Month: October 2011

The Gold Medal of the Israel Chemical Society for 2011 will be awarded to Professor Dan Shechtman of the Technion, winner of the chemistry Nobel Prize. Prof. Ehud Keinan, President of the Israel Chemical Society, made this announcement indicating that the medal will be awarded at the opening ceremony of the 77 Annual Meeting of the ICS in Kfar HaMaccabiah in Ramat Gan on February 7, 2012. Approximately 1,000 faculty members and students from all universities and technological colleges, chemists and chemical engineers, foreign guests and a large delegation of scientists from the University of California at Berkeley. After the award ceremony, Prof. Shechtman will deliver the first plenary lecture.

The Medal is the highest honor awarded by the ICS, which is considered the oldest and most influential scientific organization in Israel (since 1933). Its main objectives are the promotion of chemistry research and teaching in all levels of schools and higher education, and promoting the chemical industry in Israel.

Prof. Shechtman is joining a distinguished group of medalists: Avram Hershko, Aaron Ciechanover and Ruben Fauncz, all three from the Technion, Joshua Jortner of Tel Aviv University, Ada Yonath, Zeev Luz, Meir Lahav, Leslie Leiserowitz and Meir Wilchek, all five from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and Mr. Eli Hurvitz of Teva Pharmaceuticals.

Prof. Keinan, who also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Israel Journal of Chemistry, announced that the journal is devoting a special issue to the topic of quasi-crystals. Their discovery by research professor Dan Schechtman awarded him with Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2011.

Shechtman was born in Tel Aviv on January 24, 1941 and grew up in Ramat Gan and Petah Tikva, was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair movement. In 1962 he began studying at the Technion where he received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1966. He continued his studies at the Technion in the faculty of materials engineering where he received his master’s degree in 1968, and Ph.D. in 1972.

Prof. Shechtman was an NRC fellow at the Aerospace Research Laboratories at Wright Patterson AFB,  Ohio,  where he studied for three years the microstructure and physical metallurgy of titanium aluminides. In 1975 he joined the department of materials engineering at Technion. In 1981–1983 he was on Sabbatical at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied rapidly solidified aluminum transition metal alloys, in a joint program with NBS. During this study he discovered the Icosahedral Phase, which opened the new field of quasiperiodic crystals. Shechtman experienced several years of hostility toward his non-periodic interpretation before others began to confirm and accept it. No less a figure than Linus Pauling said he was “talking nonsense” and “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.” Shechtman’s Nobel Prize winning work was in the area of quasicrystals, ordered crystalline materials lacking repeating structures, such as this Al-Pd-Mn alloy. Through Shechtman’s discovery,  several other groups were able to form similar quasicrystals,  finding these materials to have low thermal and electrical conductivity,  while possessing high structural stability. Quasicrystals have also been found naturally. Quasicrystalline materials could be used in a large number of applications, including the formation of durable steel used for fine instrumentation,  and non-stick insulation for electrical wires and cooking equipment. In 1992–1994 he was on sabbatical at National Institute of Standards and Technology, where he studied the effect of the defect structure of CVD diamond on its growth and properties. Prof. Shechtman’s Technion research is conducted in the Louis Edelstein Center, and in the Wolfson Centre, which is headed by him. He served on several Technion Senate Committees and headed one of them. Shechtman joined the Iowa State faculty in 2004.

Shechtman serves as an Adjunct Professor at the State University of Iowa, he is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences, member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States and a member of European Academy of Sciences.

Before winning the Nobel Prize, Shechtman received numerous awards, including the European Materials Research Society Award, EMET Prize in Chemistry, Muriel & David Jacknow Award for Excellence in Teaching, Gregori Aminoff Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Wolf Prize in Physics, the Israel Prize, the Weizmann Science Award, the Rothschild Prize in Engineering, the New England Academic Award of the Technion, the International Award for New Materials of the American Physical Society, and the Physics Award of the Friedenberg Fund for the Advancement of Science and Education.

