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A team of researchers from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has developed a proof-of-concept for a novel rechargeable silicon (Si) battery, as well as its design and architecture that enables Si to be reversibly discharged and charged.

Led by Professor Yair Ein-Eli of the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, the team proved via systematic experimental works of the graduate student, Alon Epstein and theoretical studies of Dr. Igor Baskin, that Si is dissolved during the battery discharge process, and upon charging, elemental Si is deposited. Several discharge-charge cycles were achieved, utilizing heavy doped n-type Si wafer anodes and specially designed hybrid based ionic liquid electrolytes, tailored with halides (Bromine and Iodine), functioning as conversion cathodes.

Prof. Yair Ein-Eli

This breakthrough could pave the way towards an enrichment of the battery technologies available in the energy storage market, with the technology potentially easing stress on the ever-growing market and serving the increasing demand for rechargeable batteries.

PhD student Alon Epstein

Developments Leading to This Breakthrough

The increased demand for sustainable energy sources prompted the scientific community to focus on battery research capable of storing large scale grid energy in a manageable and reliable manner. Moreover, the rising demand of the EV industry, which mainly relies on current Li-ion battery (LIBs) technology is expected to strain current Li production and divert it from more widespread use in portable consumer electronics. Currently, no technology has proven to be competitive enough to displace LIBs. Metals and elements capable of delivering multi-electrons during their oxidation process have been the focus of the research community for a long time due to their associated high specific energy densities.

Magnesium, calcium, aluminum and zinc received much attention as potential anode materials with varied levels of progress; yet none of them has managed to revolutionize the energy storage industry beyond LIBs, as all of these systems suffer from poor kinetic performance to lack of cell stability, and therefore, much is left to be explored. Silicon (Si), as the second most abundant element on earth’s crust (after oxygen), was left relatively unexplored despite a high energy density of 8.4 kWh kg-1 on par with metallic Li 11.2 kWh kg-1; Si possesses stable surface passivation, low conductivity (dependent on the doping levels), and, until now, no established rechargeable cell chemistry comprising elemental Si as an active anode has been reported, outside LIB alloying anode.

Rechargeable Silicon Battery – conceptual illustration

In the past decade several publications (initiated originally in 2009 by Prof. Ein-Eli) reported the incorporation of active Si anodes in primary, non-rechargeable air-battery designs. Thus, despite its high abundance and ease of production, the possibility of using Si as an active multivalent rechargeable anode was never explored, until the team’s recent breakthrough.

The Technion team is made up of researchers from the Faculties of Materials Science and Engineering (A. Epstein, I. Baskin and Y. Ein-Eli), and from Mechanical and Chemical Engineering (M. Suss).

For the full article in Advanced Energy Materials, click here.

On June 22, 2022, the Formula Technion team unveiled its new car. For the first time, in view of the upcoming summer 2022 motor racing season, the team presented an autonomous electric vehicle (A-EV).

The Formula Technion project was established in 2012 in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and has grown steadily since. Today, the project is open to students from a variety of faculties at the Technion, who work together to build a car that competes in the Formula Student competitions in Europe. To date, the cars built by the Formula Technion teams have met with great success in the competitions, and now, the team is presenting its first-ever A-EV.

The Formula Technion Team. From R-L, standing: Itamar Ventura, Keren Grinberg, Sharon Goldstein, Muans Omari, Doron Shpigel, Dima Abu Romi, Ayham Abu Eid and Ahmad Rabi. Bottom: Salman Abdalla, Oriel Mizrahi.

Muans Omari, current leader of the team, stated: “The car world of today is shifting to electric and autonomous vehicles, and the Formula Student competitions have embraced this trend. In the new car we just unveiled, we expressed the tech revolution through a change of color, from red/black to blue, white, and light grey, colors that today stand for electric propulsion. Making the transition from an internal combustion engine to an electric propulsion system is far from easy and took a lot of work and learning. But we believe in our chances of achieving good results in the upcoming competitions, which will take place in Germany and Spain.”

Unveiling the new Formula Vehicle

The Formula Student competition is a platform for new technological developments. Teams’ vehicles are tested and their performance is rated based on a combination of engineering challenges, and driving skills demonstrated on the track. The goal of the project is to enable engineering students – and students in other fields – to acquire practical knowledge in planning as well as manufacturing vehicles, and in this way, to prepare them for their professional life.

Last year, following travel restrictions imposed due to the pandemic, the first Israeli Formula Student Race was held, with the participation of the Technion, Tel Aviv University, and Ben-Gurion University. The Technion team won first place.

