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On March 23, Nir Almog, a 22-year-old student in our Faculties of Biomedical Engineering and Physics, showcased his first solo art exhibition, entitled “What if Science Were to Burst Through the Door?” Bursting with colors and eye-catching shapes, his paintings are full of life, expressing the “sense of marvel” he draws from his studies. “In every exercise and lecture, the challenge and the thoughts evoke a wave of wonder in me, which I can only fully express through painting.,” said Almog.

Almog has been painting for as long as he can remember and has produced nearly 100 works of art. He sees no conflict between science and art. In fact, he observes that the opposite is true. People continually ask how come an artist is studying science at the Technion, he tells, and answers that his art is an expression of his love for science, while simultaneously providing a relief from its rigid confines. . The expression of joy is clear to see in his artwork – psychedelic, bold, with large brushstrokes, and bursting with life and color – his paintings lift the spirits.

Painting helps him unwind, he said, and gives him space to be less careful, to be unafraid of making mistakes. It helps him rely on his intuition and to think freely. “When we approach a complex experiment or exercise, we plan routes and destinations, armed with hypotheses and obeying the rules,” he said. “Art does not work the same way … it simply enters … says what it wants to say and moves on.”

This exhibition launches the Technion’s “Spotlight on a Creative Student” series and invites interested students to apply for an exhibition to be presented in the Corridor Gallery.

The exhibition is on display at the Ullmann Building.

Curator: Valeria Geselev

Design: Ofri Fortis and Hagar Messer

Printing: Studio Kaleidoscope, Line Cut

Framing: Aman Art

Dear Members of the Technion Family:

The spring semester recently opened, and we were thrilled to welcome students, faculty, and staff to campus. After more than two years of disruptive pandemic, we’re reminded, yet again, that meaningful learning, teaching, researching, and social interaction, are at the heart of the Technion. Now that we’re about to celebrate Passover – the Jewish spring festival – our classrooms and laboratories are bustling with academic activity, and our lawns are as lively as ever.

But Passover is not only about celebrating the spring. The Passover story is one of overcoming hardship, finding hope and liberty; it’s a story of gathering the resilience to emerge from dire straits. As we’re experiencing tensions in our region, and great conflict in other parts of the world, we must believe that even in such difficult times, there is reason for hope – just like in the story of Passover.

Our hope leads the Technion to take immediate actions, such as allocating funds toward hosting undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral students, and faculty from the Ukraine and Russia, while our peaceful campus continues to be a beacon of tolerance and coexistence.

Hope also leads us to explore new frontiers, including the groundbreaking Technion experiment successfully completed in space earlier this week; and to keep inspiring youngsters. Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe recently took the Nano Bible – developed and produced at the Technion – to the International Space Station – and this journey of the world’s smallest bible perhaps symbolizes the perseverance of our people, on their journey from slavery to a flourishing country. Taken into space, the Nano Bible connects distance and time, the past and the future, and ancient human culture with modern technology.

When we read the Passover Haggadah this holiday, I hope it will inspire us to strive for peace and freedom for all.

I wish you and your families a happy, healthy, and peaceful Passover.

Hag Same’ach,

Prof. Uri Sivan

President of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

On March 30, a large Austrian delegation visited the Technion, headed by Ms. Margarete Schrambock, Federal Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs, and Mr. Alexander Schallenberg, Federal Minister for European and International Affairs, and accompanied by the Austrian Ambassador to Israel.

המשלחת האוסטרית עם נשיא הטכניון פרופ' אורי סיון ועם המשנה לנשיא ומנכ"ל פרופ' בועז גולני

The Austrian delegation with Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan and Technion Executive Vice President & Director General Prof. Boaz Golany

Arriving at the Technion by cable car, the delegation was welcomed at the David and Janet Polak Visitors Center by Technion President, Professor Uri Sivan, who talked about the Technion being the technical university of the Jewish people, and about its history and close ties with Austrian science and research. Indeed, Professor Anton Zeilinger, the renowned Austrian quantum physicist, is due to receive an honorary doctorate from the Technion later this year. The President went on to say that “what makes us different from other universities is our mission to develop Israel’s economy and security – this is embedded in our DNA.” He emphasized the Technion’s expertise in AI – the University is ranked #1 in Europe – as well as its strong ties with industry and its emphasis on commercialization.

