2022 - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

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On October 23, 2022, the “Taste of the Future” conference, which focused on the development of alternatives for animal proteins, was held at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Speakers presented challenges, developments, and breakthroughs in the development and production of substitutes for animal-based foods. The need for such substitutes is increasing as a result of climate changes, the growing shortage of food and water due to the increase in the world’s population, and the devastating damage to biological diversity in nature caused by the clearing of forests for growing feed for cattle and for other animals raised for food.

Professor Sima Yaron, dean of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering and among the initiators of the conference, welcomed the attendees and emphasized the importance of promoting this multidisciplinary research at the Technion, partly through the help of the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center currently being established within the faculty.

R-L: Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan; Prof. Maya Davidovich-Pinchas from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering; Roni Zidon, Business Development Manager at Imagindairy, Prof. Avi Shpigelman from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Anya Eldan – CEO of Nury Ventures, Doron Maor – director of innovative technologies in protein and milk substitutes at Tnuva, Professor Uri Lesmes from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Dr. Neta Lavon – CTO at Aleph Farms, Professor Eyal Zussman from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Conference Chairman Prof. Yoav Livney, from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Ella Waldman – Government Relations at GFI, Nir Goldstein – CEO of GFI Israel, Prof. Shulamit Levenberg from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Dr. Liz Specht – Global GFI vice president for science and technology, Dr. Michal Halpert – director of academic relations – GFI Israel, David Shem Tov – leader of innovation and applied research at the Research Authority at the Technion. Conference Organizers: Prof. Livney, Goldstein, Shem Tov, Prof. Shpigelman, and Dr. Halpert.

The conference was organized by Professor Yoav Livney and Professor Avi Shpigelman from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Mr. David Shem Tov from the Research Authority, and Mr. Nir Goldstein (CEO) and Dr. Michal Halpert (Director of Academic Relations) from the Good Food Institute (GFI), Israel. GFI is a global nonprofit organization that promotes the development of alternatives to animal-based food by supporting research within the field and its application.

Speakers at the conference included:

Dr. Liz Specht, vice president, science and technology, of the global GFI organization, who presented the multidisciplinary nature of the field and the needs that require basic and applied research, and emphasized the urgency of conducting research in the field

Nir Goldstein, CEO, GFI Israel, who reviewed the developments in Israel and the world in the business arena and explained that in terms of investments in alternative proteins, Israel is ranked second globally

Professor Shulamit Levenberg from the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, who explained her research in the field of cultured meat

Dr. Martin Jager, managing partner of the venture capital fund InnoVestNutrition, who described the complex challenges faced by companies in this field

Sunny-side-up “egg” made solely from plant materials, kindly donated by the Yo-Egg company.

A steak made by 3D printing from vegetable materials produced by Redefine Meat

Technion President Professor Uri Sivan, said at the conference that, “connections between academia and industry are a central component of the Technion’s activities today. The traditional boundaries, which associate basic science with academia and applied research with industry, have disappeared. Even at this conference, we see the connection between the two sectors – experts from the Technion discuss the various issues with people from the food industry. This is the path towards changing the food industry into a high-tech industry.”

Professor Maya Davidovich-Pinhas, a member of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, added that, “the Technion excels in connecting basic science with applied research in a variety of fields like food and human health and maintains many contacts with the relevant industries.”

Prof. Sima Yaron, dean of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering

L-R: Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan, Prof. Yoav Livney, and Prof. Maya Davidovich-Pinhas from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, and Prof. Shulamit Levenberg from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering.

Panels of both industrialists and academics discussed the challenges of the field and ways to deal with them via multidisciplinary collaborations. At the end of the conference, there was a “Taste of the Future” lunch, where the participants tried “steaks” made from vegetable protein created using 3D printing by the Redefine Meat company and egg substitutes made from plant materials, courtesy of the Yo-Egg company.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), fungal diseases are responsible for destroying a third of all food crops annually, causing immense economical loss and adding to global poverty. For example, powdery mildew is a serious fungal disease, which is easily noticeable by patches of white powder found on leaves and attacks a wide range of plants. To treat these diseases, farmers are forced to use synthetic fungicides which are effective, but their extensive overuse and misuse have devastating impacts. Now, Professor Boaz Pokroy and Professor Ester Segal, of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, have proposed an environmentally friendly alternative for the exploration of which they received an EIC Pathfinder grant of $1.5 million.

