Month: April 2015

The BizTEC competition is celebrating its first decade, and the New York Times has some very good news: Google Capital will invest $60 million in the new start-up of Technion graduate Tomer London, who won first place in BizTEC in 2009

In early April, the New York Times reported an investment of $60 million in the new start-up of Technion graduate Tomer London. ZenPayroll is London’s second start-up and is already valued at over half a billion dollars. Google’s investment arm is behind this investment.

London’s first success in the field of entrepreneurship was recorded in 2009, when he won first place in the Technion led BizTEC competition with the company he had founded just months earlier. At the time, he was a student at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and in order to set up Vizmo he left his job at Intel and joined forces with fellow student Assaf Revach. The two outstanding students said at the time that the Technion gave them three things: “First, we became acquainted with each other here. Second – the Technion entrepreneurship and innovation laboratory and the diverse services that it provides. Third – the Technion Entrepreneurs Club. The Technion is undoubtedly Israel’s entrepreneurship incubator and it must stay that way.”

Tomer London isn’t the first to leap from the BizTEC springboard into the world of entrepreneurship. During these ten years, innovative projects in a wide range of fields have been developed as part of the competition. In 2006, the winner was LifeBond, which developed a liquid biological bandage that stops massive bleeding and has raised approximately $30 million since then.

The winner in 2007 was PolyTouch, with a technology for streamlining laparoscopic hernia surgery (the company was sold some three years ago for $40 million). In 2008 – DataStrata, an interactive system that allows hotel guests to order services at the hotel and from the outside, (the system is already in operation at various hotels). 2009 – Vizmo, as stated, which developed a system enabling callers to order services during their conversation with the call center. 2010 –Windward, an accurate digital mapping system for oceans and seas, including territorial waters and vessels, which has raised $5 million since then. 2011 – Pixtr, which has developed algorithms for automatically enhancing photos. 2012 – Yevvo, an app that allows sharing of live video by smartphones (last year it raised $3.7 million, and now it has raised $14 million and changed its name to Meerkat). 2013 – Breezometer, an app for monitoring air pollution levels by smartphone (the company raised $600,000, and will open offices in the US this year after the product is launched there). In 2014, the winner was Augmedics, with a support system for surgeons using 3D simulation (three months later, the company joined a leading technology incubator).

The BizTEC competition was established at the Technion in 2005 as a students’ initiative, designed to foster entrepreneurship among students at the Technion, and over the years has become Israel’s leading student entrepreneurship competition. Today, the competition is open to students for all degrees and to recent graduates. Participants include students from around 15 campuses in Israel.

This year, the tenth anniversary of its establishment, over two hundred student-entrepreneurs entered the contest, 60% of them students at the Technion. On March 30, the opening event for this year’s competition was held at the Technion. The keynote lecture at the event was delivered by entrepreneur Ofer Vilenski, who spoke about entrepreneurial motivation and “the road from idea to success story”. Another speaker was Nissan Elimelech, founder of Augmedics and BizTEC winner in 2014. The event was attended by around 200 young entrepreneurs, former participants in the competition and senior industry figures. Out of 80 competing teams, 30 teams were selected. They will participate in a yearlong program that includes lectures, workshops, guidance by industry-leader mentors, working in the accelerator, and a Demo Day, where the winning team will be announced. The prize for the winners: $10,000.

During its ten years of existence, the competition has produced 122 startups, which have raised over $100 million. “Start-up companies rise and fall on the quality of the team,” says competition director Tomer Aharonovitch, “and our job is to help students realize their ideas towards the establishment of a successful company.” Rafi Nave, director of the Bronica Entrepreneurship Center at the Technion, says “all participating teams address a real problem or unmet need, thus, they all have genuine potential to achieve business success. Furthermore, the main thing is not winning the competition, but rather the experience that the teams acquire, that provides them with the skills essential to business success and especially the motivation to initiate and innovate.”

Donation funds expansion of research between leading innovation universities

A $1.6-million gift to the University of Waterloo and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology by The Gerald Schwartz & Heather Reisman Foundation is enabling world-changing research in a range of disciplines, including research into lung disease and quantum computing.

