passed away recently.

Lily Safra Z”L. [Photo by Erez Lichtfeld].

Lily Safra received an honorary doctorate degree from the Technion in 2018 for significant charitable donations to important causes, and specifically for her support of the ISEF program that has helped hundreds of students from the Technion, as well as for her generous donations to support the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. In 2019, Weiner also received a Technion honorary doctorate degree.

Opening the doors to academic excellence for tomorrow’s scientific leaders

ISEF was established with the goal of narrowing Israel’s socioeconomic gaps by transforming Israel’s disadvantaged communities through access to higher education opportunities for underserved children. ISEF achieves this by awarding university scholarships to promising young students from a wide range of cultural and ethnic groups who share the Foundation’s values and meet the criteria for support – financial need, scholastic excellence, and leadership potential. ISEF supports students throughout their academic journey – from their B.A. through their master’s and Ph.D., and even for their postdoctoral studies.

In addition to access to academic opportunities, ISEF provides students with wraparound support and access to personal development programs that help ensure the program’s impressive graduation rate of over 95%. The program has produced 35 professors and 70 Ph.D. lecturers at Israel’s top universities, including the Technion.

Technion students shine with ISEF’s support

ISEF currently supports several Technion Ph.D. candidates taking part in breakthrough research groups:

Mor Elgarisi

Mor Elgarisi from Karmiel, a small town in Northern Israel, earned his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from a local college in his hometown, achieving summa cum laude. Mor took part in the Technion’s graduate program in Mechanical Engineering in Prof. Moran Bercovici’s Microfluidic Technologies Laboratory, entering the direct track to a Ph.D.

Israel Gabay

Israel Gabay grew up in Qiryat Shemona. He began his studies in the Technion’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and, thanks to academic excellence, later transferred to the Mechanical Engineering Faculty, where he earned his bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude. During his bachelor’s degree, Israel was recognized on the Technion President’s List for Academic Achievements five times, as well as by the Dean’s List for Academic Excellence and currently he is on a direct path to a Ph.D.

Both Mor and Israel were proud to have a key role in the Fluidic Shaping experiment recently tested by Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe in space. Stibbe, who took part in the Rakia mission that was a collaboration between Axiom Space, NASA Ames Research Center, the Israeli Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology, and the Ramon Foundation, successfully tested the ability to manufacture optical elements in space for the first time, creating a solid lens from liquid.

Hila Tarazi-Riess is another remarkable Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering. Hila is from Giv’at Ze’ev and her research focuses on evaluating the impact of physiologically digested carrageenan (a common food additive) on human gut microbiome. In 2018, Hila won first prize for ‘Innovative Product Development,’ led by the EIT Food Consortium in Europe.

Hila Tarazi-Riess

ISEF as a supporting pillar of the Technion’s academic excellence

Several members of Technion faculty are proud ISEF alumni:

Dr. Yaniv Romano is an Assistant Professor at the Departments of Computer Science and of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion. Yaniv earned his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He received support from ISEF to conduct postdoctoral research in statistics at Stanford University.

Dr. Yaniv Romano

Today, Dr. Romano works to advance theories and practices of modern machine learning systems, focusing on uncertainty quantification, explainability, and robustness.

Dr. Shenhav Cohen

Dr. Shenhav Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Biology and head of a lab deciphering the molecular mechanisms that regulate muscle size. Shenhav earned her B.Sc. in Life Science and Ph.D. in Molecular Cell Biology and Cancer at Bar Ilan University before taking part in an ISEF International Fellowship at Harvard Medical School in 2006-2011. In 2013, Dr. Cohen joined the Technion’s Faculty of Biology, enabling her to complete her research on muscular atrophy, which has been published in prestigious medical and scientific journals.