This may, in the future, help improve the efficiency of 3G solar photovoltaic cells significantly

Technion researchers from the Sara and Moshe Zisapel Nano-Electronics Center successfully polarized a nanocrystal by changing the composition of the molecules surrounding it. This finding was just published in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature Materials.

Doctoral student, Nir Yaacobi-Gross, under the supervision of the head of the Zisapel Center, Prof. Nir Tessler, exchanged some of the molecules attached to the surface of the nanometric-sized crystal with different molecules whose chemical or atomic group anchoring them to the crystal’s surface was different. The researchers discovered that the lack of uniformity in the molecular covering caused the crystal to partially polarize. The research group led by Prof. Asher Schmidt of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry also contributed to understanding the molecule-crystal connection process. As the paper shows, this discovery will likely have far-reaching consequences in as far as significantly improving the efficiency of solar cells. The latter are 3G photovoltaic cells that are being intensively developed around the world due to their relatively low cost (and therefore, their suitability for mass production). The solar cells used today are mostly silicon based and are expensive both in terms of production costs and in the energy required to manufacture them. The discovery by the Technion researchers changes the ability of nanocrystals to receive or give electrons to material surrounding it, which essentially means that they have changed the crystal’s characteristics.

 “Nano crystals of different materials are used to develop new light sources and solar cells,” explains Prof. Tessler. “The nanocrystal is produced in a solution, is about 2-8 nanometers in diameter and covered by an organic molecule that stabilizes it and allows the nanocrystal to be dissolved in the proper fluids. In this case the solution is actually an ink containing opto-electronic materials and hence today there is a lot of activity going on around the world designed to integrate these materials in the field of printed electronics that will produce sheets of lights or sheets of solar cells.”

The researchers emphasize that in order to enable the integration of these new materials in opto-electronic devices, it is important to achieve control over their characteristics so as to be able to relate to them as building blocks to be used in engineering an advanced device.

In the early stages of the research in the Zisapel Center, it was found that organic molecules could be used to move the relative location of the particle’s level of energy. What surprised the researchers at this stage was the fact that the most important factor in this move was the atom found at the end of the molecule, which connects to the nanocrystal. The researchers showed that not only can the energy levels of the nanocrystal be moved relative to materials or to other nanocrystals, but that it was possible to change areas of this tiny crystal (approximately 4 nanometers in size) relative to other areas. “This study showed that we had a crystal that is inorganic but surrounded by organic molecules such that it constitutes an entity that is a hybrid of organic and inorganic material,” stresses Prof. Tessler. This distinction requires a change in the theoretical approaches that analyze these crystals and ignore their organic part (the organic molecules attached to them), mostly because “it just contributes to creating a solution.”

In the competition in which young students and architects from 36 countries from around the world participated, presenting 200 innovative architectural projects: Technion graduates won first prize in the Innovativeness in Architecture and Sustainability Buildings Competition held in Italy

They submitted an urban and architectural project for development of open and neglected spaces found in the seam between the cities of Nazareth and Nazareth Elite. A conference center, train station, walking trails, hotel and parking lot will be built at this location to improve the lives of residents and bring life into the area

The winning project, C-Park, won in the category of Planning in Concrete for Students, beating 70 other competition entries. The reasons cited for the project’s winning were its innovativeness in using concrete and the way the design functions on a number of different levels.

The two graduates, both residents of Nazareth, as part of their final project, conducted an extensive geographic study of the area of Nazareth and Nazareth Elite and consequently drew up an urban and architectural plan for the seam between the two cities that includes a conference center, a train station, walking trails, a hotel and a parking lot, all of which are intended to improve the lives of residents and “bring life to the area,” in their words. “Between the cities there is a continuum of open spaces, most of which are abandoned and neglected, between the road skirting Nazareth and the city’s municipal border,” explains Rosan Qubti, the architect designer. “These areas are characterized by their lack of identity; neither of the two cities has any plans to build there and our project proposes to transform this continuum into an open city, a new type of space, open and inviting that will function at many levels, in order to bring people to metropolitan Nazareth and make it more central.”

 “After completing our project we submitted it to this competition and within two weeks received the exciting email informing us that we had won the Concrete Competition for Students,” relates architect Samer Hakim. “We were invited for the three days in Italy, where we attended the competition and exhibition.”