The new Autonomous Electric Vehicle

The global population is rapidly growing; on average, 2.5 new inhabitants are born each second. Indeed, it is estimated that by 2050, our planet will be inhabited by more than 10 billion people. To maintain and improve quality of life standards on a global scale while meeting the needs of an expanding world population, the production of food, medicine, consumer goods, and new technologies must be accelerated. This begs the question: can the world sustain our growing population in the same way it has up until now without causing additional ecological damage or further depleting natural resources?

One example of the increasingly far-reaching environmental consequences of modern life is that, over the past 70 years, the production of plastic increased from 1.5 million tons per year in 1950 to 350 million tons per year in 2020. This statistic might have been fine if people had known how to handle and treat plastic after use. Unfortunately, this has not proven to be the case as only 9% of plastic is recycled. In 2020 alone, more than 20 million tons of plastic ended up in the ocean, creating a floating mass that is twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. If humanity continues with its consumption patterns, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the water than fish. If that’s not enough, recent studies found microparticles of plastic in people’s blood and lungs. In order to ensure that future generations can continue to flourish on this planet, novel solutions are desperately required.

Distinguished Professor Ilan Marek (photo by Ruti Frensdorff)

Drastic changes are needed

“We are in a situation where drastic changes are needed,” Distinguished Professor Ilan Marek of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry says. “To support the needs of the growing population, to maintain and improve the life expectancy and life quality we take for granted, we cannot just produce more. We need to produce better.” The answer to sustainable production, he believes, lies in catalysis.

A catalyst is any substance that triggers or speeds up a chemical reaction. Catalysts are crucial for sustaining life itself; they control our cells, are responsible for performing our digestive processes, and form a part of our immune systems. Catalysts also make modern life possible; they play key roles in food production, drug and materials manufacturing, energy production, and many other fields. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the world today or the concept of civilized society without catalysis and its notable impact on fundamental aspects of our lives.

Catalysis stands at the nexus of many disciplines, enabling discoveries that impact areas as diverse as health (e.g., medicine, imaging), food (agrichemicals), energy (efficiency, storage, sustainable manufacturing) and more, thereby assuming a critical role in the global economy. As a process, catalysis is generally associated with underpinning several trillions of dollars of the global GDP, and it is central to the production of 90% of all manufactured products.

We need new discoveries that would change the world. But without the environmental impact

In order to identify catalyst-based solutions to humanity’s sustainability challenges, the Technion is inaugurating its Center for Sustainable Processes and Catalysis. The Center will develop new catalysts to allow for more sustainable processes, and will ultimately aim to solve environment-related global problems.

The fruits of this endeavor are expected to strengthen the State of Israel, as well as further elevate the Technion’s reputation as a leading center of science and innovation. Israel as a nation, and particularly the Technion, should be very proud of the achievements of the last 70 years. The average life expectancy in Israel increased by 15 years since the state’s establishment, serving as a testimony to improved healthcare systems and healthier lifestyles, which have been amplified by access to advanced technological tools.

Towards a more sustainable future

There are many challenges to overcome on the journey to achieving the catalyst-based vision of a sustainable future. One challenge seems to be developing solutions that continue to advance our civilization while preserving the planet’s ecology and natural resources. The future of the planet depends on our ability to think outside the box and discover new ways to address global sustainability issues. The Center for Sustainable Processes and Catalysis will address and attempt to identify ways to reinvent global production processes so that they are more sustainable, cost-effective and efficient, in order to minimize continued harm to the environment.
The Center will have several goals. The first will be to acquire necessary, state-of-the-art equipment that will enable adequate and advanced investigation into catalytic processes, in real-time. To this end, the Center will consist of several core facilities: a reaction discovery and catalyst development facility, an advanced analytical and spectroscopy facility, a heterogeneous processes facility, and a computational chemistry and Big Data facility – serving the entirety of the Technion’s catalysis community.

The future of the planet depends on our ability to think outside the box and discover new ways to address global sustainability issues

The second aim is to create and promote multidisciplinary collaboration and partnerships among industry, startup companies, and government agencies. The Center will harness the Technion’s resources in chemistry, biotechnology, physics, biology, computer science, chemical engineering, materials engineering, food engineering, and civil engineering, among other fields, providing more than 100 professors with access to essential equipment, as well as a unified facility or platform through which to interact. One of the cornerstones of the Center will be the interdisciplinary nature of the collaboration between faculty members involved in studying various areas and applications of catalysis. A seed funding program, Innovative Research Ideas Startup (IRIS), will support innovative collaborative research ideas for a one-year period, providing initial funding to proposals that have the potential to be commercialized. In short, the Center will serve as an incubator for catalysis-based talent, ideas, and solutions.