Dr. Eitan Yaakobi is an Associate Professor at the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, was an ISEF International Postdoc Fellow in Electrical and

Dr. Eitan Yaakobi

Computer Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. fellow at the University of California San Diego. Raised in Qiryat Shemona, Eitan became an ISEF scholar in 2002, earning his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Mathematics and Computer Science at the Technion. As an ISEF fellow at UC-San Diego, Eitan conducted his Ph.D. research in “error correcting coding for flash drives,” earning him the 2009 Marconi Society’s Young Scholar Award, akin to the Nobel Prize in his field of study. He was awarded the Intel Ph.D. Fellowship Award in 2011 for his research in data storage. Dr. Yaakobi is the current head of the Technion’s Excellence Program.

“This collaboration, fueled by philanthropy, brings together two world-class institutions, Technion and Cincinnati Children’s, and two leading laboratories, each with complementary skills and assets, to improve pediatric medicine on a global scale.”

–Marc Rothenberg, MD, PhD

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology are working together to improve pediatric medicine on a global scale by establishing a collaborative data-driven research program to utilize big data in novel ways.

Through this collaboration, experts within each institution will train a core group of investigators skilled in biomedical informatics, which uses large data sets to help clinicians, researchers and scientists improve precision medicine, discover treatments, and deliver the best possible healthcare.

These highly trained researchers will support collaborative studies between Cincinnati Children’s and the Technion. The goal: to elevate pediatric medicine on a global scale by leveraging Cincinnati Children’s expertise in patient care, basic research, and translational research with Technion’s excellence in computer science and bioinformatics.

The collaboration, called the “Cincinnati Children’s–Technion Bridge to Next-Gen Medicine,” includes joint workshops, online lectures, faculty/student exchange visits, and research projects. To date, Cincinnati Children’s and Technion have co-sponsored joint academic symposia to exchange expertise between faculty and students, supported postdoctoral training and launched joint research in multiple areas of medicine. This work has already led to early findings published in the scientific literature—but this is just the beginning.

The Cincinnati Children’s–Technion Bridge to Next-Gen Medicine recently announced the first joint bioinformatics research grants, totaling $200,000 and funded through philanthropy. The selected projects for funding will be awarded $50,000 each, and were selected through a joint review process, involving representatives from both institutions. Funded projects include:

Developing Artificial Intelligence Approaches for Diagnostics and Predicting Treatment Efficacy in Eosinophilic Esophagitis. Marc Rothenberg, MD, PhD and Yoni Savir, PhD

Deep Learning in Point of Care Ultrasound: Applications in Pediatric Oral and Maxillofacial Emergency Visits for Improving Diagnostic Clinical Workflow. Patrick Ruck, DDS; Sarat Thikkurissy, DDS, MS; Surya Prasath, PhD; Omri Emodi, MD, DMD; and Jiriys Ginini, MSc, DMD

Resolving Hematopoietic Stem Cell Heterogeneity from Highly Quantitative Long-read Single-cell RNA-Sequencing. Nathan Salomonis, PhD and Yael Mandel-Gutfreund, PhD

Using Eye-Tracking and Machine Learning Technology to Quantify Joint Attention and Shared Reading Quality in Children with from Disadvantaged Backgrounds and with Medical Complexity. John S. Hutton, MD, MS and Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, PhD

Michelle Kohn, Cincinnati Children’s Global Director for Israel, noted that Cincinnati Children’s–Technion Bridge to Next-Gen Medicine is one of several flagship collaborations in the medical center’s Israel Exchange Program.

“The goal of the Israel Exchange Program is to leverage the complementary strengths of Cincinnati Children’s and Israel to improve clinical care for children worldwide, expertly train pediatric providers and scientists, achieve breakthrough discoveries, and invent and commercialize products to improve children’s health globally,” Kohn said.

Professors Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus and Yoni Savir

She’s already published a scientific article and participated in an international conference, and she’s still completing in her BSc. Technion student Batel Oved presented her research at a major international conference and was nominated for two awards. The research topic: an innovative method for critical cryptographic hash functions.

Batel Oved, a BSc student at the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently presented her research at the International Conference on Modern Circuits and Systems Technologies (MOCAST) 2022 in Bremen, Germany. The paper, which she worked on as part of her undergraduate project, was expanded into a scientific article. For the paper she was a candidate for two awards – the Best Student Paper Award and the Best Paper Award in Electronics – following the development of an innovative method for critical cryptographic hash functions.

