Technion – Israel Institute of Technology wishes you a happy and healthy new year, a year to create, develop, research, study, and inspire one another.
To watch our Rosh Hashana video and read about charging electric cars faster, a solution to the oldest conundrums in physics, and other exciting news, check out our September 2021 newsletter, by clicking here.
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Projects focused on DNA simulation, image denoising and augmented reality won the best project competition held recently at the Technion’s Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science. The best projects received certificates and an award sponsored by Israeli software giant Amdocs.
Overall, 21 projects were presented at the June 16 event, their scope ranging from smart traffic lights to reducing hospital paperwork, a project which is already in use at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, Israel.
Best Project Contest, June 2021
The Mona Lisa converted into virtual DNA
“There is interest in storing information in the form of DNA,” students Gadi Chaykin and Nili Furman said about their award-winning project, advised by Prof. Eitan Yaakobi and Omer Sabary from the Information Storage and Memories Laboratory. “It requires very little space and energy.” However, “the idea is still in development,” they emphasized, “and development is hindered by the high costs of DNA synthesis and sequencing, that is, reading and writing on the ‘memory.’”
To facilitate the research and development of the platform, the two created a DNA simulator, enabling scientists to test algorithmic approaches at little cost. “In the process of copying a DNA molecule, errors of insertion, deletion, and substitution naturally occur,” they said. “We simulated these errors, creating a tool that would allow researchers to examine new coding techniques and new algorithms for DNA storage systems.”
To demonstrate, the two students showed an image of the Mona Lisa converted into virtual DNA, then reconstructed with errors resulting from the simulated DNA-replication process, and finally corrected using an algorithm they wrote.
Denoising photographs
Students Guy Ohayon and Theo Adrai, advised by Gregory Vaksman and Prof. Michael Elad from the Geometric Image Processing (GIP) lab, showcased a novel way of denoising photographs.
Every camera and every sensor currently in use produce an image with some amount of “noise” resulting from bad lighting, imperfect electronics and more. Removal of that noise is thus crucial, but remains one of the most complex challenges in the field of computer vision. Current denoising methods, the students explained, produce a “plastic,” artificial-looking image, reminiscent of a computer avatar rather than a person. Something of the vitality of the image gets lost with the noise.
Using deep learning, the group created a novel algorithm that “reimagined” the lost details, resulting in a series of many possible “recovered images” that look much more pleasant to the eye and appear close to the original. An academic article was published based on this project.
Augmenting augmented reality?
Finally, students Almog Brand, Dani Ginsberg, and Lior Wandel showcased their project, focused on improving augmented reality. Augmented reality is meant to be an experience where computer-generated elements are added to the real world we see. Popular mobile game Pokémon-Go is a well known example.
While the virtual objects in augmented reality might appear realistic, the shadows they cast do not, creating a visual dissonance. “Current algorithms might take into account one’s location, season and time of day,” the students explained, “but you might be in a building or outside, with your back to the light source or facing it. We want the shadows to reflect that.”
Augmented reality project
To achieve this, the group created a novel device that continuously samples the lighting situation and inputs it into the augmented reality scene in real-time. The project was advised by Yaron Honen, Boaz Sternfeld and Boris Van-Sosin from the Geometric Image Processing (GIP) lab, the Virtual & Augmented Reality Lab (AVRL) and the Center for Graphics and Geometric Computing (CGGC).
Winning teams
The annual competition, open to undergraduate computer sciences students, aims to recognize the value of independent work as part of a graduate’s training process. It highlights projects that stand out for their innovation and execution. Projects were completed as part of various courses during the students’ studies; they were recommended for the competition by the faculty member in charge of the project. Amdocs has been sponsoring the competition since 2009.
Professor Avi Ceder
While the damages of private transportation are no secret, a new article published in Scientific Reports presents a more disturbing picture, yet suggests sustainable solutions. The articles was authored by Professor Emeritus Avishai (Avi) Ceder of the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion, an international transportation expert, who served as the Chief Scientist of the Israeli Ministry of Transportation.
His paper, which demonstrates the magnitude of traffic and transportation damages, provides a comparison of private and public vehicle travel times, as well as a model for autonomous transportation. Ceder has developed measures for representing transportation problems globally, with data from 19 countries across five continents, including developing countries.
According to Ceder, the damages of private transportation include:
Prof. Ceder has also found that, contrary to common belief, in 94% of the cases, public transport brings passengers to their destinations in less time than a privately owned car. A comparison of traveling from the suburbs to city centers reveals that using autonomous buses over autonomous privately owned vehicles, will reduce the number of vehicles on the roads by 66%.