The third aim of the center will be to assist Israeli industry sectors that rely on the Technion’s vast and diverse expertise in catalysis. Using the most sophisticated lab equipment, Technion experts in the field will be able to provide catalytic solutions for industry partners that will boost Israel’s industrial exports and will allow the Israeli economy to benefit from the development of more efficient and sustainable industrial processes and applications.

Prof. Marek and a team member at the lab (photo by Ruti Frensdorff)

Nurturing young talent

One of the most important novelties of the Center will be the Incubator for Young Talents. In contrast to the traditional laboratory setup – in which researchers work in isolation from each other – this Center will feature an innovative open-space research laboratory model, providing lab space for eight new faculty members and their teams. This approach has several aims: to enhance multidisciplinary collaboration in a field that is rapidly evolving, to pool the use of advanced pieces of equipment among multiple researchers, and to encourage researchers of different academic disciplines to combine their expertise to solve major problems in the field. It is the Technion’s belief that the pace of innovation and discovery made possible by this open-space laboratory setup is likely to exceed that of a conventional lab arrangement.

This new faculty incubator will be established to nurture rising stars and ensure a steady flow of junior research faculty. A dedicated ad hoc committee, in close collaboration with all of the Technion’s faculties, will identify the ideal talents. After a rigorous selection process, researchers will be offered a tenure-track position. The incubator will serve as a home for junior faculty for up to six years, where they will be provided with research funding, equipment, the ability to recruit graduate students and technical staff, select a mentor of their choice, and receive administrative support. After this period, each researcher will integrate into a Technion faculty of their choice. This structure will enable a positive turnover in the incubator, where new and fresh ideas will be constantly investigated.

Ensuring continued prosperity

The Technion is uniquely positioned to realize this vision. For nearly a century, the Technion has spearheaded research programs in science and technology designed not only to expand the boundaries of knowledge, but also to ensure the continued prosperity of Israel, the Startup Nation, and its people. The Technion has a long history of pioneering new fields of research, which are subsequently developed through special programs and dedicated national projects. For example, the Technion’s international renown in the fields of civil engineering, aerospace engineering, computer science, and nanotechnology paved the way for the thriving corresponding industries that lead Israel’s economy. The university’s commitment to promoting sustainability is evident in the research being conducted in its Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program and the Grand Water Research Institute.

“New molecules and new processes can change the way we live, much like the Haber-Bosch process changed it in the past, supporting almost half of the world’s population through increased food production,” says Prof. Marek, referring to a process of fertilizer production. “It is perhaps one of the most significant inventions of the 20th century. But it is also a process that consumes a large amount of energy and is responsible for considerable CO2 emissions. Now we need new discoveries that would change the world just as much, but without the environmental impact.”
As we urgently need to give back to our planet what we took from it, to nurture and preserve it, we also need to correct our past mistakes by developing new and sustainable catalytic transformation. The Technion aims to become a leading global innovator in the catalysis field, guided by the fulfillment of this critical mandate.

This article was originally published in the June 2022 President’s Report.

The conventional pedagogic approach is constantly being questioned. New technologies have generated many important benefits in the field of education and have designated the traditional paradigm as only one facet of a multi-dimensional spectrum. You might ask – if academic lectures are widely available on YouTube, why go to class? In fact, why get a university degree at all?

Realizing that the Technion must redefine its approach to remain relevant and a worldwide leader in science and technology, the university is devising a broad strategy to update the teaching and learning processes across all faculties. The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated this process, sparking a worldwide overnight switch to digital learning.

Prof. Oded Rabinovitch, Senior Executive Vice President of the Technion, explains that the university is indeed in the midst of a broad conceptual change: “We are shifting from a focus on teaching and learning to a wider mission that also includes educating. Education is much more than simply transmitting knowledge; it is also about social and environmental awareness, ethical values, understanding historical context and realizing the full potential of all faculty members. In fact, education is just as much about values as about skills. The broader look at university-level education and the availability of a variety of digital means point to the need to rethink and perhaps leverage the added value of our faculty and the meaning and value we contribute to the development of the next generation of scientific and engineering leadership.”

A window of opportunity

The Technion’s plan to support new modes of teaching and learning is being developed by the Steering Committee for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Undergraduate Studies, under the leadership of Prof. Hossam Haick, Dean of Undergraduate Studies. The committee recently submitted a report describing the need to upgrade the students’ educational experience both on and off-campus. According to the report, the pandemic has generated a window of opportunity, facilitating processes of deep change in academia and encouraging the implementation of new approaches.

One of the most fundamental changes recommended by the committee’s report is to teach Technion students 21st-century skills crucial for thriving in the contemporary workplace. Among them are leadership, complex problem solving, teamwork, entrepreneurial skills, and a heightened awareness of social and environmental issues. Tools that encourage the acquisition of these skills will be incorporated into courses throughout the Technion.