Batel Oved

Batel grew up in Kiryat Ekron and began her undergraduate studies three years ago. During her first year, she decided to apply for a prestigious scholarship, and the requirements included a reference from a Technion professor. Batel says, “At that point, I didn’t personally know any professor, so I decided to reach out to Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky, who taught the course “Digital Systems and Computer Structure” – the first course that exposed me to the world of hardware. I sent him an email, and though I didn’t get a reference for the scholarship (after all, he didn’t know me personally), I did get a better offer: to hear about his research group and maybe even join it.” The two met, and Batel heard “about the crazy stuff they do in the group. Of course, I wanted to be a part of it.” And so, at the start of her second year, Batel joined the ASIC2 research group, where most of the members are students studying for advanced degrees. “I learned a lot there. It started with understanding the technologies we were researching by reading articles about the field, which was incredibly challenging at first. So, I joined the research project of one of the PhD students in the group, in which we studied the practical aspects based on theory. I had the privilege of being involved in designing a printed circuit board for a chip that was also designed by the group, and I took part in testing it in the lab.”

At the end of her second year, like many of her fellow students, Batel looked for a job. “I started working at Microsoft as a chip design intern, but I didn’t want to leave the research group just yet. So, I brought the final undergraduate project forward to the beginning of my third year at the university, supervised by Prof. Kvatinsky.” In the project, Batel demonstrated the huge potential inherent of in-memory computation – a new approach that accelerates calculation speed and reduces the amount of energy consumed in the process.

Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky

Batel explains that the approach demonstrated is based on memristive digital processing-in-memory. “Memristors are components that store data, but also can perform logic operations by varying their resistance level. In the article, we chose to present the potential of computations of this kind on a fundamental algorithm in secure communication, specifically, the SHA-3 (Secure Hash Algorithm-3) standard. SHA-3 is a set of cryptographic hash functions, and in the article, we presented a method for their effective implementation, while achieving very high throughput and significantly lower energy consumption compared to other solutions in the field.”

Following the success of the project, Batel worked hard on translating it into a scientific article. She was assisted in the endeavor by Prof. Kvatinsky, Ronny Ronen and Orian Leitersdorf, all of whom “guided me along the way to understand how the world of research works, how to show correctness and extract relevant and reliable information, how to compare the study to other studies using different technologies, and so much more. And we succeeded in authoring an article that presents impressive results.”

The article was submitted and accepted to the IEEE International Conference on Modern Circuits and Systems Technologies (MOCAST) 2022, which took place in Bremen, Germany.

The process of sexual reproduction in plants and animals, as it is familiar to humans, requires the fusion between egg cells and sperm cells. The emergence of sexual reproduction is usually dated back about 1-2 billion years ago. But Technion – Israel Institute of Technology researchers, in collaboration with expert teams abroad, now speculate that the mechanisms that allow for this fusion event to occur appeared as early as 3 billion years ago.

The research, published in Nature Communications, was carried out by Professor Beni Podbilewicz and doctoral student Xiaohui Li from the Technion’s Faculty of Biology, along with researchers from Uruguay, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Great Britain, and Argentina.

Prof. Benjamin Podbilewicz and doctoral student Xiaohui Li

The fusion of sperm and egg marks the climax of fertilization – and the onset of embryonic development. Since both cells contain exactly half of the genetic information needed for the offspring, aberrant fusions of multiple sperm to one egg will have abnormal development. The process is therefore tightly regulated. Specialized proteins called ‘fusogens’ must be present at the precise time and place to allow the egg and the sperm to merge into one.

The Podbilewicz Laboratory studies fusogens in several organisms, and first identified and characterized two such proteins in the nematode C. elegans (EFF-1 and AFF-1). These proteins are involved in organ development, but not in fertilization. Surprisingly, structural analysis revealed that these proteins have a very similar three-dimensional structure to another fusogen involved in fertilization in plants (GCS1/HAP2). This family of similarly structured fusion proteins has been named Fusexins and includes representatives in plants, animals, viruses, unicellular algae, and parasites.