The project was executed in the framework of a joint studio between the Technion and the University of Leuven in Belgium, organized and conducted by the architect Els Verbakel, who chose to focus on Nazareth and Nazareth Elite. Students from the two countries proposed new ideas for developing sites in the area and the studio was held in cooperation with the municipality of Nazareth. As already mentioned, the project by Qubti and Hakim was chosen to represent the studio in the competition. “This is an impressive and inspiring achievement for the Technion,” sums up Els Verbakel.

The two intend to present the project to the municipality of Nazareth Elite, in whose jurisdiction most of the sites fall, in order to see it implemented.

Above: Rosan Qubti and Samer Hakim with their award, in Bologna, Italy. Photo: Technion Spokesman

NEW YORK CITY/HAIFA, ISRAEL – Cornell University and The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology announced today a new partnership to create a world-class applied science and engineering campus in New York City, as outlined by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The NYC Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island will combine the full spectrum of both institutions’ academic strengths, as well as Cornell’s entrepreneurial culture and deep connection to the city’s emerging tech sector and the Technion’s global leadership in commercialization and technology transfer. This partnership will transform New York City into a world hub of innovation and technology commercialization.

“By joining forces in this groundbreaking venture, our two great universities will employ our demonstrated expertise, experience and track record of transforming new ideas into solutions to create the global avenues of economic opportunity and tech leadership that Mayor Bloomberg envisions,” said Cornell President David Skorton. “The Technion is the driving force behind the miracle of Israel’s technology economy. Its academic rigor in computer science and engineering and its leadership in technology transfer has helped create one of the largest concentrations of start-ups anywhere and attracted the world’s leading technology companies to Haifa to leverage Technion’s research and its outstanding graduates.”

“We are very proud of the many strengths we bring to this endeavor, and we are excited to be a partner with another of the world’s great research universities,” said Technion President Peretz Lavie. “Cornell‘s globally recognized research and graduates are fueling new technologies and innovative start-ups at the center of New York City’s current tech boom. Cornell is uniquely positioned by its deep connection to the city’s emerging tech sector to serve as a catalyst for the creation of new technologies, jobs and industries in New York City.”

The key attributes of the partnership between Cornell and the Technion underscore the distinctive and practical dimensions of the proposed NYC Tech Campus and its specific focus on strategies to spur innovation and commercialization. An integral part of the campus will be the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute (TCII), a 50-50 collaboration between the two universities to form a graduate program that will focus on commercialization of immediate relevance to the city’s economic growth.  Second, the campus’ academic hubs will provide an interdisciplinary environment to better prepare students for careers in tech companies, large and small, where the problems to be solved involve using technical knowhow and also expertise in other domains at the heart of the city’s key industries.  Finally, for their degrees, students will be required to take courses that prepare them to be entrepreneurs and early stage investors, fueling the rapid expansion of the tech ecosystem in New York.

The partners will be joining in a full-scale campus – not a satellite of either school – to open in 2012, initially in either leased space or existing Cornell facilities in New York City. The NYC Tech Campus will eventually grow to more than 2 million square feet on Roosevelt Island, accommodating, at full build-out, nearly 2000 graduate students and 250 faculty, as well as visitors and corporate researchers. Cornell and the Technion will collaborate in teaching, educating and advising students. The sustainable campus will include academic and commercialization space, as well as housing and community gardens.

Initially, the NYC Tech Campus will offer Cornell degrees in technical fields such as computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and information science., but the academic programs for these degrees will have unique interdisciplinary requirements related to each of the campus’s academic hubs. Once the proper New York State approvals are received, students also will be able to pursue a dual degree from both the Technion and Cornell.  These programs will provide students with an unparalleled breadth of studies from which they may choose.

More details of the partnership will be outlined in the universities’ proposal to the city, due Oct. 28, said presidents Lavie and Skorton.