The highlight of the visit was a meeting on Digital Health moderated by Mr. Markus Haas from Advantage Austria and led by Austrian’s Minister for Digital and Economic Affairs Ms. Margarete Schrambock. Technion ‘stars’ on the panel included Professor Hossam Haick, Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Head of the Laboratory for Nanomaterial-based Devices, Faculty of Chemical Engineering; Assistant Professor Joachim Behar, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering; Dr. Shuli Schwartz, Managing Director of the Technion DRIVE Accelerator; and Mr. Sagiv Segal, Machine Learning Intelligent Systems (MLIS) Business Development Manager. The group conversed on ways to further strengthen digital collaborations and partnerships within health and life sciences.

שר החוץ אלכסנדר שאלנברג והשרה לענייני כלכלה ודיגיטל ד"ר מרגרט שרמבוק סוקרים את מיצג הננו-תנ"ך במרכז המבקרים ע"ש פולק בטכניון

Austrian delegation looking at the nano-bible at the David and Janet Polak Visitors Center

Sagiv Segal presented MLIS and its activities, saying that “data is the fuel of the AI economy.” He also mentioned that there were considerable challenges surrounding data privacy and the prevention of biases in data analysis to deal with.

Prof. Joachim Behar talked about the new Technion Human Health Initiative (THHI), which brings together many disciplines, aiming to break barriers and allow access to the data. The initiative focuses on developing tools to help doctors choose, in real time, the most accurate and appropriate medical treatment for the patient. Prof. Behar emphasized the importance of multidisciplinary cooperation.

Prof. Hossam Haick talked about the importance of commercializing the technologies. He explained how many students dream of bringing the technology into the world through their start-up, and how the Technion supports them on this journey.

Dr. Shuli Schwartz explained that their role at DRIVE (Dream, Research, Invent, Venture, Excel) was to find problems that matched the solutions. “Our accelerator supports entrepreneurs at an early technological and business stage,” she said. She added that as a scientist turned entrepreneur, she recognized this was a transformation and not a transition.

Having heard about progress and innovations, Ms. Schambrock was impressed by the Technion’s advances in this area and said that Austria “can learn from Israel.” She stressed that R&D in health and life sciences was very important for Austria and talked about these areas being cornerstones for both countries. The Minister went on to talk about the challenges of data protection, asked how the Technion had succeeded in bringing about multi-disciplinary partnerships in digital health, and agreed that more problems need to be found and matched to the innovative solutions that scientists and engineers are discovering.

The discussion was a promising start for future joint Israeli and Austrian collaborations. The participants promised to continue the conversation.

The new Technion-Rambam Center for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (CAIH) – a joint initiative of Rambam Health Care Campus and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology – organized a Datathon – an information-based competition – as its inaugural event. Eight teams and 50 participants worked on four challenges proposed by Rambam physicians. The event took place in the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering.

“The clinicians bring their side, which is formulating the problem and the clinical knowledge, while the students and researchers from the Technion bring their side, which is how to build algorithms and analyze big data. Together we’ll find solutions,” said Assistant Professor Danny Eytan.

The teams were asked to develop a model based on computational learning to solve clinical problems encountered by hospital physicians, using real anonymized data from the hospital. The groups included students and graduates from eight faculties at the Technion, medical personnel, and industry personnel.

The winning team of students. From left to right: Prof. Leo Anthony Celi, the winning students (in white shirts), the facilitator Eytan Katz, Dr. Jonathan Sobel, Dr. Joachim Behar, Dr. Ronit Almog, Asst. Prof. Danny Eytan Photo credit: Yossi Weiner

The list of winners is as follows:

The winners were Team Stem Cells, who presented a model for early prediction of blood infection in bone marrow transplant patients. Team members: Omer Shubi, Tom Yuviler, Oren Ploznik, Yoav Danieli, Yotam Martin, Nitzan Dahan, and Shoval Zandberg. The team was mentored by Eytan Kats, Israel Henig, and Asaf Miller.

Second place went to Team Birth, who presented a model for the personalized prediction of birth weight (as an indicator of future defects) based on clinical parameters and previous births. The team was comprised of Anastasiya Kuznetsova, Alon Hacohen, Noam Keidar, Rotem Shapira, Galya Segal, and Shiri Fistel. The team was mentored by Marie-Laure Charpignon, Pierre Aublin, and Ron Beloosesky.

In third place was Team COVID-19, who presented a model for early prediction for Coronavirus patients regarding the chances of recovery, and the number of days artificial ventilation would be required. The team members were Yotam Granov, Michal Jacob, Hadar Guthmann, Alon Tsaizel, Ofek Avraham, Gal Binary, and Hagay Michaeli. The team was mentored by Einat Borohovich and Danny Eytan.