In order to expand upon and to characterize the origin and evolution of the Fusexin family, research collaborator David Moi and a team of researchers from Argentina and Switzerland conducted a bioinformatic search on genetic sequences sampled from different environments. After screening samples from soil, saline lakes, freshwater, and marine sediments, they discovered 96 sequences belonging to archaea, which showed some similarities with known fusion proteins. The sequences were named fusexin1 (Fsx1), and an expert team led by Pablo S. Aguilar, Hector Romero, and Martin Graña confirmed that they belong to archaea species from lineages estimated to originate 3 billion years ago. However, it remained unclear whether the protein that Fsx1 encodes looks similar to members of the fusexin family and whether it is truly capable of mediating cell-to-cell fusion.

The research group from the Technion, from right to leftR-L: Prof. Benjamin Podbilewicz, Katerina Flyak, Clari Valansi, Xiaohui Li, and Dr. Nicolas Brukman

To determine the structure of an Fsx1 protein, Shunsuke Nishio of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden used crystallographic methods to decipher the three-dimensional conformation of the Fsx1 protein. Nishio showed that the Fsx1 protein contains three structural domains very similar to known Fusexin members and is arranged in a three-piece complex – known as a trimer – as do other known fusogens. Surprisingly, Fsx1 has an additional fourth domain not found in any known Fusexin member. Professor Luca Jovine, leading the crystallographic structure analysis, also used novel machine-learning software (AlphaFold2) to determine the structure of the Fsx1 protein.

To prove that the protein Fsx1 carries a fusogen role, doctoral student Xiaohui Li from the Podbilewicz Laboratory conducted an experiment in which she expressed the Fsx1 protein in a cell culture derived from mammals, which typically do not fuse. In collaboration with lab manager Clari Valansi and lab members Dr. Nicolas Brukman and Kateryna Flyak, Li showed that Fsx1 from archaea does induce the fusion of these mammalian cells that diverged 1-2 billion years ago.

Known Fusexin proteins in viruses serve to mediate viral entry into the host cell (as is the case for coronavirus), while in eukaryotes (cells with nuclei) – plants, nematodes, and protists – they play roles in organ sculpting, neuronal repair, and sex. But who came first? Was a fusogen used for sexual reproduction snatched by a virus, or was a viral protein used for infection adopted by plants? Since Archaea predate the origin of eukaryotes, the study by Moi, Nishio, Li, and others raises a possible third scenario: all fusexins originate in archaea, from which the lineage split into a variety of functions, from viral infection to sperm and egg fusion – a billion years before sexual reproduction.

An important next step will be to study what Fsx1 proteins are doing in nature. Do they fuse archaeal cells like their plant and animal fusexins counterparts fuse gametes (e.g., eggs and sperm) to promote a sex-like DNA exchange? Parallel studies will also be needed to understand the evolutionary history connecting the Fsx1 protein and GCS1/HAP2 in order to establish their origin. Archaeal fusexins and other still undiscovered fusogens might help us to understand how cells evolved from apparently simple forms sharing discrete pieces of DNA between them to today’s complex life forms undergoing sexual reproduction. Thus, the discovery that ancient creatures like archaea can also contain fusexin proteins now raises the intriguing possibility whereby the Fsx1 protein is the ancestral version from which viral, plant, and animal fusogens derived.

An illustration by Prof. Luca Jovine of the Karolinska Institute shows the Fsx1 protein structure (on the right) deciphered by the researchers, belonging to an archaeon from a hyper-saline environment (represented by salt on the left).

The study was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program, the Marie Curie Grant, the Israel Science Foundation, and others. Some sample analysis was conducted at the European Synchrotron (ESRF) facility.

For the full article in Nature Communications click here.

Can immunotherapy treatment help this cancer patient? And, if it can, which specific treatment should be applied? Oncologists routinely ask themselves these questions. Insurance companies also pose these questions since immunotherapy is expensive. Patients ask if this novel treatment could save their lives. Now, a new study by Professor Keren Yizhak, from the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, uses Artificial Intelligence to create a simple and inexpensive method of answering this question for each individual patient. Prof. Yitzhak’s findings were recently published in Nature Communications and selected to be featured in the “Editor’s Highlights” about cancer.