“I launched Qualcomm’s first international R&D Center in Haifa, Israel, in 1992, staffed entirely with Technion graduates and purposely located near the campus to take advantage of its great education and research,” said Irwin Jacobs, the founding chairman and CEO of Qualcomm. “Technion, with its many contacts, was a great help in our subsequent worldwide expansion. The Technion’s demonstrated success in translating basic and applied research to job creation complements Cornell’s deep academic strengths and translational activities, providing an extraordinary partnership for the benefit of New York City. Technion and Cornell, working in close collaboration on the new campus, will inspire a next generation of entrepreneurs to pursue innovations by forming start-ups and expanding existing businesses.”

Technion is a global leader in applied research, technology transfer and commercialization and a major force behind Israel’s emergence as the home of one of the greatest concentrations of high-tech start-up companies anywhere in the world.  In partnership with a strong community of incubators, private investors, venture capitalists, angel groups and entrepreneurs, the Technion’s tech transfer arm, Technion Technology Transfer (T3), has filed 300 average annual patents and nurtured scores of innovative startups in sectors such as clean-tech, cell therapy, drug delivery, nanotechnology and others. Companies including Intel, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Yahoo! and Hewlett-Packard have established their operations near or on the Technion campus, where they can take advantage of the Technion’s research power and outstanding students and graduates.

Technion graduates head 59 of 121 Israeli companies on the NASDAQ, and these companies have a combined market value of over $28 billion.  More than 70 percent of Technion graduates are employed in the high technology sectors that drive Israel’s economic growth.  Today, Israeli companies headed by Technion graduates employ 85 percent of Israel’s technical workforce. And the Technion also has an established presence in New York City with the American Technion Society (ATS) , which maintains a national network of thousands of alumni and supporters and has raised more than $1.65 billion since its founding in 1940, the majority raised in the last decade.

Cornell is known worldwide for its top programs in engineering and computer science, and for its interdisciplinary approach to technology that spans fields from the social sciences to the arts and humanities. Cornell’s entrepreneurial culture and deep connection to every aspect of New York’s tech sector – start-ups and entrepreneurs, existing industry leaders, and venture capital – will make the NYC Tech Campus uniquely positioned to serve as a catalyst for the creation of new technologies, jobs and industries in New York City.

Cornell’s portfolio in New York City includes the world-class Weill Cornell Medical College – where Cornell is now engaged in a $1 billion capital project that includes construction of a new state-of-the-art medical research facility – as well as Cornell Cooperative Extension-New York City, Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations in NYC in Midtown and its Architecture, Art and Planning Center in Chelsea, Cornell Financial Engineering Manhattan off Wall Street, Cornell-sponsored Food and Finance High School on the West Side, and various programs in disciplines ranging from labor and employment law to human ecology. The city is now home to almost 50,000 Cornell alumni – including thousands already working in the tech sector – and about 5,000 Cornell employees.

Above: The two presidents, Prof’ Lavie (right) and Prof’ Skorton (left)

Center to specialize in e-commerce basic research

The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Microsoft Research (MSR) and Microsoft Online Services Division (OSD) announced today their intent to co-establish the Academic Research Center for E-Commerce Technologies. The new Research Center will promote and fund basic research in areas of computer science, artificial intelligence, game theory, economic and psychology, focusing on the connections between these subjects in the e-commerce domain. The center is the first academic research program by Microsoft Research in Israel, a part of the Microsoft R&D Center in Israel.

Through the five-year joint research and education partnership, Microsoft Research and The Technion will explore scientific and technological insights in e-commerce, such as online advertising and the use of social networks for commerce. Microsoft will invest $1.5 million (U.S.) over the next five years.  The center will be located at the Technion campus in Haifa, Israel.

The head of the new center will be Professor Moshe Tennenholtz of the faculty for Industrial Engineering and Management. Prof. Tennenholtz has collaborated with Microsoft Research (MSR) for several years and is considered a world-leading expert in E-commerce. Research will be conducted by scientists and research students from several Technion departments along with MSR researchers.

Yoram Yaacovi, General Manager, Microsoft Israel Research and Development Center “Microsoft understands that academia is at the heart of technological innovation and seeks to catalyze innovation in research and curricula in leading academic institutions worldwide. Today’s announcement reflects Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to partnering with academia in developing new and advanced technologies.”