Finally, the transition from a private car to any kind of public vehicle must be based on the individual’s decision to prefer public transport vehicles. Prof. Ceder stresses that the changes will only emerge if proactive government actions are taken in two major directions: developing autonomous vehicles exclusively for public transport and setting standards for automatic connections of different vehicles. He believes that many patterns in our lifestyles that changed due to Covid-19 are likely to provide leverage for change in the world of transportation.
“Driving habits have to change,” he says. “The addiction to driving is similar to the addiction to smoking, and here too, real withdrawal is required.” Prof. Ceder believes that “the jolting experience of the pandemic offers new ways of thinking. We can’t afford to lose the momentum.”
Click here for the full paper in Scientific Reports (Springer Nature Publishing Group)
The Technion is 94th on a list of the world’s top 100 universities, according to a report published yesterday by Shanghai Ranking, the world’s leading index for higher education. The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is also on the top 50 list in two fields: aerospace engineering (16th place) and automation & control (46th place). In chemistry, the Technion ranks among the top 50-75 universities in the world. The Technion has consistently made the top 100 list of the Shanghai Ranking since 2012 (with one exception in 2020).
“The Technion is one of the world’s leading universities, and we will continue to invest efforts and resources to maintain this position for years to come,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “The Technion’s strength lies in its excellent human capital, which leads to numerous achievements and breakthroughs in research and teaching. This is the result of hard work and dedication by Technion faculty, deans, administrative staff, and management.”
Prof. Sivan added that the Technion’s listing on the Shanghai Ranking and other indices “is not a purpose on its own. Global academic competition is rapidly intensifying, and while many governments around the world are steadily increasing their investments in academia and research, Israeli universities rely almost entirely on donations, which are becoming increasingly difficult to get.”
Prof. Uri Sivan, President of the Technion
According to Prof. Sivan, “in order for Israel to preserve its standing at the forefront of global research, and to ensure the nation’s security, as well as its academic and economic future, the government should significantly increase investment in research and teaching, as well as adopt a welcoming stance toward the absorption of foreign faculty and students.”
While Prof. Sivan is “pleased that the Technion is among the three Israeli academic institutions on the top 100 list, we must remember that without government support and globalization of our research institutions, it will be harder for us to maintain this position.”
The Shanghai Ranking, first published in 2003, categorizes academic institutions according to objective criteria, such as the number of Nobel Prize laureates and other prestigious awards; the number of scientific articles published in the leading journals Nature and Science; the number of times scientific articles published by university researchers have been quoted; and researchers who’ve been frequently quoted in academic journals, relative to their peers in the field.
The index looks at 1,800 universities, from which the top 1,000 are selected. Leading the list are Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, MIT and UC Berkeley. For the full ranking, click here.
From detecting cardiovascular disease, to fighting coronavirus, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering students recently presented an array of innovative projects that integrated everything they had learned.
During project development, the students had to go through all the stages needed to bring an idea to fruition. Starting with a medical problem which they had to tackle, they had to combine and implement medical know-how with engineering skills and scientific knowledge in order to provide a real-world solution. This hands-on experience exposes and prepares Technion graduates to the high-tech and biomed industries, and to biomedical research in a way that encourages multidisciplinary work. Therefore, such projects are vital for their future career and entrepreneurial skills.
Here’s a glimpse into some of the most intriguing (and often lifesaving) student projects in biomedical engineering.
Early detection of cardiovascular disease
Sivan Barash and Shachar Zigron took first place in the student project competition, presenting a novel way of labelling macrophage cells, making them detectable by MRI. Macrophages are cells involved in the detection and destruction of bacteria. Cardiovascular disease is strongly associated in the public mind with fat storage in the body, but recent studies have shown significant involvement of inflammation in the process. Since macrophage cells have a major role in inflammation, being able to observe their movement within the body would facilitate scientists’ exploration of the connection between inflammation and cardiovascular disease. The duo’s project has lain the groundwork for in-vivo studies soon to be conducted in the laboratory of Prof. Katrien Vandoorne.