Prof. Keren Yizhak

Immunotherapy is a recent development within the world of cancer treatments. It has provided full remission to patients who could not be helped by other means, and it reduces many of the side effects of chemotherapy. There are multiple immunotherapeutic treatments. The principle under which they all operate is stimulation of the patient’s immune system to attack the cancerous cells.

How does the immune system distinguish between the cancer cells it should attack and the healthy cells of the body? The more mutations the tumor has amassed, the more it differs from the “normal” cells, and thus immunotherapy can be more effective. This characteristic is called Tumor Mutation Burden (TMB). A higher TMB means more new mutations. Prof. Yizhak’s method significantly simplifies measurement of the TMB.

Currently, in order to measure TMB, cells are taken from the tumor and their DNA is compared to DNA from the patient’s healthy cells. Prof. Yizhak and her group propose two significant modifications to this process.

The first modification, already explored in a previously published article by the group, is comparing RNA molecules rather than DNA molecules. This makes a difference because DNA molecules contain the entirety of the human genome, while RNA molecules are small parts of the genetic code, copied out to be used as instructions within the cell. In their previous study, the group showed that RNA molecules can also be used to identify the cancer-specific mutations.

Dr. Rotem Katzir

The innovation in the group’s most recent article is two-fold: first, eliminating the need to compare the RNA from the cancerous tumor to DNA from healthy cells. As a result, a smaller amount of genetic material needs to be sequenced, so patients can be subjected to fewer procedures. Instead of comparing the genetic material from the tumor to the patient’s own healthy genetic material, Prof. Yizhak’s team developed a machine-learning algorithm which was trained to recognize aberrations from the healthy genome and to tell them apart from the natural variation that exists between people. Second, using these predictions, they were able to compute an RNA-based TMB metric. In fact, this method proved to be more effective than the standard method in estimating the predicted effectiveness of immunotherapy for a given patient. This is thought to be the case because the RNA contains the parts of the genome that are in constant use and can therefore initiate an immune response. Mutations in parts of the genome that are not in use are less likely to affect the cell’s operation.

The development of the algorithm was made possible by using a large existing database of sequenced RNA from cancer patients, on which the algorithm could be trained. In fact, Prof. Yizhak’s laboratory is a computational, “dry,” lab. Computational labs make use of the large amounts of clinical data collected by the scientific community around the world, using it to achieve new discoveries and to develop new tools to assist patients. The study was led by Dr. Rotem Katzir and B.Sc. student Noam Rudberg, both from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science.

For the full article in Nature Communications click here.

Bareqet Hadad got married at the age of 18, and after giving birth to her first child, the next step seemed clear: studies at a religious college to become an English teacher. She grew up in an ultra-Orthodox community, finished high school with a complete matriculation certificate and discovered that she was good in English. But one evening, while she was on her way to friends in Haifa, her husband stopped her and said, “Bareqet, here’s something that looks interesting.” It was an advertisement for graduates of Beit Yaakov School for girls who want to study for a degree at the Technion.

“It was a possibility that I couldn’t have imagined,” she said several days after receiving her bachelor’s degree from the Technion. “I came from Haredi education and never thought that studying at the Technion was an option for me. But I called and discovered that there was an opening in the pre-academic course for ultra-Orthodox women at the Technion.”

From Torah to industrial engineering

Bareqet grew up in Elad. “At home, studying was at the forefront – general studies for girls, Torah studies for boys. When I decided to take five units of English I needed special approval, and together with four other girls I took the matriculation exam and passed. I also wanted five units in mathematics, but I had to be satisfied with three, so the preparatory program opened an unexpected opportunity for me.”

At the start of the course at the Technion, Bareqet felt that she was back in her natural setting – studying with other women. “Not that it was easy. The studies are high-level and very intensive, but from the beginning, I felt a guiding hand from above. The lecturers were simply amazing and did everything they could to help us succeed. I insisted on understanding every detail and their door was always open, even after study hours.”