Prof. Ester Segal

Some plants, like lotus and broccoli, naturally exhibit anti-adhesive wax crystals on their leaf surfaces. These crystals prevent pathogens from attaching to the plant, as the wax renders the plant inaccessible. Inspired by the crystals of the lotus and the broccoli, Prof. Pokroy from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering and Prof. Segal from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering created SafeWax, a non-toxic biodegradable formulation made from renewable materials, that can be sprayed on any plant and has the same effect as natural plants’ wax. Not only that, but it can also be tuned to provide UV radiation filtering, prevent sun damage, as well as facilitate water collection from dew condensation, mitigating the inevitable effects of climate change. Between the effects of climate change, global population growth, and the already existing global food insecurity, the importance of protecting food crops from disease cannot be understated.

Prof. Boaz Pokroy

Profs. Pokroy and Segal, working in collaboration with colleagues from the Università di Bologna, the Institut Français de la Vigne et du Vin and BASF SE, intend to demonstrate SafeWax’s capabilities on the grapevine – a crop of high importance to Europe’s economy, environment and culture, and which is highly susceptible to fungal diseases and is, for that reason, the most-frequently treated crop. The European Union is planning to prohibit the use of many fungicides due to their toxicity, leaving the grapevine and other crops defenseless unless an effective alternative is found. Europe is therefore eager for the Technion team’s experiments to succeed.

With its Pathfinder scheme, the European Innovation Council (EIC) supports the exploration of bold ideas for radically new technologies. It welcomes the high-risk/high-reward and interdisciplinary cutting-edge science collaborations that underpin technological breakthroughs. From among 858 submissions evaluated this year, the EIC selected only 57 projects to be funded.

Andrea and Lawrence Wolfe

We are thrilled to announce that Andrea and Lawrence Wolfe have received the Albert Einstein Award, the highest recognition given by the American Technion Society (ATS). Expressing his gratitude for all of their support, Technion President Uri Sivan shared: “Your contributions represent the essence of what the Technion was built on: applying the knowledge provided by science for the benefit of humanity and producing the next generation of the brightest minds in science and engineering.”

Andi and Larry Wolfe are involved in supporting the Michigan-Israel Partnership for Research and Education, in which the Technion plays a central role. Over the last decade, the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation (named for Andi’s parents and of which Larry is the President) has supported many vital initiatives at Rambam and the Technion, including the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation Pediatric Pulmonary Institute, the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation Center for Interventional Cardiology, the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Mechanical Engineering Building and most recently, and the Wolfe Center for Translational Medicine and Engineering.

Larry Wolfe has been a member of the American Friends of Rambam Board of Directors for many years. Andi is a member of the Technion Board of Governors and on the National Board of Directors of the American Technion Society (ATS). Both Andi and Larry have also been involved in many other projects in Israel and in the State of Michigan. Among their generous contributions, Andrea and Lawrence Wolfe have supported Professor Marcelle Machluf and her technology for drug delivery and cancer therapy, which helped her launch the biotech company NanoGhost. Over the years, their contributions have enabled Technion researchers to widen and further their impact in a variety of important fields.

On behalf of the Technion community, we sincerely thank you for your support!

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed a revolutionary invisible facemask to protect wearers against the transmission of COVID, MERS, influenza, and other respiratory viruses.

Although conventional facemasks help protect against disease transmission, recent scientific literature shows that they also present adverse psychological and physiological effects. They reduce facial identification and emotion recognition, adversely affect oral communication, and can cause headaches and skin problems. Wearing masks throughout the workday also results in a lack of focus, as well as reduced attention and patience in a wide range of professions. As a result of these difficulties, many people wear masks incorrectly – on or below their mouths – which greatly reduces protection. Even in Japan, where facemasks are common, a large study found that just 20% of people wear masks correctly.