“This gift shows what a partnership between two of the world’s top innovation universities supported by the vision of Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman can accomplish,” said Feridun Hamdullahpur, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo. “This visionary donation is already allowing us to accelerate progress in the key areas of quantum information science, nanotechnology and water. Collaboration between Waterloo and Technion will lead to new innovations that will help to shape the future of communities, industries and everyday life.”

”The collaboration between the University of Waterloo and the Technion focuses on joint research between Israeli and Canadian scientists in areas crucial to making our world a better place”, said Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie. “I cannot think of a better partner for such projects than the University of Waterloo, and it is the vision and generosity of Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman that are making this promising partnership a reality”.

Among the researchers the gift supports, Professor Frank Gu will expand his work into targeted drug delivery for eye diseases to include pulmonary diseases.

Targeted drug delivery uses nanotechnology to carry medicine directly to the diseased area improving the effectiveness of the treatment and minimizing side effects by reducing toxicity in other parts of the body.

With highly efficient and effective drugs currently available for many diseases and conditions, researchers are advancing the management of disease by improving delivery of the drug rather than developing new treatments.

“There are many organs that we can live without but we can’t survive without a lung. The lung is such a critical component to quality of life,” said Prof. Gu, from the Faculty of Engineering at Waterloo and Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology Engineering. “The problem with these drugs is they aren’t getting to the right target. Our goal is to make these particles so small and so smart, and efficiently transport these therapeutic compounds to the right place.”

The research is a joint project between Waterloo’s Gu from the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology and Prof. Josué Sznitman, from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion, an expert in targeted drug delivery systems in the nasal area.

Prof. Sznitman: Premature newborn infants are frequently born with a deficiency of pulmonary surfactant, the soapy liquid that lines our lungs and is essential for easing every breath we take. Surfactant Replacement Therapy (SRT) is used to treat premature infants where artificial surfactant is instilled in the intubated neonate. Often, however, the liquid has to be administered more than once and such interventions remain a distressing experience for a newborn. Our work is aimed at improving strategies for SRT delivery where clinicians need to know how much of the initial dose will reach the targeted airways.

Given the success of drug delivery research, being able to focus on conditions of the lung is considered an opportunity to revolutionize treatment for conditions that are highly prevalent and affect large numbers of people.

Gu’s project is funded by a grant awarded through the Waterloo-Technion Research Cooperation Program. The program was created to facilitate joint research projects between Israeli and Canadian scientists in the areas of quantum information science, nanotechnology, and water. Funding for the cooperation program is part of an overall $1.9 million donation from The Gerald Schwartz & Heather Reisman Foundation.

The Waterloo-Technion Research Cooperation Program is also funding research into quantum computing. The ultimate goal of quantum information science is to build a scalable, universal quantum computer. A quantum computer will provide computational capabilities that cannot be achieved with classical computers for applications including database search, machine learning, drug design, information security and more.

One of the challenges of building a quantum computer is controlling the quantum systems to behave the way we want because they are extremely sensitive to any disturbance.

“Along with our colleagues in Technion’s Qubit Group, we will explore theoretical and experimental algorithms to cool quantum systems and thus reduce noise,” said Raymond Laflamme, Executive Director of the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at Waterloo. “Quantum computation allows the most precise and efficient processing allowed by nature.”

“Heat-bath algorithmic cooling” – first suggested by Tal Mor and collaborators, and first implemented by Laflamme and collaborators – is an important method for cooling quantum systems using quantum algorithms and heat-flow analysis instead of using conventional physical cooling.

“It is great to have this opportunity to advance much further this field of research, and especially – together with this excellent team from IQC”, said Tal Mor, the coordinator of the Technion’s Qubit Group (TQG). “The main goal for establishing TQG was precisely for such purposes of advancing collaboration with world leaders in the field of quantum computing and information sciences, and the main goal of this current research is to advance algorithmic cooling much further together with TQG’s and IQC’s experts in (nuclear and electron) magnetic resonance and magnetic imaging.”