And then – a second pregnancy. “I remember struggling. It was difficult and challenging. I studied day and night, and fortunately the director of the course at the time Mooly Dotan gave me all the help I needed, including mentoring at the Technion and externally, anything that could help me finish the course. Without Mooly’s help I wouldn’t have been able to finish the course.” Bareqet successfully passed the pre-academic program and gave birth to her second son a few days later. Now she was ready to become a full-time Technion student, strengthened by her success in the program.

Bareqet Hadad

Bareqet chose the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management – and dove right in. “The path was clear, but I knew the road was difficult,” she said. “Sitting in a mixed classroom, men and women – was a very new experience for a woman from an ultra-Orthodox background. But I learned that to succeed you need partners, and the task is to study and nothing else, so why not? Ultimately, it was an important lesson for me.”

Bareqet chose as many courses as possible related to manufacturing. “This is the field that interested me most, because my father worked in sales in companies that developed and manufactured, so that was present in my life growing up,” she explained. “When you add to that my love for communicating with people, identifying problems, situation analysis and creating solutions – you get the Manufacturing and Service Systems Program.” So, she deepened her study into various topics, among them productivity and maintenance quality, quality engineering, industrial engineering incidents, service systems engineering, and production systems.

“On the personal level, studying at the Technion was a roller coaster. I started the first semester enthusiastically. At first everything went smoothly, it was all fresh in my mind from the preparatory course, but as the weeks went by the intensity grew and so did the workload. At some point I understood that I wasn’t keeping up, I was starting to hand in work late, but I continued, sat for exams…and then suddenly – fail, fail, and another fail,” she recalls. “At this point, just before registering for the second semester, I broke down. My husband and I realized that maybe we were wrong, that maybe it wasn’t for me. In the morning we dropped the children off and sat on a bench, shattered, trying to come to a decision. At that time, we lived in the Technion dormitories, and we knew that stopping my studies meant leaving the dorms – and how would we get by?”

Top of the world

Bareqet decided to stop for a semester, to think and get organized, and then she returned. “I realized that life had toughened me up and I came back ready for the winter semester – my second at the Technion.” Here, Galit Eisig came into the picture. A counselor at the Technion’s Student Counseling Center, she accompanied Bareqet throughout the semester, and the trailblazing student passed all her exams the first time around, no need to retake them. “I felt on top of the world. It gave me the strength to continue.”

Her final project, which took the entire academic year, took place at Strauss, under the guidance of Dotan Rodensky, a faculty lecturer and CEO of consulting firm IE&P Group. Rodensky worked with the Technion Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center, and so the project had two teams – from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, and a team of four students from the Henry & Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, who provided artificial intelligence-based solutions. “Dotan’s guidance helped me submit an excellent project and we presented an end-product that will help Strauss’ excellence team,” says Bareqet.

In summary, she says, “there’s no doubt that the effort was worth it. Today I see that what they say about us, Technion graduates, is true: we stand out, we are equipped with an array of relevant skills for industry. Today, I am already in my second position in the industry, and I can quickly enter any role, work on the most complex production floors with the most advanced production lines. The skills that I learned at the Technion – thinking, analysis, systemic approach – are reflected in the field.”

Bareqet completed her degree with a third child, and let’s not forget that on the way, there were Zoom studies while holding children. “All this required me to improve my time management and planning. I also keep the Shabbat, so I have to be much more efficient during the week. I think that the Shabbat enabled me to survive the rest of the week. I learned how to manage myself on a daily basis, to ask for help, for advice, even to ask a hundred times until I’m sure I understand, to submit work on time, and think two steps ahead.”

Her belief in a guiding hand from above made it possible to overcome everything. “It’s a belief that gives enormous power to overcome small and big obstacles.” She has no doubt that there is no way she could have been able to get her degree without the tremendous help of her husband, a Yeshiva student and Torah Scribe, who took upon himself most of the care for their children. “During that time, he was also studying for accreditation exams of the Chief Rabbinate, and I’m happy that he passed them successfully at the same time as I did.”