Conventional facemasks have also led to a dramatic rise in plastic waste, exacerbated by governmental mask-wearing mandates, producing millions of tons annually.

Air-Screen: Fluidic facemask

Now, a Technion team led by Professors Moshe Shoham and David Greenblatt has come up with a radically new solution to the conventional mask dilemma by creating an invisible “air-screen” in front of the wearer’s face. The air-screen originates from within a lightweight filter-covered unit mounted on the visor of a cap. Several major advantages became clear: the air-screen protects the eyes, nose, and mouth without negative effects on facial identity, emotion recognition, or oral communication. The air screen is also reusable, so it does not pollute the environment.

Recently published research, based on experiments conducted in Prof. Greenblatt’s laboratory, demonstrated the air-screen’s efficacy by effectively blocking aerosols produced during oral communication, as well as large droplets produced by coughing and sneezing. It also removes quiescent aerosol-laden air from in front of the face by a process known as “entrainment.” This joint effect of blocking and entrainment can be seen in the video, where laser illumination is used to render the airflow visible. David Keisar and Anan Garzozi, students in the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program, were instrumental in conducting and analyzing the experimental data, and in developing a theoretical physics-based mathematical model of the air-screen.

Aerosols rendered visible by ultraviolet illumination.

Several one-on-one interviews and pilot studies with more than 50 subjects from various sectors (e.g., older adults and their caretakers in nursing homes, university professors and their students, close-proximity workers including tutors, physiotherapists and psychologists, retail workers in stores and offices, and high-tech management teams and board members who participate in long meetings indoors), clearly showed the advantage of the invisible air screen over the commonly used face masks. These groups represent potential early adopters, who will benefit most from this new technology in Israel and globally.

The Technion recently licensed the technology to Wisdome Wearables Ltd. This new startup is currently in the process of commercializing the product, and seeking partners to realize this disruptive technology for the benefit of those at high-risk of suffering from respiratory viruses.

For the full article, click here

One in nine women in the developed world will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in her life. The prevalence of breast cancer is increasing, an effect caused in part by the modern lifestyle and increased lifespans. Thankfully, treatments are becoming more efficient and more personalized. However, what isn’t increasing – and is in fact decreasing – is the number of pathologists, or the doctors whose specialization is examining body tissues to provide the specific diagnosis necessary for personalized medicine. A team of researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have therefore made it their quest to turn computers into effective pathologists’ assistants, simplifying and improving the human doctor’s work. Their new study was recently published in Nature Communications.

L-R: Amir Livne, Dr. Gil Shamai and Prof. Ron Kimmel

The specific task that Dr. Gil Shamai and Amir Livne from the lab of Professor Ron Kimmel from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion set out to achieve lies within the realm of immunotherapy. Immunotherapy has been gaining prominence in recent years as an effective, sometimes even game-changing, treatment for several types of cancer. The basis of this form of therapy is encouraging the body’s own immune system to attack the tumor. However, such therapy needs to be personalized as the correct medication must be administered to the patients who stand to benefit from it based on the specific characteristics of the tumor.

Multiple natural mechanisms prevent our immune systems from attacking our own bodies. These mechanisms are often exploited by cancer tumors to evade the immune system. One such mechanism is related to the PD-L1 protein – some tumors display it, and it acts as a sort of password by erroneously convincing the immune system that the cancer should not be attacked. Specific immunotherapy for PD-L1 can persuade the immune system to ignore this particular password, but of course would only be effective when the tumor expresses the PD-L1.