Education is much more than simply transmitting knowledge; it is also about social and environmental awareness, ethical values, understanding historical context and realizing the full potential of all faculty members

The Technion Center for Promotion of Learning and Teaching, which is spearheading implementation of the plan, has been significantly bolstered to meet the challenge. Headed by Dr. Olga Chuntonov, the Center has recently launched an innovative pilot program: assigning pedagogic change agents to specific faculties. These education specialists are tasked with upgrading and modernizing the learning experience in their faculty. They are highly qualified academic professionals with expertise in the discipline where they are embedded and well suited to work with the teaching staff to update the curricula and teaching models. Faculty members are urged to receive training in modern teaching technologies and up-to-date pedagogic approaches using the Center’s resources.

Prof. Ido Roll and Dr. Olga Chuntonov use an electronic light board to record a lecture

“Until now, faculty members interested in upgrading their teaching methods had to consult the Center voluntarily. Now we are investing in the Center’s professional team. The education specialists proactively act within the faculties and bring the needed resources and skills to train lecturers, develop new content and embed digital components in the curriculum. All the Deans are very enthusiastic,” notes Assoc. Prof. Ido Roll of the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology. This program will be evaluated at the end of the one-year pilot period and will hopefully be expanded to include more faculties.

Reaching a digital equilibrium

One of the university’s biggest challenges is finding equilibrium on the spectrum that spans from 100% traditional face-to-face to 100% digital learning. “Students may prefer Zoom, but face-to-face classes are critically important,” explains Prof. Haick. “Our vision is that large introductory courses will include significant online components, while more advanced courses will be ‘blended’ – meaning that they will be in person but will include digital technologies to enhance the inter-action between students and teachers.” These include tools such as online simulations, virtual labs, interactive assignments, etc. Introducing digital tasks throughout the semester will encourage students to learn continuously rather than “cram” before exams.

One of the models of blended learning that is gaining traction at the Technion is the “flipped class-room,” where students learn the course material at home through digital platforms and then meet in classroom settings to discuss the material under the teacher’s guidance. The Technion is also encouraging professors to develop MOOC courses, which are free online courses typically attended by tens of thousands of people worldwide. This is an excellent way to promote the Technion internationally and draw attention to the unique achievements and knowledge of its teaching faculty.

According to the Steering Committee for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the primary motivation for promoting digital learning in academic courses is the understanding that digital elements such as flipped classrooms can significantly improve the teaching quality and make classes more accessible to a larger audience. They enable greater collab-oration among students, including students from different faculties and universities. Furthermore, they create spaces for diverse and complementary knowledge that connect students and faculty members. These virtual platforms can also be used as spaces that encourage collaborations among undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students, enabling a vertical integration.

‘Blended’ learning includes digital technologies to enhance the interaction between students and teachers

Another key aspect of the current strategic change involves a new approach to teacher evaluations. Several pilot programs are testing various ways to obtain meaning-ful feedback from students. One example entails testing students six months after completing a course to see what they remember. Another innovative program uses a digital platform to ask students every half hour during a lecture whether they understand the material, with the professor receiving their feedback in real time. These are among the new tools that the Center for Promotion of Learning and Teaching is training lecturers to use and are part of the Technion’s new strategic approach to enhance its students’ overall education.

This article was originally published in the June 2022 President’s Report.

In an age of self-driving cars, industrial robots, and intelligent systems that help humans in a variety of situations, time and computational resources are valuable assets. These systems are required to react quickly to circumstances in a changing environment, and under conditions in which information is lacking (i.e., conditions of uncertainty). Furthermore, economic constraints limit the complexity of elements such as hardware, and the systems must be cheap enough for potential consumers to be willing to pay for them.

Research conducted at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and published in the International Journal of Robotics Research presents a theoretical and computational breakthrough in this context: the simplification of planning problems and decision-making under uncertainty in a way that reduces the amount of data that the computer is required to analyze.

The study was headed by Professor Vadim Indelman, head of the Autonomous Navigation and Perception Lab (ANPL) in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, and Khen Elimelech, who recently completed his doctorate in the Technion Autonomous Systems Program (TASP).

Prof. Vadim Indelman

“We demonstrate that we can significantly reduce computation time, without harming the successful execution of the task,” explained the researchers. “We also demonstrate that computation efforts can be reduced even further if we accept a certain loss in performance – loss that our approach can evaluate online. In an age of self-driving cars and other robots, this is an approach likely to enable autonomous online decision-making in challenging scenarios, reduce response times, and achieve considerable savings in the cost of hardware and other resources.”