The new project includes Laflamme, IQC faculty Adrian Lupascu and Jonathan Baugh, and Professors Aharon Blank, Tal Mor and Itamar Kahn of Technion.

The Waterloo-Technion Research Cooperation Program was established in March 2014 beginning with a joint conference funded by The Gerald Schwartz & Heather Reisman Foundation and held at Technion’s main campus in Haifa, Israel. Gu and Laflamme’s work are two of 10 new projects between the two universities funded by the $1.6 million gift, shared between the two universities. Other projects range from the removal of organic pollutants in drinking water to an interdisciplinary research project at the interface of soil science, groundwater hydrology, biogeochemistry and geophysics.

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.”

The Shrine of the Book Celebrates 50 Years with Renewed Exhibition Space, Special Displays

And Then There Was Nano features The Smallest Bible in the World from the Technion

Concurrent exhibition dedicated to Shrine’s iconic architecture

Two special displays and a new exhibition space were inaugurated yesterday to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Shrine of the Book, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls and part of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, which opened to the public in April 1965.

And Then There Was Nano: The Smallest Bible in the World, features the world’s tiniest version of the Hebrew Bible, created at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The Nano Bible serves as a contemporary complement to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Biblical manuscripts in the world, providing audiences with a unique opportunity to examine the technological evolution of the Hebrew Bible from antiquity to the postmodern era.

On view concurrently, The Architecture of the Shrine of the Book is devoted to the unique history and design of the Shrine itself, an iconic work of modernist expressionist architecture, designed by Frederic Kiesler and Armand Bartos. Part of the Israel Museum’s anniversary celebrations throughout 2015, these special installations pay tribute to the Shrine of the Book’s opening in April 1965 as a prelude to the inauguration of the Museum’s entire campus.

The new exhibition space was inaugurated on April 20th with the display of And Then There Was Nano: The Smallest Bible in the World, revealing to the public for the first time the world’s smallest copy of the Old Testament.  Developed by the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion in Haifa, the nano bible showcased in And Then There Was Nano is accompanied by the incredible story of the world’s smallest Hebrew Bible etched onto a microchip no larger than a grain of sugar. The exhibition includes narrative presentations explaining the story behind the creation of the Nano Bible and detailed media through which the Hebrew Bible has been interpreted over time, tracing the path from the Biblical Nation to the Start-Up Nation.

“This exhibition writes a new chapter in the journey of the Book of Books from antiquity to the present – from the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls to the 21st-century Nano Bible,” said James S. Snyder, Anne and Jerome Fisher Director of the Israel Museum.  “This remarkable technological achievement will bring to a broad audience the context of the narrative of the Shrine of the Book and of the history of Biblical text from the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls to the most cutting-edge technology.  It also marks a joint celebration with the Technion, whose Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute created the Nano Bible to mark the 50th Anniversary year of the Shrine and of the Museum.”

“Technion is delighted to partner with the Israel Museum, and to take part in its 50th anniversary celebrations,” said Technion President, Prof. Peretz Lavie. “The Nano Bible exhibition is a fascinating confluence of history, culture and cutting edge science – where the Land of the Bible meets the Start-Up Nation.”

What is the Nano Bible?

The Nano Bible is a gold-plated silicon chip the size of a pinhead on which the entire Hebrew Bible is engraved. The text, consisting of over 1.2 million letters, is carved on the 0.5mm2 chip by means of a focused ion beam. The beam dislodges gold atoms from the plating and creates letters, similar to the way the earliest inscriptions were carved in stone. The writing process takes about an hour and a half. The letters belong to a font unique to this technology and appear darker against their gold background. In order to read the text, it is necessary to use a microscope capable of 10,000 times magnification or higher.

Employing a modern incarnation of an ancient writing technique, this technological marvel demonstrates the wonders of present day miniaturization and provides the spectator with a tangible measure of the achievable dimensions. Dense information storage is not unique to human culture: The blueprints of all organisms are stored by nature at even higher densities in long DNA molecules and transmitted in this form over generations.