It is a pathologist’s task to determine whether a patient’s tumor expresses PD-L1. Expensive chemical markers are used to stain a biopsy taken from the tumor in order to obtain the answer. The process is non-trivial, time-consuming, and at times inconsistent. Dr. Shamai and his team took a different approach. In recent years, it has become an FDA-approved practice for biopsies to be scanned so they can be used for digital pathological analysis. Amir Livne, Dr. Shamai and Prof. Kimmel decided to see if a neural network could use these scans to make the diagnosis without requiring additional processes. “They told us it couldn’t be done,” the team said, “so of course, we had to prove them wrong.”

Neural networks are trained in a manner similar to how children learn: they are presented with multiple tagged examples. A child is shown many dogs and many “not-dogs”, and from these examples forms an idea of what “dog” is. The neural network Prof. Kimmel’s team developed was presented with digital biopsy images from 3,376 patients that were tagged as either expressing or not expressing PD-L1. After preliminary validation, it was asked to determine whether additional clinical trial biopsy images from 275 patients were positive or negative for PD-L1. It performed better than expected: for 70% of the patients, it was able to confidently and correctly determine the answer. For the remaining 30% of the patients, the program could not find the visual patterns that would enable it to decide one way or the other. Interestingly, in the cases where the artificial intelligence (AI) disagreed with the human pathologist’s determination, a second test proved the AI to be right.

Dr. Gil Shamai

“This is a momentous achievement,” Prof. Kimmel explained. “The variations that the computer found – they are not distinguishable to the human eye. Cells arrange themselves differently if they present PD-L1 or not, but the differences are so small that even a trained pathologist can’t confidently identify them. Now our neural network can.”

This achievement is the work of a team comprised of Dr. Gil Shamai and graduate student Amir Livne, who developed the technology and designed the experiments, Dr. António Polónia from the Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto, Portugal, Professor Edmond Sabo and Dr. Alexandra Cretu from Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, who are expert pathologists that conducted the research, and with the support of Professor Gil Bar-Sela, head of oncology and hematology division at Haemek Medical Center in Afula, Israel.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to bring together artificial intelligence and medicine,” Dr. Shamai said. “I love mathematics, I love developing algorithms. Being able to use my skills to help people, to advance medicine – it’s more than I expected when I started out as a computer science student.” He is now leading a team of 15 researchers, who are taking this project to the next level.

“We expect AI to become a powerful tool in doctors’ hands,” shared Prof. Kimmel. “AI can assist in making or verifying a diagnosis, it can help match the treatment to the individual patient, it can offer a prognosis. I do not think it can, or should, replace the human doctor. But it can make some elements of doctors’ work simpler, faster, and more precise.”

a. A 2D visualization of the image feature vectors by applying t-SNE. Each point represents a single patient in the BCCA test set. The t-SNE embedding maps patients with similar image features to near points, and patients with dissimilar image features to far points. The points are colored by the PD-L1 prediction scores of their corresponding patients. The 8 patients that were classified positive by the first pathologist and low-PS by the system are marked and their classifications by both pathologists are noted. b. The TMA images corresponding to the t-SNE embedding are presented. Several examples of low and high prediction score images are shown, to demonstrate the characteristics observed by the pathologists. Examples of partially missing tissues are shown at the bottom.

For the article in Nature Communications click here

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded four early-career Technion scientists with Starting Grants, recognizing the great promise in their research fields. These scientists are: Assistant Professor Inbal Talgam-Cohen from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science; Assistant Professor Ofra Amir from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management; Assistant Professor Noga Ron-Harel from the Faculty of Biology; and Assistant Professor Naama Geva-Zatorsky from the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine.

ERC is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research and is part of the Horizon Europe program. The ERC Starting Grant is aiming to assist excellent early-career scientists, who are starting their career as heads of their own lab, in forming their teams and pursuing their most promising ideas.

Prof. Ofra Amir

Prof. Ofra Amir’s main research interests lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. People often find it hard to trust computer systems, because they don’t understand their behavior. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has a great potential to benefit society in areas such as transportation, healthcare and education. But to fulfill this potential and collaborate effectively with AI, we need to be able to know when we can trust its decisions. For example, a driver of an autonomous vehicle will need to anticipate situations in which the car fails and hands over control, while a clinician will need to understand the treatment regime recommended by an AI to determine whether it aligns with the patient’s preferences. The objective of Prof. Amir’s study is to develop adaptive and interactive methods for conveying the behavior of AI-based systems to users, develop algorithms that determine what information about AIs’ behavior to share with users and, design interfaces that allow users to proactively explore AIs’ capabilities in order to understand them better.