David Ku, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Advertising R&D: “The joint research center Microsoft Israel is building in collaboration with the Technion is the first of its kind established by Microsoft with Israeli academia – and there are few like it elsewhere in the world. Our goal is to shape a new generation of core technologies for e-commerce that will empower new opportunities for industry and exciting new value for customers. We believe that this cooperation between Microsoft Online Services, Microsoft Research and the Technion has the potential to help usher in the next generation of technology and customer value. “

Professor Boaz Golany, Dean of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion: “Microsoft’s decision to establish the research center at the Technion is a very strong statement by one of the giants of global technology regarding the position of the State of Israel at the forefront of information & communication technologies and the strength of the Technion in the areas of science and technology. Our partnership with Microsoft is part of The Technion’s strategy that strives for cooperation with large international companies both because of their ability to support large-scale basic and applied research and because of the fact that in many cases these companies expose our researchers to significant challenges, which by being solved will, to a large extent, determine the technological agenda for the coming decades.”

About Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering. Researchers focus on more than 60 areas of computing and collaborate with leading academic, government and industry researchers to advance the state of the art. Microsoft Research has expanded over the years to twelve facilities worldwide.

About The Technion

The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is consistently ranked among the world’s leading science and technology universities. As such, it breeds first-rate scientific and technological innovations, many of which have substantial economic potential, as well as notable graduates that are now leading global tech industries. As Israel’s oldest and premier institute of science and technology, the Technion has been an active and leading participant in Israel’s rapid scientific and industrial growth and has played a pivotal role in transforming Israel`s economy and workforce into a leading high tech/high growth economy

October 5, 2011 – Distinguished Professor Dan Shechtman of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  Of the five Israeli scientists to have ever won the Nobel Prize, three are Technion professors.

Prof. Shechtman, of the Technion’s Department of Materials Engineering and holder of the Philip Tobias Chair in Materials Science, won the award for his 1982 discovery of Quasicrystals, an entirely new form of matter with a structure that scientists previously thought was impossible.

Israel’s President Shimon Peres called Prof. Shechtman to congratulate him: “I salute you, you gave the people of Israel a wonderful gift. This is a great day for Haifa, a great day for the Technion.”

“That an Israeli has once again been awarded a Nobel Prize is a mark of distinction for Israeli science in general and for the Technion,” said Technion President Peretz Lavie.  “And the fact that this is the third Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Technion researchers in eight years is a clear indicator of the world-class research being done here.”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Shechtman’s discovery fundamentally changed the way chemists look at solid matter. It initially faced strong objections from the scientific community.

Since then, Quasicrystals have been produced in laboratories and a Swedish company found them in one of the most durable kinds of steel, which is now used in products such as razor blades and thin needles made specifically for eye surgery, the Nobel citation said.

Scientists are also experimenting with using Quasicrystals in coatings for frying pans, heat insulation in engines, and in light emitting diodes (LEDs).

On April 8, 1982, when Shechtman first observed crystals with a 10-point pentagonal symmetry in the NBS laboratory in Maryland, crystallography had long been considered a “closed field” promising no revolutionary breakthroughs. Shechtman’s groundbreaking quasiperiodic structure was first described in Physical Review Letters in 1984, marking the birth of a new scientific field of Quasiperiodic crystals.

The scientific community, led by two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, rejected Shechtman’s findings, but in 1987, the pattern which had previously been considered contrary to the laws of nature was observed with the help of the electron microscope.

More than 40 scientific books have been dedicated to Quasiperiodic crystals, and hundreds of materials are known to exist with the structure discovered by Shechtman.  In the wake of his discovery and its proof, the International Society of Crystallographers changed its basic definition of a crystal.

Prof. Shechtman’s Nobel Prize follows many other prestigious awards including the Aminoff Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2000), Wolf Foundation Prize in Physics (1999), Israel Prize in Physics (1998), Weizmann Prize in Science (1993),  Rothschild Prize in Engineering (1990) and the International Award for New Materials of the American Physical Society (1987).  He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Above: Distinguished Professor Dan Shechtman