The term “nano” derives from the Greek word nanos, meaning “dwarf.” The unit nanometer measures one billionth of a meter, a ratio similar to the size of an olive compared with the entire planet earth. Nanotechnology makes it possible to construct new materials stronger and lighter than steel, to desalinate water more efficiently, to deliver medications to designated parts of the body without harming surrounding tissues, and to detect cancerous cells in early stages. At the dawn of the Nano Age, scientists and engineers are discovering ways to harness such exquisite control over the elementary building blocks of nature for the benefit of mankind and our planet.

The Nano Bible was conceived of and created by Prof. Uri Sivan and Dr. Ohad Zohar of the Russell Berrie

Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. It was made by engineers in the Sara and Moshe Zisapel Nanoelectronics Center and the Wolfson Microelectronics Research and Teaching Center. The first of two copies was presented by the former President of the State of Israel, Shimon Peres, to Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Israel in 2009. The chip on display in the Israel Museum was produced especially for the Information and Study Center of the Shrine of the Book.

And Then There Was Nano is curated by Dr. Adolfo Roitman, Lizbeth and George Krupp Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Head of the Shrine of the Book. It was made possible through the generosity of the Dorot Foundation, the Russell Berrie Foundation and Joan and Arnold Seidel.

The Architecture of the Shrine of the Book

Marking the Shrine of the Book’s 50th anniversary, this exhibition is devoted to the design of the Shrine itself – an icon of modernist architecture – and to its architects, Frederick Kiesler and Armand Bartos. On display are preliminary sketches of the Shrine by Kiesler, shown to the public for the first time, as well as examples of his “correalistic” furniture that illustrate his distinctive approach to design and architecture.

The exhibition also features photographs documenting the Shrine’s building process and its early years, when it served as a site of pilgrimage to photographers and to the public at large.

The Architecture of the Shrine of the Book is curated by Osnat Sirkin, Associate Curator, Department of Design and Architecture, and is on display through April 26, 2016.

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

The Israel Museum is the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel and is ranked among the leading art and archaeology museums in the world. Founded in 1965, the Museum houses encyclopedic collections ranging from prehistory through contemporary art and includes the most extensive holdings of Biblical and Holy Land archaeology in the world, among them the Dead Sea Scrolls. Over its first 50 years, the Museum has built a far-ranging collection of nearly 500,000 objects through an unparalleled legacy of gifts and support from its circle of patrons worldwide.

The Museum’s 20-acre campus, which underwent comprehensive renewal in 2010 designed by James Carpenter Design Associates and Efrat-Kowalsky Architects, features the Billy Rose Art Garden, the Shrine of the Book, and more than 225,000 square feet of collection gallery and temporary exhibition space. The Museum also organizes programming at its off-site locations in Jerusalem at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, where it presents archaeological artifacts from the Land of Israel; and at its historic Ticho House, a venue for exhibitions of contemporary Israeli art.

The Shrine of the Book houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, among these the world’s oldest biblical manuscripts, as well as other rare biblical manuscripts. This monumental structure has become an icon in Israel and around the world, its shrine-like interior affording visitors a rich spiritual experience.

The Dorot Foundation Dead Sea Scrolls Information and Study Center in memory of Joy Gottesman Ungerleider was inaugurated in 2007 and reopened in April 2015 in honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Shrine of the Book. In establishing the Foundation, Gottesman Ungerleider followed in the footsteps of her father, philanthropist D. S. Gottesman, who helped support the construction of the Shrine in 1965 and contributed to the purchase of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Museum is celebrating its 50th anniversary throughout 2015, with a year-long program devoted to an exploration of Israel’s aesthetic culture in the 50 years before and after its founding.

Take a virtual tour of the exhibition.

 

The innovative method, developed at the Technion, identifies persons at risk for developing stomach cancer and for detecting tumors at an earlier stage. The prestigious journal Gut, which published the research, notes that the detection method is quick, simple, inexpensive and non-invasive.

Innovative gastric cancer-detection technology developed by the Technion can be used for the early detection of stomach cancer and for identifying persons at risk for developing the disease. The new detection method, based on breath analysis, has significant advantages over the existing detection technology: Gut reports that the new method is quick, simple, inexpensive and non-invasive.