Prof. Naama Geva-Zatorsky

Prof. Naama Geva-Zatorsky studies the interactions of the gut microbiota with our immune system and their potential effects on our health. In particular, she seeks to understand better their functionality and spatial organization – where exactly in the intestine the microbes thrive, how they adapt to their environment, and how they affect us – their mammalian host. These questions have a particular importance for colitis and Crohn’s Disease, types of inflammatory bowel diseases. Specifically, Crohn’s patients’ intestines display patches of gut inflammation surrounded by uninflamed regions, with a clear demarcation but unknown cause. Prof. Geva-Zatorsky seeks to find out why some areas of patients’ guts become inflamed while others do not, understand how the microbes and the patients’ immune system interact, and hopefully obtain knowledge that could lead to new and better diagnostics and treatments.

Prof. Noga Ron-Harel

Aging of the immune system is the focus of Prof. Noga Ron-Harel’s study. Specifically, her work focuses on T lymphocytes. These cells are central players in our defence against pathogens, and mediate response to vaccination and immunological memory to past events. T lymphocytes are among immune cell populations that are most detrimentally affected by aging. Strikingly, old and dysfunctional T cells promote organ ageing and age-related morbidities. Prof. Ron-Harel aims to delve into the pathways by which T cells interact with their aging microenvironment and vice versa, understand the cause-and-effect relations between organs’ ageing and T cells’ ageing, and perhaps find new ways to rejuvenate both.

Prof. Inbal Talgam-Cohen

Prof. Inbal Talgam-Cohen works in the field of Algorithmic Game Theory, her particular interest being algorithms with economic and societal applications. Such algorithms can’t be designed in a void; they constantly interact with humans, who have their own interests. Prof. Talgam-Cohen proposes to apply the algorithmic lens to a field in economics called ‘contract design’, recognized by the 2016 Nobel Prize. That is, contracts could be designed by means of algorithms, in ways that would incentivize all parties involved to invest effort towards a fruitful cooperation. Applications of this approach range from traditional contracts moving to online platforms, like freelancing, to novel data-driven incentive schemes for domains like digital healthcare.

Prof. Jacob (Koby) Rubinstein, the Technion Executive Vice President for Research, said “the achievements of the four faculty members place us at the forefront of the most outstanding universities in Europe. No less important, there’s noteworthy gender representation here – something to be proud of for us, and of course for the four women themselves.”

Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: “We are proud that we are empowering younger researchers to follow their curiosity. These new ERC laureates bring a remarkable wealth of scientific ideas, they will certainly further our knowledge and some already have practical applications in sight. I wish them all the best of luck with their explorations.”

President of the European Research Council Prof. Maria Leptin said: “It is a pleasure to see this new group of bright minds at the start of their careers, set to take their research to new heights. I cannot emphasize enough that Europe as a whole – both at national and at EU level – has to continue to back and empower its promising talent. We must encourage young researchers who are led by sheer curiosity to go after their most ambitious scientific ideas. Investing in them and their frontier research is investing in our future. It is a pleasure to see this new group of bright minds at the start of their careers, set to take their research to new heights. I cannot emphasize enough that Europe as a whole – both at national and at EU level – has to continue to back and empower its promising talent. We must encourage young researchers who are led by sheer curiosity to go after their most ambitious scientific ideas. Investing in them and their frontier research is investing in our future.”

Students at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management have developed computational tools for predicting the success of harvests. These tools will help the volunteer Israeli organization Leket Israel gather unused food and distribute it to those in need, reducing food waste in the process.

A recent event was conducted between Leket Israel and the Technion in the format of a Datathon using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud environment that provides tools for storing information, computing, and handling big data.

