Independence Day – A Trailblazing Trio

Three Technion alumni will light torches at the opening event for Independence Day at Mt. Herzl. This year 14 “trailblazing Israelis who made the world a better, safer, more interesting and more advanced place” were chosen to light the torches.

Raphael Mehoudar

At 20, when he was an IDF academic cadet, Rafi Mehudar developed the dual-quantity flushing system, which is in use today in almost every Israeli home. At the same time, he developed an irrigation system that waters a square area – in contrast to the circular area sprinklers. The Standards Institution of Israel was very impressed by the young inventor, and hired him to work there part-time after his discharge from the IDF.

Netafim, which had heard about the pressure regulator developed by Mehudar, also approached him – and the rest is history. Mehudar invented the drip pipes that have changed the agricultural world, and today, at 70, some 400 patents are registered in his name. According to the Ministerial Committee for Ceremonies and Symbols, “the invention of the drip pipes was an agricultural breakthrough for Israel and the world and contributed to tremendous savings in irrigation water. The drip pipes made it possible to build communities and develop agriculture even in arid regions in countries plagued by starvation”.

Dr. Gavriel Iddan

When Gavriel Iddan was an engineer at RAFAEL (the Hebrew acronym of the Armament Development Authority), he conceived a revolutionary idea: a capsule camera that a patient would swallow and which would photograph his digestive system. The digestive system is long and convoluted, such that it is “unknown territory” that is very difficult to map via external imaging.

For a decade Dr. Iddan worked on his invention, and in 1998 RAFAEL founded Given Imaging, which develops and markets the PillCam. In 2001 the PillCam was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and today it is sold around the world.

The PillCam, which weighs just a few grams and is 26 millimeters long, contains an advanced miniature video camera. The patient swallows the PillCam, which traverses his entire digestive tract in about 8 hours and constantly transmits to an external recorder. This is a diagnostic test that does not require hospitalization and allows the patient to continue his daily routine (work, leisure, sports). Doctors and researchers from around the world agree that the PillCam has revolutionized diagnosing digestive disorders.

Alice Miller

Alice was born in South Africa and immigrated to Israel at age 6. She always dreamed of being an astronaut and obtained her civilian pilot’s license at age 20 and began university studies as an IDF academic cadet at the Technion Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.

After earning her B.Sc. Miller completed her military service as an officer in the Israeli Air Force. Following her discharge, she worked as CEO of a few companies and at a certain point moved to a small village in India. During her years in Israel she lived at her home in Kibbutz Hukok.

Following the IAF’s refusal in 1995 to accept her for pilot training, Miller petitioned the High Court of Justice against the IDF and the Ministry of Defense, demanding that the court orders the air force to allow women to train as pilots. “I could not be accepted because I had the wrong chromosomes, and to me that seems illogical,” said Miller in an interview. She herself was not accepted to the pilots’ course, but following her victory at Israel’s Supreme Court, other opportunities were opened for women in the navy and air force. The Ministerial Committee for Ceremonies and Symbols noted “her struggle promoted the achievement of gender equality throughout Israeli civic society.”