Gastric cancer is one of the most lethal forms of cancer and in most cases, its diagnosis involves an endoscopy (the insertion of a tube into the esophagus, requiring that the patient fast and receive an intravenous sedative). Treatment is aggressive chemotherapy, radiation and the full or partial removal of the stomach. The disease develops in a series of well-defined steps, but there’s currently no effective, reliable, and non-invasive screening test for picking up these changes early on. Thus, many people succumb to stomach cancer only because it was not diagnosed in time.

The new technology, developed by Prof. Hossam Haick of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering, can be used to detect premalignant lesions at the earliest stage, when healthy cells start becoming cancerous.

The research, published in Gut as part of the doctoral thesis of Mr. Haitham Amal, was conducted in conjunction with a Latvian research group headed by Prof. Marcis Leja, based on the largest population sample ever in a trial of this type. 484 people participated in the trial, 99 of whom had already been diagnosed with stomach cancer. All the participants were tested for Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium known to increase the risk for stomach cancer, and two breath samples were taken from each person.

The first sample from each participant was analyzed using the GCMS technique, which measures volatile organic substances in exhaled breath. The researchers noted that GCMS technology cannot be used to detect stomach cancer because the testing is very expensive and requires lengthy processing times and considerable expertise to operate the equipment.

The second breath sample was tested using nanoarray analysis, the unique technology developed by Prof. Haick, combined with a pattern recognition algorithm.

The findings:

1. Based on the concentrations of 8 specific substances (out of 130) in the oral cavity, the new technology can distinguish between three groups: gastric cancer patients, persons who have precancerous stomach lesions, and healthy individuals.
2. The new technology accurately distinguishes between the various pre-malignant stages.
3. The new technology can be used to identify persons at risk for developing gastric cancer.
4. The diagnosis is accurate, regardless of other factors such as age, sex, smoking habits, alcohol consumption and the use of anti-oxidant drugs.

In short, the nano-array analysis method developed by Prof. Haick is accurate, sensitive technology that provides a simple and inexpensive alternative to existing tests (such as GCMS). This new technology offers early, effective detection of persons at risk for developing stomach cancer, without unnecessary invasive tests (endoscopy). In order to assess the accuracy and effectiveness of the new, a wide-scale clinical trial is currently under way in Europe, with thousands of participants who have cancerous or pre-cancerous tumors.

About Prof. Hossam Haick

Prof. Hossam Haick, who joined the senior staff at the Technion Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering in 2006, has been working since that year on the development of innovative, non-invasive technology for detecting cancer and other diseases. This technology is based on an “electronic nose” – an apparatus capable of detecting illnesses by analyzing a patient’s exhaled breath.

Prof. Haick, a native of Nazareth, completed his Ph.D. studies at the Technion by the time he was 27 and went to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and Caltech Institute of Technology in California. He returned to the Technion in 2006 and his research group was awarded one million euros in grants by the European Union, which was very impressed by his research into artificial olfactory systems. Today he heads a consortium that includes Siemens and several universities, research institutes and companies in Germany, Austria, Finland, Ireland, Latvia and Israel. Since joining the senior faculty in the Chemical Engineering Department in 2006, Prof. Haick has won dozens of awards, grants and international honors. These include the Marie Curie Excellence Grant, European Research Council (ERC) grant and the Bill & Melinda Gates Award. Prof. Haick was nominated to MIT’s list of the 35 leading young scientists worldwide, received the Knight of the Order of Academic Palms, from the French Government and won the Hershel Rich Technion Innovation Award (twice), as well as the Tenne Prize for Excellence in the Science of Nanotechnology. He has also been recognized for his outstanding teaching skills and is the recipient of the Yanai Prize for Academic Excellence. In 2014, at the initiative of the president of the Technion, Prof. Haick headed an MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in nanotechnology and nano-sensors that had an enrollment of 42,000.

Prof Haick is a faculty member at the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute.