The students who won first place

The participants were all undergraduate students in the faculty, studying data science and engineering or information systems engineering. They were required to develop computational methods to predict the amount and type of produce that would be made available to Leket Israel at any given time in any region of the country. These predictions would improve Leket’s ability to plan the harvesting of the produce efficiently, further reducing food waste and increasing the donations of food to the various organizations throughout the country.

The students who won second place

The event was opened by data science Professor Avigdor Gal, one of the initiators of the Technion’s Data Science and Engineering program in the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management – one of the first such educational curriculums around the world. He explained that “the event is part of the faculty’s annual extracurricular activities designed to generate social and ethical awareness among students, with the understanding that their professional occupation in the future will require access to data that impacts society, for example social media content, health data, and the like.”

Gathering for judging: deputy director-general for marketing at Leket Israel Anat Friedman-Koles, deputy director general for operations at Leket Israel Irit Davidovich, coordinator of the Technion’s Social Incubator Ronit Piso and the Dean of the Faculty, Professor Ran Samorodinsky.

According to Professor Liat Levontin, who is also a member of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, “the Datathon was designed to improve the food supply chain of Leket Israel while analyzing its collection and distribution data. Data science students from the faculty proposed technological solutions expected to reduce food waste and improve the recipients’ trust in the supply chain. As part of a large study by EIT FOOD, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, we found that consumer trust in the food supply chain has significant implications, for example, on healthy eating habits, and we believe that the Datathon will advance consumer’s trust.”

All Datathon participants

According to Dr. Gila Molcho, director of academic projects and coordinator of the faculty excellence programs, “beyond the fun of participating in the competitive side of a datathon, the students gained experience in understanding data and extracting insights within a given time frame. Furthermore, they experienced a sense of personal empowerment and satisfaction from being part of the Data for Good experience. Our collaboration with Leket Israel will not end with the Datathon. Our information systems engineering students will continue developing a management tool for Leket Israel as part of their annual capstone project.”

The Datathon was organized by the Technion’s Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Data for Good Israel, Leket Israel, the Technion’s Social Incubator and EIT FOOD – Consumer Trust Grand Challenge with the support of Tech.AI, the Technion’s Center for Artificial Intelligence.

On October 9, the most energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever measured was observed. The burst, which occurred 2.4 billion light-years from Earth, was documented as GRB 221009A.

In an amazing coincidence, an article predicting the maximum energy of GRBs written by researchers at the Faculty of Physics at the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology was accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, which many say is the most important journal in astrophysics. Entitled “The Maximum Isotropic Equivalent Energy Of Gamma Ray Bursts,” the article predicted not only the strength of the eruption but also its other characteristics. It was written by Professors Arnon Dar and Shlomo Dado. The professors recently uploaded their findings to “Internet Archive,” a repository whose stated mission is universal access to all knowledge.

Prof. Arnon Dar

A gamma ray burst is a cosmic event during which a huge amount of gamma rays and X-rays is emitted within seconds in a single pulse or in several adjacent pulses. Some 25 years ago, Dar and his colleagues, Professor Ari Laor and Nir Shaviv published an article suggesting the possibility that gamma-ray bursts may be responsible for some of the past major extinctions of life on Earth.

Gamma bursts were first discovered in 1967, when the USA sent satellites to detect possible Soviet nuclear tests in space. Such tests were prohibited by an international agreement, but the Americans suspected that the USSR was conducting them in space on the assumption that it would be impossible to detect them from Earth due to the atmospheric absorption of x and gamma rays. Six years later, in 1973, only after it became clear that they were not caused by humans, their existence was published.

In the first two decades after the discoveries of gamma-ray bursts, most of the scientific community believed these events were taking place in the Milky Way, which is “our” galaxy. Only in 1991 did the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) obtain observational evidence that these events occur mainly in other, very-distant galaxies.