Prof. Indelman’s research deals with autonomous decision making under uncertainty – a fundamental problem in AI and robotics. This capability is particularly essential for autonomous agents that are required to perform reliably over time, under conditions of uncertainty and in a changing environment. Furthermore, in many cases the agent does not have direct access to the problem’s state variables, and it functions based on a probability distribution or “belief”. This belief reflects the knowledge that the agent possesses about itself and its environment, based on probabilistic models, actions performed, and measurements obtained from its sensors.

Khen Elimelech

One of the key directions explored by the research group is computationally efficient decision-making under these conditions, also known as “belief space planning” (BSP). Solving this problem (i.e., calculating the entire set of optimal actions or policies necessary to achieve the goal) requires that potential actions be evaluated under a reward or cost function, such as the distance to the goal or an “uncertainty” measure. According to the researchers, this challenge requires the prediction of how the “belief” will develop in the future for different possible actions, while predicting different future scenarios. As a result, decision-making under these conditions is computationally costly, which challenges the autonomous action of intelligent agents in real time. Additionally, in problems with numerous state variables (for example, when the environment changes or is not known in advance), the computational challenge is even greater. All the above are accompanied by economic considerations, time constraints, and computation time, which mandate a reduction in the necessary computational resources. Therefore, the simplification of decision-making under uncertainty problems is an important goal in these research directions.

Prof. Indelman’s research group refers to all these aspects in the development of simplification approaches, which enable these problems to be solved in a way that is more computationally efficient, for example, through the sparsification of matrices. Crucially, these approaches are accompanied with performance guarantees that quantify the worst-case degradation in performance as a result of the simplification process; such guarantees are of key importance in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving.

The researchers’ findings lay the foundations for solving decision-making problems through simplification and demonstrate that these approaches are able to lead to considerable savings in computation times, without significant loss in terms of outcomes.

Recently, it was announced that doctoral student Khen Elimelech, who led the study, will receive the Outstanding Ph.D. Research Award, The Israeli Smart Transportation Research Center (ISTRC).

The ANPL team

The study was sponsored by the Israel Science Foundation.

For the full article in the International Journal of Robotics Research click here.

On June 30th, 2022, we held the graduation ceremony of the Technion’s 93rd cohort, awarding 1869 students with their university degrees; 40% of the graduates were women. Our guest of honor, Dr. Albert Bourla, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, gave the commencement speech. The graduation ceremony was preceded by the Honorary Doctorate Conferment Ceremony for Dr. Bourla.

Watch the full graduation and honorary doctorate ceremony:

Dr. Bourla’s commencement speech:

To watch the film on Dr. Bourla we aired at his Honorary Doctorate Conferment Ceremony on June 30, 2022, click here (a subtitled film is also available):

The festive ceremony – the first in almost 3 years because of the COVID-19 pandemic – took place during the annual Technion Board of Governors meeting, and three distinguished individuals received an Honorary Fellowship. The ceremony was held in the presence of Technion President Professor Uri Sivan, Chairman of the Board of Governors Mr. Scott Leemaster, members of the Technion management and Faculty deans.

L-R: Gal Haber, Robert (Rob) Polak, Ira Taub

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan expressed his joy at being able to finally hold the ceremony in-person again and talked about the transitions to digital teaching that were forced upon them during the pandemic and the new challenge of using digital mentoring technologies. Despite great leaps in this area, he went on to say that no matter how advanced we are in digital terms, students love to be on campus. “Person to person interactions are near and dear to our hearts, as they clearly are to our three awardees celebrating here with us tonight.”

Scott Leemaster, Chairman of the Board of Governors, also expressed his joy in being able to meet in person with like-minded Technion supporters from all over the world. And reminding everyone that we are approaching the 100^th anniversary of the Technion, he identified (with the help of former President Peretz Lavie) five remarkable individuals who had an extraordinary impact on the Technion. From Dr. Paul Nathan who established the Technion in its first building; to Eliezer Kaplansky, Technion’s general manager from 1931 to 1950; General Yaakov Dori, the first President of the Technion; Prof. Sydney Goldstein, the first Dean of Aeronautical Engineering and as Academic Vice President; and finally Major General Amos Horev, whose life is intertwined with the Technion’s to this day.

Mr. Leemaster also congratulated Prof. Adi Salzberg, on taking up her senior position as Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, a new post created by Prof. Uri Sivan to safeguard the fundamental principles of the Technion as being open to all, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or gender.

Finally, he reminded us that the Technion makes history every single day with its innovations and achievements. He spoke of the historic Abraham Accords which are already leading to new collaborations with our neighbors, and mentioned the next Space-IL’s mission to the moon, which will be a joint Israeli-Emirates project.