The near future is completely obvious to her. “I have no doubt that I will be integrated in a senior position in the operational excellence division of a large enterprise like Strauss, a large company or a leading consulting firm. I will have a black belt in training for excellence and will be involved in projects that reach the CEO level,” she says.

An exceptional university in terms of support

The Technion, she says, is “an exceptional university in terms of support. I always remind myself that no matter how much and what we are given, in the end we, the students and graduates, have to meet the challenges by ourselves. No one will be tested in my place, and no one will be interviewed in my place. And yet – the help was and still is essential. Accommodation in the dormitories was critical both economically and in terms of proximity to the faculty. The scholarships, with which I received the immense support of Naama Dror from the Office of the Dean of Students, were a great help. The lecturers, the tutors, dedicated their time far beyond the formal definitions. And finally, Iris Moshkovitz, who we were fortunate to have thanks to Mooly and the Technion. Iris, an expert in business communication and career success, give us VIP service even after graduation in helping to find a job, CV, preparation for interviews, accompaniment in entering a new job and LinkedIn skills, and all with exceptional professionalism. That’s a great help.”

“Bareqet has shown remarkable determination, dedication to achieve her goals, and coping abilities,” says Mooly Dotan of the Technion Center for Pre-Academic Education. “Throughout her studies, she experienced several crises but managed to rise above, to complete all her assignments and finish her studies admirably as a woman with a family and mother of three. She is a Technion graduate and as such she deserves all the accolades,” he said. “More and more ultra-Orthodox girls are now showing an interest in studying engineering and medicine at the Technion. They are accepted in the regular admission process, like any other student, according to the “sechem” grade (average of matriculation exams and psychometric exam grades). Some of the ultra-Orthodox students choose medicine and some go to other faculties.”

Today, there are 100 ultra-Orthodox men and 20 ultra-Orthodox women studying at the Technion. Bareqet is one of the pioneers, and she hopes to influence girls in the ultra-Orthodox community and at least to present them with the possibility to study engineering, sciences, and medicine at the Technion.

The award, presented for multidisciplinary research in human health, is given on behalf of the Adelis Foundation and honors the memory of Mr. André Cohen Deloro (z”l). Prof. Wolosker received the award from Technion President Professor Uri Sivan and the Trustees of the Adelis Foundation Mrs. Rebecca Boukhris and Mr. Sidney Boukhris.

The new award is recognized by the André Cohen Deloro Institute for Transformative Biomedical Sciences and Engineering. The Adelis Foundation currently supports the construction of a new Technion center – the André Cohen Deloro Institute for Transformative Biomedical Sciences and Engineering. The new institute will serve as the epicenter of the Technion’s multidisciplinary research activities in human health and will feature state-of-the-art infrastructure necessary to drive innovation, including cutting-edge laboratories and equipment.

The André Cohen Deloro Institute will also serve as a hub of the newly established Technion Human Health Initiative. This large-scale initiative will further facilitate innovative research at the Technion by focusing on the next level of medical innovation through partnerships with Technion-affiliated hospitals and cutting-edge pharmaceutical and biomedical companies.

“Today’s recipient, Prof. Herman Wolosker of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, exemplifies this, as he uses a wide range of techniques to advance his research.” said Rebecca Boukhris on behalf of the Adelis Foundation. “We’d like to congratulate Prof. Herman Wolosker,” she continued. “His remarkable work has been cited in many prestigious academic journals and we’re happy and proud that he is the recipient of the first André Cohen Deloro Prize.”

Prof. Wolosker’s research focuses on the unique and atypical neurotransmitters that are essential for brain function and which are also involved in neurodegenerative diseases. Based on a new mouse model, he studies the roles of amino acid-based neurotransmitters and the blood-brain barrier in brain development.