Prof. Shlomo Dado

In 1994, Prof. Dar, together with Prof. Nir Shaviv (his doctoral student at the time), published a new model explaining the phenomenon – a narrow jet of balls of matter emitted at the birth of neutron stars or black holes. These balls move at a speed – close to that of the speed of light. This model became the basis of the “cannonball model” that was later developed by Profs. Dar and Dado with their colleague Prof. Alvaro De Rujula from the CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. According to this model, the balls of matter scatter the light and matter in their path, thus creating a narrow beam of high-energy photons, electrons and atomic nuclei. When the photons in the beam reach Earth, they are observed by ground and space telescopes.

In their current article, Profs. Dar and Dado link the phenomenon of gamma-ray bursts to cosmic rays, which were discovered at the beginning of the last century and remain a mystery that has not been solved to this day. This should not be confused with the cosmic background radiation that originated in the Big Bang. The researchers explain that the magnetic fields in space scatter the electrons and atomic nuclei in the beam without them losing their energy. These particles become part of the so called cosmic rays which fill space.

Profs. Dado and Dar show that these two phenomena – cosmic rays and gamma-ray bursts – are probably born together in the birth of a neutron star or a black hole. Under this assumption, they estimated the maximum energy of GRBs, only slightly more than that of GRB 221009A.

The GRB221009A burst as recorded about an hour after the first one was documented by the SWIFT telescope. Credit: NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore (University of Leicester)

On average, gamma-ray bursts are observed once a day, but bursts of the magnitude of GRB 221009A are estimated to reach Earth only once every 500 years. The burst observed on October 9 this year was measured by NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope and by an array of gamma-ray detectors that were installed in space. Its location was determined the next day using the giant VLT telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.

To read Profs. Dar & Dado’s article, click here

The eruption report on the NASA website: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-swift-fermi-missions-detect-exceptional-cosmic-blast

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed an innovative technology for growing tissue for transplantation by printing it into a microgel bath as support material. The research, published in Advanced Science, was led by Professor Shulamit Levenberg and her doctoral student Majd Machour from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering along with Professor Havazelet Bianco-Peled and doctoral student Noy Hen from the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering and The Norman Seiden Multidisciplinary Graduate program in Nanoscience & Nanotechnology.

Prof. Shulamit Levenberg; Photo credit: Revital Tubul

Tissue printing is an innovative approach for creating tissue for transplantation. In this technique, also called bio-printing, living cells are embedded in biological ink and printed layer upon layer. The printed tissue then undergoes growth for days or weeks until it is ready for printing.

Prof. Havazelet Bianco-Peled

According to Prof. Levenberg, “many research groups around the world are working on improving tissue printing, but most of them are focusing on the printing phase and the initial product – the printed tissue. However, the growth phase of the tissue – that is, the period between the printing and the transplantation in the target organ – is no less important. This is a complex period in which the printed cells divide, migrate, and secrete their extracellular matrix and attach to each other to create the tissue. One of the problems is that in this complex process, the tissues tend to distort and shrink in an uncontrolled manner.”

Majd Machour

The Technion researchers thus focused on preventing the uneven shrinkage of the printed tissue in the weeks after printing. The solution was found through changing the medium in which the tissue is printed and grown. The new concept, print-and-grow, is based on an original medium developed by the researchers – an innovative microgel used as a support material in the process, CarGrow, which is a substance mainly composed of carrageenan (Carrageenan-K) and is produced from red algae. In fact, the new support bath preserves the size of the tissue after printing and prevents it from shrinking and losing its shape. This process allows reliable and controlled production of functional tissue in the desired size and shape. Since this material is transparent, it makes it possible for the scientists to monitor the development of the tissue through imaging.

The Technion researchers hope the new method will lead to the development of new technologies for bio-printing. The research was supported by an ERC (European Research Council) grant from the European Union.

Noy Hen

About a year ago, Prof. Levenberg published another breakthrough in the field of bio-printing in Advanced Materials. In that study, she was able to create a printed tissue flap based on collagen and living cells containing major blood vessels and small blood vessels that feed the tissue and make possible a connection to the artery after the transplant. This allowed immediate blood flow into the engineered tissue right after the transplant, which accelerates and improves the integration of the tissue in the body. You can read more about that study here.