Robert (Rob) Polak

With gratitude for your enthusiastic support of Israel and the Technion; in honor of continuing your rich family legacy while creating your own niche; in appreciation of your vision to advance Technion’s most commercially promising research; in recognition for all you do for students and soldiers; and in thankfulness for the many contributions that have made you a Technion Guardian.

Robert (Rob) Polak with Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan

Ira Taub

In appreciation of your passionate concern for Israel and advancing Technion’s global impact; in honor of furthering your parents’ historic vision; in recognition of your active leadership in the American Technion Society and your community; and in gratitude for your pivotal role in directing philanthropic funds to priority areas across the Technion, especially computer science, and institutions throughout Israel and the United States.

Ira Taub with Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan

Gal Haber

In recognition of your achievements as an entrepreneur, innovator, and industry leader; in gratitude for your contributions to the Technion and to Israeli society, in particular to the education and personal empowerment of youth; and in appreciation of your position as a role model who continues to inspire Technion students and graduates as they embark on their professional journeys.

Gal Haber with Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan

On June 26, the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science held its Project Fair at the Technion, with the participation of dozens of undergraduate students. Diverse projects in various fields were presented under the following categories: Internet of Things (IoT), Android applications, software engineering, and computer communications.

Many of the projects at the fair – led by Itai Dabran and Tom Sofer of the Interdisciplinary Center for Smart Technologies (ICST) in computer science – utilize various technologies to benefit society; for example, a smart hospital bed that warns of the danger of falling off, a swimming prosthesis for amputees, a system for organizing clothes sold in second-hand stores, a robot that solves a Rubik’s cube based on voice commands, a home monitoring app for air pollution, and apps to support various non-profits.

ערכה לימודים המשלבת רובוטיקה ותאטרון בובות

Where theater meets robotics

Elinor Ginzburg, a student who volunteered for a time in the Neurosurgery Department at Rambam Health Care Campus, learned that brain surgery and related treatments often cause blurring and confusion. As a result, patients sometimes try to climb over the bed railings and fall off. Together with Leon Kosarev and Tomer Ron, Elinor developed a system that provides medical staff with advance warning of such dangerous attempts.

מיטה המונעת נפילות מאושפזים עם פגיעה נוירולוגית

Warning doctors of potential falloffs

Students Noor Shbat and Nawal Sheikh have developed a system that analyzes the performance of Olympic surfers and provides data analysis to help them win. The system is built on sensors and computerized analysis of the information received and operates even in places with no cellular reception. It was developed in collaboration with the Wingate Institute and the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering.

Students Nadav Kiri, Ben Shani, and Noa Rosenthal developed a smart prosthesis that helps amputees swim, using sensors that detect the position of the arm and a neural network that learns the user’s behavior.

רובוט הפותר קובייה הונגרית בעזרת פקודות קוליות

Robot solving Rubik’s cube

Dina Alexandrovich, Racheli Chepovetsky, and Maya Stein developed an app that helps run second-hand clothing stores. The app allows you to enter any incoming item into the system, manage inventory, and allow customers to easily find the clothes they want.

The Technion Social Hub, which specializes in research and education for technological involvement in the community, collaborated with the Interdisciplinary Center for Smart Technologies on five projects. They included “Paamonim,” a system for managing employees at the social non-profit; an app that helps collect electronic equipment for recycling; a communication board that helps people with cerebral palsy; a support system for the “Women’s Courtyard,” a multicultural space for at-risk girls and women; and an IoT system to support the disabled and visually impaired at the Migdal-Or factory. This system was also incorporated into one of the students’ final projects as part of “Seeds of Innovation” in the Faculty of Industry and Management.

For the full list of projects: click here

On May 23, 2022, the Technion awarded 212 Ph.D. degrees to its latest cohort of doctorates in a moving ceremony hosted on campus and attended by friends and family of the graduates. Professor Oded Rabinovitch, the Technion’s Senior Executive Vice President, opened the event with his remarks, followed by words from the Dean of the Graduate School Professor Dan Givoli. The ceremony was moderated by Professor Irad Yavneh of the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science and the Director of the Samuel Neaman Institute.

Technion Senior Executive Vice President Oded Rabinovich expressed words of thanks “to the families, parents, partners, friends and children, and to all those who without your support, these achievements would not have happened.” He went on to say that “the nature of innovative, deep, leading, and groundbreaking research is that it is difficult to identify the final chord. You probably know better than all of us that every research question that is answered, generates at least three or four new questions. None of these give a sense of completion or closure. On the contrary, the final chord of the doctoral dissertation is an opening chord to a world of professional research that invites curiosity and a striving for truth, realizing your ability to delve into a complex and complicated problem and break through it, and harnessing your ability to face the real challenges facing society. All of this turns that elusive doctoral graduation chord into the opening chord of a wonderful path, through which you as newcomers join the family of doctoral graduates at the Technion. We wish you luck!”