Technion and the Rambam IT and Epidemiology Department worked hand in hand to set up the computational cloud infrastructure and collate original datasets from several units across the hospital. The Datathon was a joint effort between the Technion, Rambam Health Care Campus, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was organized by staff from all three institutions: Assistant Professor Joachim Behar (Technion), Assistant Professor Danny Eytan (Technion and Rambam), Dr. Ronit Almog (Rambam), Professor Leo Anthony Celi (MIT), and Dr. Jonathan Sobel (Technion). The event was also supported by several academic and industrial partners including Roche, GE Healthcare, and Technion Human Health Initiative (THHI).

Video from the datathon:

The Technion and Rambam Health Care Campus are setting up a new joint Technion-Rambam Center for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (CAIH) that will signal a revolution in medical decision-making. The CAIH, the first joint academic-hospital AI center in Israel and one of the first in the world, will develop advanced artificial intelligence systems to analyze a patient’s condition. The center will focus on developing tools that will help physicians select, in real time, the most appropriate and accurate medical treatment for a patient. These tools will be based on a complex and rapid analysis of all the relevant medical information that has accumulated in big medical databases over the years. In the words of Assistant Professor Joachim Behar, co-director of the center, the aim of the CAIH is to “create the leading Israeli academic center for medical AI committed to advanced medical and clinical research, resulting in significant and actionable benefit to patient care.”

The Center’s opening conference, “Technion-Rambam Hack: Machine Learning in Healthcare,” which was held at Rambam Health Care Campus on March 9, was attended by about 250 people, and featured leading researchers from the Technion, Rambam, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Ministry of Health, Clalit Health Services, GE Healthcare, and Roche. Scientists, healthcare practitioners and policy makers from all around the world shared their knowledge on the fascinating topic, while student teams attempted to tackle salient issues in healthcare by technological means. The opening remarks were delivered by Technion President, Professor Uri Sivan and the CEO of Rambam, Professor Miki Halberthal. A roundtable on the topic of data stakeholders was moderated by Professor Rafi Beyar, former director of Rambam Health Care Campus, and one of the visionaries behind the new center.

“It is very exciting to be here,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “When I took office as President of the Technion more than two years ago, we built a strategic plan. The first initiative that came out of the program was the ‘Human Health Initiative,’ of which the new Center for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare is a part. The connection between the Technion and Rambam is a key element in this vision of cooperation and connection between science, engineering, and medicine, and it combines two strong and important forces. 170 faculty members at the Technion are currently working on issues related to the life sciences, and I have no doubt that there is enormous potential here.”

President of the Technion, Prof. Uri Sivan, at the conference [photo courtesy of Rambam Health Care Campus]

“It is a great privilege to open this event that connects Rambam, the Technion, and MIT,” said Rambam CEO Prof. Miki Halberthal. “I would like to thank all the organizers as well as all the guests who have come from abroad. We have many big challenges that we have not yet solved medically – infections, deterioration of corona patients, improved treatment of heart failure, and more – and I believe that cooperation with the Technion will lead to significant breakthroughs.”

The first part of the conference dealt with current trends in machine learning in healthcare, the second part on access to medical databases in Israel, and the third part on the prospective evaluation of machine learning models in the clinical environment. The conference was organized by Dr. Joachim Behar from AIMLab, Dr. Danny Eytan, Dr. Ronit Almog, and Prof. Leo Anthony Celi, who delivered the keynote address.

Prof. Leo Anthony Celi, is a senior researcher and director of the MIT Laboratory of Computational Physiology (LCP), the organization behind SANA, which supports technological innovation for the benefit of all mankind, including developing countries. Prof. Celi is a founder of MIMIC – a database serving more than 2,000 researchers in around 30 countries, creating a global community of medical researchers in the field of medical data science.

Prof. Ran Balicer is Chief Innovation Officer at Clalit Health Services, founding director of the Clalit Research Institute, a member of the Management Team for Epidemics in the Ministry of Health, and Head of the National Covid-19 Experts Advisory Team. He spoke at the conference on ways to harness data science to improve medical care. “Data science is expected to revolutionize the medical world,” said Prof. Balicer, “and there is no doubt that big data is a huge opportunity; however, as information accumulates, we understand that the key question is not how much information you have but how much knowledge it gives you, what significant insights you can gain from it and how you can incorporate it into improving medical care. In a nutshell, this revolution has taken responsive medicine for a single patient to predictive, proactive, and preventive medicine for everyone. This is no longer science fiction and we started working on it more than a decade ago. Today we are already making such predictions, and the COVID pandemic has accelerated this, of course.”