The results of growing the printed tissue in CarGrow (above) and without it. One can see that the innovative process maintains the original size of the tissue and prevents its drastic shrinking.

For the article in Advanced Science click here

Bringing together concepts from electrical engineering and bioengineering tools, Technion and MIT scientists collaborated to produce cells engineered to compute sophisticated functions – “biocomputers” of sorts. Graduate students and researchers from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Professor Ramez Daniel’s Laboratory for Synthetic Biology & Bioelectronics worked together with Professor Ron Weiss from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create genetic “devices” designed to perform computations like artificial neural circuits. Their results were recently published in Nature Communications.

The genetic material was inserted into the bacterial cell in the form of a plasmid: a relatively short DNA molecule that remains separate from the bacteria’s “natural” genome. Plasmids also exist in nature, and serve various functions. The research group designed the plasmid’s genetic sequence to function as a simple computer, or more specifically, a simple artificial neural network. This was done by means of several genes on the plasmid regulating each other’s activation and deactivation according to outside stimuli.

Prof. Ramez Daniel

What does it mean that a cell is a circuit? How can a computer be biological?

At its most basic level, a computer consists of 0s and 1s, of switches. Operations are performed on these switches: summing them, picking the maximal or minimal value between them, etc. More advanced operations rely on the basic ones, allowing a computer to play chess or fly a rocket to the moon.

In the electronic computers we know, the 0/1 switches take the form of transistors. But our cells are also computers, of a different sort. There, the presence or absence of a molecule can act as a switch. Genes activate, trigger or suppress other genes, forming, modifying, or removing molecules. Synthetic biology aims (among other goals) to harness these processes, to synthesize the switches and program the genes that would make a bacterial cell perform complex tasks. Cells are naturally equipped to sense chemicals and to produce organic molecules. Being able to “computerize” these processes within the cell could have major implications for biomanufacturing and have multiple medical applications.

The Ph.D students (now doctors) Luna Rizik and Loai Danial, together with Dr. Mouna Habib, under the guidance of Prof. Ramez Daniel from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion, and in collaboration with Prof. Ron Weiss from the Synthetic Biology Center, MIT, were inspired by how artificial neural networks function. They created synthetic computation circuits by combining existing genetic “parts,” or engineered genes, in novel ways, and implemented concepts from neuromorphic electronics into bacterial cells. The result was the creation of bacterial cells that can be trained using artificial intelligence algorithms.

Dr. Loai Danial

Dr. Mouna Habib

Dr. Luna Rizik

The group were able to create flexible bacterial cells that can be dynamically reprogrammed to switch between reporting whether at least one of a test chemicals, or two, are present (that is, the cells were able to switch between performing the OR and the AND functions). Cells that can change their programming dynamically are capable of performing different operations under different conditions. (Indeed, our cells do this naturally.) Being able to create and control this process paves the way for more complex programming, making the engineered cells suitable for more advanced tasks. Artificial Intelligence algorithms allowed the scientists to produce the required genetic modifications to the bacterial cells at a significantly reduced time and cost.

Going further, the group made use of another natural property of living cells: they are capable of responding to gradients. Using artificial intelligence algorithms, the group succeeded in harnessing this natural ability to make an analog-to-digital converter – a cell capable of reporting whether the concentration of a particular molecule is “low”, “medium”, or “high.” Such a sensor could be used to deliver the correct dosage of medicaments, including cancer immunotherapy and diabetes drugs.

Conceptual illustration: bacterial cells as artificial neural circuits

Of the researchers working on this study, Dr. Luna Rizik and Dr. Mouna Habib hail from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, while Dr. Loai Danial is from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. It is bringing the two fields together that allowed the group to make the progress they did in the field of synthetic biology.

This work was partially funded by the Neubauer Family Foundation, the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, the Technion’s Lorry I. Lokey interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

For the article in Nature Communications click here