Students presenting a novel way of labelling macrophage cells, making them detectable by MRI
AI-based decision support machine for fetal monitoring
Second place went to Amit Parizat and Rotem Shapira, who created an artificial intelligence (AI) system to analyze the output of the fetal monitor during labor and serve as a decision support machine. Complications during labor develop rapidly and can harm mother and child. The fetal monitor alerts healthcare providers of complications during labor. However, analyzing the monitor’s long signals manually is challenging and leads to obstetrics teams recommending a Caesarean “just in case” at the slightest indication, to the point that currently a third of all births in the U.S. involve a C-section, and only 20% of C-sections are later found to have been necessary. C-sections carry risks to the mother and involve a long recovery and long-term side effects. Amit and Rotem proved the feasibility of training an AI machine to predict complications during childbirth, preventing unnecessary invasive intervention, while ensuring that intervention is performed when needed. To achieve this, the two worked with the Obstetrics and Newborn Medicine Division at the Carmel Medical Center.
Treating cancer
Orel Shahadi and Or Levy, coming in third, developed a 3D model that simulates drug penetration into solid tumors, facilitating development of new drugs and drug combinations to treat cancer. Their innovative model features an inner cluster of cells engineered to display fluorescence, surrounded by an outer layer of cells. Change in the cells’ fluorescence served as an indicator, providing a way to measure drug penetration into the tumor with a high level of precision.
Detecting heart rhythm problems through the color of your skin
Yonathan Belicha and Daniel Cherniavsky, who took fourth place, explored a novel approach to diagnosing cardiac arrhythmias (heart rhythm problems), using nothing more than a few 1-minute videos of the patient – the kind of videos one might make using one’s smartphone. The natural contraction and relaxation of the heart cause minute changes in the human skin color. Yonathan and Daniel extracted those very small changes from the video, and from them – the subject’s pulse. Using this, they trained an AI system to recognize cardiac arrhythmia.
Fighting coronavirus with… ultrasound!
Finally, Mor Ventura, Dekel Brav and Omri Magen, coming in fifth, tackled one of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 epidemic. Classification of the COVID-19 severity degree is usually done in hospitals using CT. However, CT machines’ availability is strained, they are expensive, and the process is further complicated by the need to transfer a patient with a highly contagious disease to and from the machine. Mor and Omri explored the possibility of using lung ultrasound instead, obtaining the necessary diagnostic information faster and more easily at the patient’s bedside, also significantly reducing the workload in healthcare facilities. To this end, they first developed an image-processing algorithm to “read” and label lung ultrasounds, identifying areas of interest and ignoring artefacts. Using the results of this algorithm, the trio then trained a neural network to classify the ultrasound videos and identify the severity of the patient’s illness. The project was conducted in collaboration with the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.
Award-winning FemTech startup
Asaf Licht and Zeinat Awwad presented the entrepreneurship project. Just finishing their bachelor’s degree, the two have already turned their project into a startup called Harmony. Their project is a FemTech initiative, developing a wearable, continuous, and non-invasive tracker to monitor women’s hormonal levels, aiming to ease the process of IVF, but also relevant for avoiding pregnancy, or alternatively for increasing the chances of getting pregnant. Currently, IVF procedures requires a blood test multiple times a week; Harmony seeks to replace that with an at-home device that provides continuous measurements while reducing discomfort. This project won first place in the EuroTech Innovation Day startup competition.
To read about additional student projects recently presented at the Technion, click here, here, and here.
Story by Tanya Haykin
Air drums, dancing “spiders,” and robodogs were among many cool student projects presented recently at the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science.
In a project fair held at the end of the spring semester, students graduating from the Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science presented their work. The faculty values independent work as part of the graduates’ training process, and such projects give students an opportunity to integrate what they have learned.
The students presented various projects in the field of computer science, focused on the challenges they chose to tackle. Some created mobile apps for different uses; some developed programs to solve diverse problems; some delved into virtual reality; and others built devices, in the evolving field of Internet of Things (IoT). Multiple projects focusing on the Internet of Things were led by Itai Dabran and supervised by Tom Sofer, Michael Mendelson Mints, Vladimir Parakhin, Alon Binder, and others.
Here are some of the most intriguing projects presented.
Play drums without disturbing the neighbors
Almog Algranti, Nadav Abayov, and Yarden Wolf, created air drums: using computer vision algorithms, their app detects the drumsticks in the user’s hands, and plays music as if the user were seated at a drum set, recognizing both which drum is being struck, in what manner and with what force. “I play the piano, and recently got interested also in drums,” Algranti (filmed, below) explained. “This was an opportunity for me to create an ‘instrument’ that would let me practice without the financial investment in a drum set, and without disturbing the neighbors.”
Vintage computer game ‘Icy Tower’ now requires taking actual steps!