Dean of the Graduate School Prof. Dan Givoli continued with his congratulatory remarks, stating, “The two main components of the Technion’s success are faculty and doctoral students. All of you, doctoral students, were one of the cornerstones of the Technion during your studies here and we are proud of you for that – and proud of your future achievements.” Prof. Givoli noted some statistics related to the degree recipients, and wished them well, saying, “The 212 graduates were supervised by 276 advisors. The number of advisors is greater than the number of doctorates because much of the research is interdisciplinary and requires more than one advisor. The youngest graduate is 28 and the oldest is 76 – which shows that it is never too late to start studying for a doctorate. Good luck.”

40% of the graduates are women

This year’s group of doctoral graduates is particularly diverse in both their backgrounds and the range of research fields and specialties. Nearly 40% of the graduates are women, and nearly 45 of the graduates come from international backgrounds outside of Israel including locations such as the former Soviet Union, Ukraine and Russia (29), China (7), India (4), and the United States (4). 75 students took the Direct Ph.D. track. The Rappaport Faculty of Medicine leads with the highest number of doctoral graduates (33).

Natalie and Oren Rizansky, who completed their Ph.D. studies in Biology and Mechanical Engineering respectively, spoke at the ceremony on behalf of the graduates. “Studying for a PhD is a rollercoaster with highs and lows and is a herculean task,” they said. “What all graduates have in common is the challenge to discover something they didn’t know before.”

The couple met during military service in the training section of the Combat Engineering Corps. After the army, Oren began studying for a bachelor’s degree in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion and Natalie attended the Faculty of Biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After graduating, Natalie joined Oren in the Technion dorms, and they both began studying at the Technion for a master’s degree that soon turned into a direct doctoral track. In her doctoral dissertation, Natalie, under the supervision of Professor Emeritus Arie Admon from the Faculty of Biology, researched “the identification of mutant and unique peptides in cancer cells,” while Oren researched the mechanical reaction of metal plates under load under the guidance of Professor Danny Rittel from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. While studying for their doctorates, they brought two children into the world, Tomer, who is now 5, and Yuval, who is 3. They are currently expecting their third child.

The oldest graduate to receive their degree was Dr. Rinat Baor, who carried out her research in the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology. She said that after working for 20 years as a math teacher and 13 years as a teaching assistant, “I wanted to do a Ph.D., and unfortunately, I wasn’t able to afford it and didn’t have time. The Technion gave me the opportunity to do a doctorate in a faculty with a really nice atmosphere. I received excellent guidance and enjoyed a good relationship with my supervisor, Associate Professor Einat Heyd-Metzuyanim. The research group I joined also helped me develop my research and encouraged Ph.D. thinking.”

In total, 212 Ph.D. degrees were awarded to graduates from all Technion faculties, for their research work across various interdisciplinary fields, including: calculations using an engineered bacterium (Dr. Natalia Berger, under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Ramez), flow in coral reefs (Dr. Shai Asher, under the supervision of Prof. Uri Shavit), assessing the accessibility of urban spaces for the visually impaired (Dr. Ahituv Cohen under the supervision of Dr. Sagi Dalyot and Dr. Asia Netapov), research into the development of water waves under wind constraint (Dr. Almog Shani-Zerbib, under the guidance of Prof. Dan Liberzon), from start-up beginnings to entrepreneurial success (Dr. Moran Lazar, supervised by Prof. emeritus Miriam Erez and Prof. Ela Meron-Spektor), biomaterials – complex designs (Dr. Noam Attias, led by Prof. Noam Grubman and Prof. Ezra Tarazi), using diverse sources of information for the re-labeling of drugs (Dr. Galia Nordon, under the guidance of Prof. Benny Kimelfeld and Dr. Kira Radinsky), repairing DNA fragments. Dr. Ines Abu Zahya, led by Prof. Nabieh Ayoub), muscle tissue engineering to increase insulin sensitivity in diabetics (Dr. Margarita Beckerman, under the guidance of Prof. Shulamit Levenberg and Prof. Emeritus Eddy Karnieli), and stretch sensing systems for the development of electronic skin (Dr. Yehu David Horev under the supervision of Prof. Hossam Haick), among many others.

Thank you, President Sivan and the entire Board of Governors for conferring upon me this honorary degree. It is a great honor to be a part of the Technion Institute community.