For further details: Gil Lainer – 058-6882208, Doron Shaham – 050-3109088

Learning from the past to safeguard our future: 32 Technion students travel to Poland as part of the International March of the Living program organized through the National Union of Israeli Students

“The journey to Poland is as important as any other subject we learn at the Technion. After all, first we all need to be human beings living in a civilized society.”

Amit Kornberg is a Technion student at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management. He returned last month from a trip to Poland, organized by ASAT (the Student Association of the Technion). “I knew quite a lot about the Holocaust before going, because most of my family was murdered in Poland, but up till now, any talk about the subject was always in the form of labels – ‘Holocaust and Heroism,’ the ‘Yellow Star’ (of David), and of course the appalling number ‘Six Million.’ On this journey, we examined each of these categorizations in detail, and we began to understand the significance of the events that occurred: What really happened, how it happened, what motivated the people – also on the German side – and whether we too may deteriorate one day to such behavior. We learned that every individual also has a negative force within him or her that may erupt in wartime, and sweep the mainstream society. This trip was actually a break, a chance to ask and think about these majorly difficult questions. I’m glad that the Technion invests in this project and subsidizes it, and think that it should be offered by all academic institutions; I believe that what we learn today can become the doctrine of tomorrow for another.”

The Technion delegation included 32 students – the largest number in Technion history, and this year’s largest university student delegation. The delegation spent a week in Poland as part of the educational tour organized by the National Union of Israeli Students, under the direction of Roy Hanani from the tour company ‘Mool Nevo”. “We offer an alternative approach to Poland tours,” explains Hanani. “For us, the journey begins long before boarding the plane and continues long after returning to Israel. The journey is actually a tool for critical thinking, to enhance social awareness and involvement in society. Our goal is for participants to gain insights from this experience, to fundamental questions such as what makes us human, what is our responsibility as individuals in society, as citizens, as Jews. We certainly try to steer it clear from taking on a nationalist direction, while not ignoring the unique Jewish aspects of the Holocaust.”

Alon Cohen-Naznin, who headed the delegation and serves as the Vice-Chairman of ASAT said, “This journey, which took me to places where my late grandfather Arie Viceberg had been and where he lost all of his family members, filled me with a sense of victory. It is a great privilege and honor to tread on this ground, at the hardest sites in the history of the Jewish people, alongside wonderful people representing Israel’s college and university students.”

According to Technion student Smadar Boyam, the journey has been very important and significant. “At our age, we are mature young adults, which makes us more focused on the journey itself and less so on the social aspects of the trip and excitement about a trip abroad as compared with high school students. There was something very practical, educational and informative on this tour.” Learning about the holocaust is especially personal for Smadar because her maternal grandmother had escaped from Poland to Siberia, along with her parents and older brother during World War II. After the war, she returned to Poland to discover that all of her relatives were murdered at the Sobibór extermination camp. She and her nuclear family eventually made an Aliyah to Israel in 1950, at around the same time her paternal grandmother made an Aliyah with the group of Holocaust survivors known as the ‘Tehran Children.’ “About a quarter of my family were murdered in Sobibór, and from the remaining three-quarters, nearly none survived.”

Smadar recalled that the most emotional parts of the trip was when the delegation unexpectedly met with Holocaust survivors along the tour, one of whom they encountered within the ruins of a gas chamber. “He was leaning on a stick, with an Israeli flag wrapped around his shoulders, and he had rolled up his sleeve so that the number tattooed on his arm was visible.” ‘I saw my father sent to this place,’ he said.  This statement really hit it home for me – suddenly you see before you a man that remembers his own father being sent here in rather than trying to comprehend a statistic about an inconceivable number of people who perished here during the Holocaust. I returned from the trip with a lot of questions for my grandmother, in the hopes that one day I would be able to return here with a more personal focus.”