Suad Mansour, Sereen Diab and Aseel Khateeb, turned nostalgic computer game Icy Tower into a sports app by attaching an exercise stepper. Now, the game character would only move so long as the player kept moving. If the player stopped, the character would fall, resulting in a game-over. Like any sports app, the project displays feedback about steps walked and calories burned, as well as the game’s leaderboard. “As children, we played this game, and it as a lot of fun,” the three explained, “but it’s not very healthy to spend a long time by the computer, moving nothing but the arrow keys.”
Icy Tower team. (L-R) Suad Mansour, Aseel Khateeb and Sereen Diab
Smart clotheslines
Eliezer Alter, Barel Cohen Adiv and Eliad Ben Haiem, who all three live in the campus dorms, decided to “smartify” their clothesline. Equipped with a water sensor, a light sensor, and a tarp, their clothesline now unrolls the tarp over the clothes if it rains, folds the tarp back when the sun comes out, and even sends reminders to do the laundry when the weather promises to be fine.
Smart clothesline team: Eliezer Alter, Barel Cohen Adiv and Eliad Ben Haiem
No (real) dog, no mess: meet the robodog!
Nadav Ashkenazi, Asaf Bialystok and Nathan Voldman constructed a dog that recognizes its owners, follows them around, and barks at strangers. Ethan Baron, Ron Klaz and Snir Green’s “spider” recognizes music and dances to the rhythm. Daniel Shkolnik, Omer Hemo and Mordechai Ben Harush created a queuing app for individual exercise machines at the gym.
Robodog prototype
All in all, students created useful and fun projects, all demonstrating implementation of diverse skills. A considerable number of projects stood out for being purposely built to help the community. You can read about those here.
Come end of term, the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion held its annual projects fair, showcasing projects by undergraduate students in their final year. Given freedom to choose how they will apply the principles learned in the course of their studies, multiple groups chose to help the community, and more than one partnered with the Technion Social Hub to do so.
The students’ projects and the partnership with the Technion Social Hub present a unique opportunity: small NGOs often find themselves in need of a software solution but can neither find an existing platform to cover their particular needs, nor afford custom software. This is just the demand students can meet, at the same time gaining valuable experience in serving a client.
This year, three such projects stood out among the rest.
Friends for Health Team
First, a project for Friends for Health, by Ido Yam, Tal Manheim, Yaakov Sherma, Illay Hai, and Daniel Shapiro, guided by Eytan Singher and Itai Dabran. Friends for Health is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people who cannot afford the life-saving medication they need. Their stock comes from donors who have unused medications that they are willing to donate. The Technion team wrote for the organization a computerized interface – for the patients, it guides them to the appropriate form for receiving the specific medication they need; for donors – organizing the donation, adding the possibility for medications to be collected from the donor’s home (necessary for medications with strict storage requirements); for employees – management functions. These functions, which we take for granted in a commercial company, were previously done manually in this important nonprofit. The students’ software would considerably shorten waiting times and enable Friends for Health to assist more patients.
Social Delivery Team
A similar project was provided for Social Delivery by Lior Zelikman, Alex Chirkov, Yagel Meir and Tal Neoran, guided by Eytan Singher and Itai Dabran. Social delivery is an initiative offering logistical solutions for connecting between excess stocks of various objects (furniture, textiles, etc.) and NGOs needing those objects. Recently, they are also looking into adding companies replacing office furniture as potential donors. The students digitized for the first time the initiative’s donations, requests and storage tracking. The new interface even lets donors see their past donations and which NGOs they had helped.
A project of a different sort is the Hadar Social Network, by Haneen Jeries, Hussein Abu Jabal, Sami Hammoud and Haitham Kablan, guided by Elazar Gershoni and Itai Dabran. Hadar is considered a disadvantaged neighborhood in the City of Haifa, and the Technion is located nearby. Over the past years, the neighborhood has come to organize, and people started assisting each other however they can. But everything was happening over disjointed WhatsApp conversations, making it difficult to keep track of what was going on, or administrate the interactions. The students partnered with the neighborhood council to create a dedicated app, providing a smooth and secure process of connecting volunteers with people who need help. An administrator can ensure the security of the interaction, and a community social worker can use it to provide assistance.
Hadar Social Network Team
These projects were by no means the only ones that sought to combine a homework assignment with a chance to do good. Other groups dealt with fair trade, donation of excess food from restaurants, accessibility mapping and more. For Technion students, academic success and helping those less privileged go hand in hand.
Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed an innovative rapid imaging technology and demonstrated its performance in reconstructing the movement of a minute animal. Published in Nature Communications, the development project was headed by Professor Amir Rosenthal, doctoral student Evgeny Hahamovich, and master’s student Sagi Monin of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Images: Visualizing the movement of C. elegans with the new technology. Creating such videos had not been previously feasible with SPI technologies.
The research team’s technology is based on the innovative SPI (single-pixel imaging) concept – the production of high-quality images using a device equipped with only a single detector. This concept, which enables photographs to be taken without a camera, has vast potential for diverse applications, such as the development of components of warning systems in autonomous vehicles or enhanced image depth in microscopy of biological tissues.
SPI is based on the illumination of an object with encoded light patterns, generally by means of a projector. Based on the properties of the light reflected and propagated by the object, the image of the object can be produced using reconstruction algorithms. The problem is that to date, these systems have been hampered by significant limitations, one of them being the slow image acquisition rate, which is the result of the fact that the projectors themselves are slow. This has, until now, limited use of the systems to photographing stationary objects.
The Technion research team broke through this limitation by applying a new method for spatially encoding light at unprecedented frequencies – 2.4 MHz as opposed to 22 kHz, which is the maximum frequency currently available in SPI technology. This represents an improvement of more than a hundredfold in projection rates and image acquisition rates. By using a rotating device fitted with a coding mask, the researchers created a completely new illumination pattern and an SPI microscope with unprecedented capabilities.
To demonstrate the system’s capabilities, the research group produced videos with a frame rate of 72 FPS (frames per second). The films accurately depict the complex movement of the nematode worm, C. elegans, an impossible achievement using currently available SPI technology.
The study was funded by the Ollendorf Minerva Center.
Click here for the paper in Nature Communications
Professor Amir Rosenthal
Doctoral student Evgeny Hahamovich
Master’s student Sagi Monin
H2OLL, an innovative Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG) technology developed at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, has won the prestigious Water Europe Innovation Award for SMEs. The award was announced in June at the Water Innovation Europe 2021 Conference. Water Europe (WE) is a European technology platform for collaboration between research institutes, companies, and water utilities. The Water Europe platform was initiated by the European Commission in 2004, and now encompasses more than 200 commercial businesses, academic and research bodies, and water supply companies whose collective goal is to build a water-smart economy in Europe.
More than 10% of the world’s population, over 670 million people, presently have no access to clean drinking water, which significantly impacts numerous aspects of their lives, including health, education, and gender equality. H2OLL’s Atmospheric Moisture Harvesting (AMH) technology is capable of extracting moisture from the air even in arid and desert regions, and is highly relevant to many of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, including the rights of every person for clean water, good health, and well-being, climate action, quality education, and gender equality (in many places in the world, children – girls in particular – are required to provide water to the family at the expense of attending classes at school).
The H2OLL technology was developed by Professors David Broday and Eran Friedler from the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering and was patented by the Technion. The development team is headed by Mr. Ilan Katz (M.Sc.) as CTO, Mr. Oded Distel who leads the business development, and Dr. Khaled Gommed from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
The Technion research team built a prototype at the Technion’s Environmental Technologies Yard, which has been producing potable water since the winter of 2019-2020 (i.e. throughout the COVID-19 pandemic) and serves as a proof of concept (POC). Award-winning company H2OLL is en route to becoming a company and to commercializing the technology, with Mr. Ilan Katz as its CEO and Mr. Oded Distel as VP for business development.
Technion researchers are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle the world’s most-pressing challenges. Their extensive work in the field has positioned the Technion among the world’s leaders in AI research and development. CSRankings, the leading metrics-based ranking of top computer science institutions around the world, has ranked the Technion No. 1 in the field of artificial intelligence in Europe, and 15th worldwide. In the subfield of machine learning, the Technion is ranked 11th worldwide.
Over the years, the Technion has carried out outstanding research in the field of AI – much of which has developed into trailblazing commercial products. Collaborations with manufacturers, the high-tech industry, government agencies, R&D centers, healthcare providers and academic institutions, have all contributed to the Technion’s excellence in the field, and many alumni and researchers have gone on to found companies across the AI spectrum.
Technion’s Summer 2021 AI Brochure
During the coronavirus pandemic, Technion researchers and alumni have used a host of AI technologies, from detection to diagnostics, including testing for pre-symptomatic COVID-19 carriers; predicting the spread of COVID-19 around the globe; and analyzing the data of thousands of patients to show the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine.
To learn about the Technion’s groundbreaking AI research and technologies, click to read our Summer 2021 AI Brochure.