L-R: Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan, Mrs. Rebecca Boukhris, Prof. Herman Wolosker and Mr. Sidney Boukhris

Mrs. Rebecca Boukhris put the new prize in a broader context: “74 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, we might ask ourselves what would have happened to the Jewish people without Israel. The answer is anyone’s guess, but the following question is much simpler to answer: What would have happened if the Technion had not been established 36 years prior to the formation of the State of Israel? Here we all know the answer: Israel could not have become the tremendous Startup Nation it is today, it would not have the thriving economy it has today, and I even doubt it could have defended itself the way it has throughout all these years. These two questions were at the heart of André Cohen Deloro’s thoughts and philosophy, and it is on this basis that the Adelis Foundation was created – to support science and help build the security of the country and its future.

We rely heavily on Technion researchers to transcend the boundaries between disciplines, bringing together doctors, engineers, and scientists from different fields to make our dreams come true and meet the challenges of medical research. The future of research lies in the ability of researchers to remove barriers between research fields and to create strong synergies between different scientific disciplines.”

Distinguished Professor Ilan Marek

Prof. Ilan Marek, Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Chemistry was the Master of Ceremonies. He stated, “On a personal note, it is a huge pleasure for us to have you here. Your love for the Technion and Israel is clear, and this is your second home. I travel a lot and meet many people – Mr. Cohen Deloro had a strong impact on me, and I still remember our first meeting. He had a smile in his eyes.”

President of the Technion Uri Sivan said, “André Cohen Deloro passed away in 2012 but his legacy continues to flourish in the skillful, loving hands of Mrs. Rebecca Boukhris and trustees of the Adelis Foundation. It gives us special pleasure to inaugurate this prize by awarding it to Prof. Herman Wolosker for his groundbreaking work on unconventional transmitters and their role in brain development and neurodegeneration. Wolosker epitomizes the type of scientist of whom the Technion is so proud and so blessed to be home.”

Prof. Herman Wolosker

Prof. Herman Wolosker

Prof. Wolosker completed his M.D. and Ph.D. at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and did his postdoctoral fellowship at John Hopkins University. His research studies novel and atypical neurotransmitters in the brain that are important for normal brain function and can cause neurodegeneration. His research aims to fully characterize the role of the serine shuttle in various human diseases and to identify all, yet unknown, components of this metabolic pathway using genetically modified mice.

Brain diseases are often incurable, but metabolic imbalances can be corrected by either supplementing or restricting a missing amino acid. By focusing on metabolic disorders caused by the malfunction of the serine shuttle, Prof. Wolosker hopes that the knowledge gained about this metabolic pathway can be translated into new treatments.

Wolosker won the Teva Award on Rare Diseases (2012), the One Mind Rising Star Award from the International Mental Health Research Organization USA (2010), and the Yigal Alon Scholarship (2002).

THE ADELIS FOUNDATION

The Adelis Foundation is an Israeli foundation that was created in 2006 by an exceptional man, André Cohen Deloro (z”l) (1933 – 2012). A graduate of the prestigious École Polytechnique and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, André Cohen Deloro (z”l) had a brilliant career in construction. Realizing his unbreakable link with the State of Israel, he built the Adelis Foundation – the most important work of his life. The Adelis Foundation was built so that André Cohen Deloro (z”l) could contribute in his own way to the wellbeing of the Jewish People and to the security of the State of Israel.

The Adelis Foundation was created based on the conviction that the security and future of Israel, its economic development, and its influence among the nations depended on the excellence of its universities and research centers. The Adelis Foundation believes that it is crucial to guarantee the knowledge of Israel’s next generations through the high level of education of its human capital to improve its future. But a strong nation is also a nation that knows how to take care of its weakest links.

Thus, the Adelis Foundation intervenes in the following key areas: scientific and medical research of excellence (65%), education – mainly in the social and geographical periphery (25%), and social well-being (10%).

In the field of science, the Adelis Foundation has a desire to help Israel through preserving its position among the world leaders in research and innovation through exploring new technological frontiers. The Adelis Foundation promotes these directives by financing research infrastructure in the country’s most promising academic institutions, as well as by granting research budgets to excellent researchers from the best universities in key areas where the State of Israel has added value. Research is likely to create scientific breakthroughs that improve the well-being of Israel’s citizens and of humanity as a whole as our Jewish values teach us.