To all of today’s graduates — congratulations!

As a scientist and a Jew, I can’t overstate how much it means to me to receive this degree and to be invited to address this year’s graduating class.

Since first opening its doors in 1924, the Technion has been a beacon of light not only for Israel, but for the entire world. The story of the Technion, like that of my company, Pfizer, is a one of innovation, but also of courage and optimism – all of which have helped give birth to technological and scientific breakthroughs aimed at making the world a better place.

Researchers at the Technion have driven advances in alternative fuels that are helping mitigate climate change. Professors Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko’s Nobel Prize-winning work in ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation led to a better understanding of human health. And the Technion’s first-of-its-kind collaboration with Cornell University is pursuing breakthroughs in the areas of connective media, health technologies and urban engineering.

But none of these successes would have been possible without courage and optimism – the courage of Paul Nathan, who endeavored to establish a university in Israel that would improve the lives of Jews while they were largely banned from studying scientific and technological subjects in Europe … and the optimism of Dr. Chaim Weizmann and Albert Einstein who refused to let the school die after the financial difficulties brought on by World War I.

Innovation, courage and optimism are three things that define my colleagues at Pfizer, as well. It took courage, for example, to make the counterintuitive decision to use mRNA technology in the COVID-19 vaccine we developed with BioNTech. This courage not only helped us deliver a safe and effective vaccine in only nine months, but it may also prove to be an important step in unlocking the great promise that the technology holds for many other therapeutic areas, including cancer and rare disease. Our successful vaccine journey showed us we can make the impossible possible – and our colleagues are now taking this newfound optimism to their work in other areas.

If you are anything like I was on my graduation day, you are thinking about all the hard work it took to get you to this day. But guess what … that was the easy part. There was a curriculum and you did what you needed to do to complete it.

What makes the next chapter more challenging – but also more exciting – is there is no set curriculum. The next chapter is all electives – and your choices will define your future.

Now, I can’t tell you what choices to make because we are all different people from different backgrounds with different circumstances. What I can do is share a few simple truths I have learned along the way that might help you make choices that are right for you – and that just might help you change the world (or at least your little corner of it).

First, setting extremely ambitious goals that are seemingly impossible based on conventional wisdom does not restrain human ingenuity, it liberates it. That’s why you should always aim high. If you aim for incremental change, you may improve upon something someone else has done, which is great. But it’s only when you aim for step changes – aim to do the seemingly impossible – that you can unlock the full potential of your creativity, discover completely new ways of solving a problem and deliver true breakthroughs.

Of course, aiming high does not guarantee you will hit your target. The truth is the first time you pursue an ambitious goal, you are more likely to fail than to succeed.

This brings me to the second truth: Resiliency is as important as getting it right the first time. Our failures can teach us even more than our successes. So, when something you set out to do doesn’t go as planned, don’t choose to walk away and give up; rather choose to find out why it didn’t work and let that knowledge inform your next attempt. That’s how the world moves forward.

The third truth I will share is that optimism is infectious. I learned this from my parents – particularly my mother – and it has been one of the key ingredients in inspiring my colleagues at Pfizer to shoot for the moon and make the impossible possible.

ד"ר אלברט בורלא (מימין) עם נשיא הטכניון פרופ' אורי סיון

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan (left), with Dr. Albert Bourla, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer

Of course, with our world facing several threats – war, the pandemic and racial hatred, to name just a few – you may find yourself asking: “How can we feel optimistic in a world that feels so dark?”

There are many reasons to be optimistic, including …

Human ingenuity. Humans have a proven ability to solve problems, and the convergence of advances in digital technologies and biology have us poised to make significant progress in the battle against disease.

Human compassion. As I was reminded again during my visit this week to Yad Vashem, the compassion of those who helped Jews escape the Holocaust was awe-inspiring and can be seen today in those welcoming refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world.

And human courage. There’s that word again. It’s a powerful thing to have the courage to try something new, to challenge the status quo, to speak out against injustice. And even the smallest acts of courage can have a transformational impact on our world.

I will close with a quote from the man many have called the greatest philosopher of all time – the namesake of the university from which I proudly graduated – Aristotle – who said:

“Excellence is never an accident. It represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice not chance, determines your destiny.”

As you approach the many alternatives that lie ahead in your journey, always remember to aim high, be resilient and remain optimistic in all you do. If you do, you just might be surprised with what you can accomplish – and the lives you will impact.

Thank you again for inviting me to be a part of this celebration. I wish you all tremendous success.

Congratulations and good luck.

To watch the film on Dr. Bourla we aired at his Honorary Doctorate Conferment Ceremony on June 30, 2022, click here (a subtitled film is also available):