Prof. Shie Mannor is from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering and considered one of the world’s leading experts in artificial intelligence. He is also co-director of MLIS – the Center for Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems at the Technion – and a senior scientist at NVIDIA. Prof. Mannor said, “in general I am a pessimist and skeptical of the promises made in the context of artificial intelligence, but in the medical world I believe that there is, and will be, significant progress based on AI. Of course, I also have warnings: it takes time to apply artificial intelligence, and the big challenge is not writing articles but bringing real applications to the field. In this sense, doctors have a significant role to play, and only they know what is really needed, and we researchers need to help develop systems that will work in the real world.”

The Technion-Rambam Center for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare is the brainchild of the two institutions and jointly funded by both. It will operate initially in the Meyer Building in Rambam and will later be transferred to the newly built Discovery Tower on the western campus of the hospital. “The Center will start running five flagship projects, and its directors are Assistant Prof. Joachim Behar (head of the group), Assistant Prof. Uri Shalit, Prof. Shie Mannor, Prof. Lior Gepstein, Prof. Shai Shenn-Orr, Assistant Prof. Danny Eytan, Dr. Ronit Almog, and Dr. Oren Caspi.”

Conference speakers (photo courtesy of Rambam Health Care Campus)

The Center is expected to bring about a dramatic change in the way patients are diagnosed and treated in real time. According to Assistant Prof. Uri Shalit of the Technion, “The Center will serve as a significant collaborative platform that will connect doctors and researchers from Rambam with scientists and engineers from the Technion, with the aim of promoting diagnosis and medical treatment through artificial intelligence. We, as data scientists, need large amounts of curated data – Big Data – and the clinical world needs experts who will analyze this data and derive useful insights from it. For us as scientists, this is an important connection to the field and a significant means of influencing human well-being.”

Prof. Rafi Beyar (left), Prof. Lior Gepstein, Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan, and Prof. Joachim Behar (right) – photo courtesy of Rambam Health Care Campus

“This is the great innovation,” said Dr. Oren Caspi, Director of the Heart Failure Unit at Rambam, a researcher at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion, and one of the leaders in establishing the Center. “We all know the usual procedure – the patient is hospitalized, undergoes diagnostic tests, and receives treatment to the best abilities of the medical staff. The new vision presented by the Center is one of diagnosis and treatment based on extensive information from a huge number of patients. As a result, the doctor will be able to ‘tailor’ the patient’s treatment to be optimal, accurate, and customized. The Center’s uniqueness will help us convert academic achievements in artificial intelligence and big data into therapeutic tools that are immediately available at the patient’s bedside in the spirit of personalized medicine.”

The conference summarized the results of a “Datathon,” an information-based competition held last week at the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. The conference was attended by around 50 students and alumni from various Technion faculties who developed different technologies related to the analysis of medical data in solving important challenges in cardiology, fetal monitoring, intensive care, and stem cells. The students were accompanied by 20 mentors from the Technion, Rambam, and industry.

Click here to read the Technion’s AI Brochure

New technology that allows for very high-resolution medical imaging (close to 10 µm) is expected to lead to the development of tiny and effective ultrasound systems and other medical applications. The innovative technology, SPADE, is based on research led by Professor Amir Rosenthal and Ph.D. student Yoav Hazan of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.

Prof. Amir Rosenthal (left) and Ph.D. student Yoav Hazan of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Medical ultrasound is an accepted and common tool for monitoring various physiological conditions in internal tissues. Its great advantage is that unlike CT scans and x-rays, it is not based on ionizing radiation, which is considered dangerous in high doses. The main component of ultrasound systems is the transducer – an electro-mechanical device that transmits and receives ultrasound waves.

One of the technological challenges in the world of ultrasound is the development of endoscopic transducers – miniature transducers inserted through a tiny hole in the skin, or from one of the body’s natural orifices in a minimally invasive procedure. Such transducers are essential because the scan of deep tissue regions often requires a small transducer that comes close to the target tissue.

The challenge in developing these transducers stems in part from the fact that miniaturization impairs their sensitivity, making it difficult to create high-quality images. The SPADE (Silicon-Photonics Acoustic Detector) technology developed by the Technion researchers is based on optical components instead of electrical components that literally alter the image. It provides the possibility to perform ultrasound tests in resolutions not previously achieved. The researchers stress that the new technology could dramatically improve the resolution of additional diagnostic methods such as vascular imaging using optoacoustics. In this regard, the article in Nature Communications presents mapping of blood vessels in a mouse’s ear at an unprecedented resolution (about 10 microns).

תמונה של מיפוי כלי דם באמצעות שיטת הדימות האופטואקוסטית שפיתחו חוקרי הטכניון

Optoacoustic image acquired with the new technology.

The study was supported by the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI), the National Science Foundation, the Polak Foundation, the Israel Innovation Authority, and the Ollendorf Minerva Center.

Click here for the paper in Nature Communications.

Professor Emeritus Moussa Youdim of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is the recipient of the 2022 Israel Prize for Life Sciences. The Prize Committee noted that the prize was awarded to Prof. Youdim “for his pioneering, groundbreaking scientific achievements in the field of neuropharmacology. He has placed generations of undergraduates and graduates, many of whom hold key positions, in Israeli academia and in the biotechnology industry. His publications have received wide international acclaim and have won him many awards.”

Technion President Professor Uri Sivan said: “It is my honor to congratulate Professor Moussa Youdim on being awarded the Israel Prize for Life Sciences in recognition of his transformative contributions to science and medicine. The applicative and far-reaching nature of his achievements make him a member of an elite group of scientists privileged to see their research applied to benefit humankind. Prof. Youdim’s brilliant work has brought about a dramatic change in the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and literally transformed the quality of life of Parkinson’s patients the world over.”

The President added “This is the third Israel Prize awarded this year to Technion researchers, a record for us, and it makes us so proud to see the Technion recognized for its important contributions to Israel and the world.”

Prof. Youdim was born in Tehran, Iran to a family with 5 children. The synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Tehran belonged to his family and they ran all the community services relating to religion. The family was scholarly, passing on knowledge and giving advice to members of the community; hence their surname “Youdim (from the Hebrew word for knowledge).”

At the age of 12, Youdim was sent to England. He has never returned to Iran. In England, he was educated at a Jewish boarding school in Brighton ,and in 1959 was accepted to study medicine at McGill University Medical School in Canada. There, he was exposed to the world of brain biochemistry (neurochemistry), and as a result decided to pursue a doctorate in biochemistry and psychiatry. From Canada he returned to England, where he worked at the University of London, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford.

In 1972, he first heard about selegiline – a drug developed by Hungarian Holocaust survivor Joseph Knoll – whom he later visited in Budapest to collect a sample. In 1975, Prof. Youdim visited Israel, where he heard from his friend, Professor Raphael Meshulam, that the Technion Rappaport Faculty of Medicine was looking for a pharmacologist to establish and head a pharmacology department. Prof. Youdim did not know that a faculty of medicine even existed at the Technion, but he responded positively to the request of the faculty’s first dean, Professor David Erlik, and took up the position. In 1977, he immigrated to Israel with the decision to continue his selegiline research here.

In the Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Youdim and his colleague Professor John Finberg began developing the Parkinson’s drug together with Teva. By 1981, they knew they had an effective drug to treat Parkinson’s, but it wasn’t until 2006 that the drug Azilect® (Rasagiline) was approved by the FDA for treating Parkinson’s patients. A chronic and steadily disabling disease, Parkinson’s is afflicting younger populations as its average onset age continues to drops. It is now known that “Azilect” is effective in treating various stages of Parkinson’s disease, both as a single drug and in combination with the drug L-dopa. Azilect was selected by the NIH, the American National Institute of Health, as a major research topic in the study of neurodegenerative diseases and is the first drug that not only eases the symptoms of the disease but actually slows down their progression, especially when given in the early stages of development.

For decades, Prof. Youdim managed the Eve Topf Center for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, as well as the U.S. National Parkinson Foundation Centers of Excellence for Neurodegenerative Diseases Research. He has published about 800 articles on various topics related to the brain, brain diseases, and the nervous system. In recognition of his work, Prof. Youdim has twice won the Hershel Rich Prize from the Technion as well as the Henry Taub Prize. He also received the EMET Prize for Brain Science and close to 50 other important international awards, and now the Israel Prize.

In addition to Professor Youdim, two other Technion professors will receive the Israel Prize this year: Prof. Emeritus Joshua Zak of the Faculty of Physics will be awarded the 2022 Israel Prize in the Field of Physics and Chemistry Research; Prof. Emeritus Yoram Palti of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine will receive the Israel Prize in the Field of Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation.

(Photos by Miki Koren)

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

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

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

The winning entries were:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tell me about some your challenges here

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why did you decide to stay in Israel?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A peaceful place with cutting-edge research

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

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