Miriam’s story, who managed to survive the Majdanek concentration camp, was one of the survival stories that were followed over the course of the journey. Miriam often said: “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day represents your grandfather and me. I – a ghetto and concentration camp survivor (Holocaust), and Grandpa – a partisan – he represents the heroism.” Their granddaughter, Inbar Shriber, a Technion master’s student from the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, joined this year’s delegation. “This trip clarified just how wrong this distinction between holocaust and heroism truly is, because anyone who was capable of maintaining their humanity through this cruel period is a hero. From now on, for me, both of these concepts are one in the same. Tracing the path my grandmother took from Warsaw to Majdanek was an empowering experience for me. I felt proud of my family and my country and I view it as a victory over the Nazis.”

Inbar speaks positively about the heterogeneous make up of the Technion delegation – made up of students from all academic levels, different age groups, men and women, single, married and some already parents. “This unique composition contributed to the diversity and richness of the discussions we had over the course of the tour. I feel that this journey sharpened my Israeli identity, and hightened the awareness of the dangers of inflammatory rhetoric, racist attitudes and militant behavior to society.”

Sun Pharma and the Technion form Research Collaboration to Develop New Class of Oncology Drugs

Mumbai, India: April 15, 2015 – Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Reuters: SUN.BO, Bloomberg: SUNP IN, NSE: SUNPHARMA, BSE: 524715) and the Technion – Israel institute of technology, today announced that their respective subsidiaries have entered into an exclusive worldwide research and license agreement. This agreement aims at the development of a joint project, based on new findings by Nobel Prize laureate Distinguished Professor Aaron Ciechanover, Dr. Gila Maor and Professor Ofer Binah, that can potentially lead to the development of novel anti-cancer drugs. The pre-clinincal research was funded thus far by Dr. Alfred Mann.

“We are very excited about this new endeavor between Sun Pharma, with the Technion. We are confident that this collaboration will help us move rapidly forward with our research” said Ciechanover and Binah. “We explored several collaboration alternatives, but Sun Pharma’s market leadership and its long term commitment have made this collaboration a very high priority for us”.

“The Technion is delighted to partner with Sun Pharma to advance this project through pre-clinical development process. This collaboration is an excellent example of interactions between academic discovery and pharmaceutical companies demonstrating the valuable contribution academic institutions can make in bringing new products to help patients worldwide. We sincerely believe this agreement represents the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship between the Technion and Sun Pharma”, added Ciechanover and Binah.

“This collaboration is part of the various initiatives that Sun Pharma is taking to enhance its specialty pipeline. Mutually beneficial partnerships with independent research institutes, especially world renowned institutes, such as the Technion, is our preferred route to bring to the market, innovative products for unmet medical needs” said Kirti Ganorkar, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Sun Pharma.

About Sun Pharma (CIN – L24230GJ1993PLC019050): Sun Pharma is the world’s fifth largest specialty generic pharmaceutical company and India’s top pharmaceutical company. A vertically integrated business, economies of scale and an extremely skilled team enable us to deliver quality products in a timely manner at affordable prices. It provides high-quality, affordable medicines trusted by customers and patients in over 150 countries across the world. Sun Pharma’s global presence is supported by 45 manufacturing facilities spread across 5 continents, R&D centers across the globe and a multi-cultural workforce comprising over 50 nationalities. The pro forma consolidated revenues for 12 months ending December 2014 are at US$4.5 billion, of which US contributes US$2.2 billion. In India, the company enjoys leadership across 11 different classes of doctors with 31 brands featuring amongst top 300 pharmaceutical brands in India. Its footprint across emerging markets covers over 50 countries and 6 markets in Western Europe. Its Global Consumer Healthcare business is ranked amongst Top 10 across 4 global markets with 5 brands enjoying category leadership across India, Romania and Nigeria. Its API business footprint is strengthened through 11 world class API manufacturing facilities across the globe. Sun Pharma fosters excellence through innovation supported by strong R&D capabilities comprising 1800 scientists and R&D investments of 6.3% of annual revenues. For further information please visit www.sunpharma.com

About Technion-Israel Institute for Technology: Founded in 1912, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is the oldest university in Israel. The Technion offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in science and engineering, and related fields such as architecture, medicine, industrial management and education. It has 18 academic departments and over 50 research centers. Since its founding, it has awarded over 100,000 degrees. Technion’s over 600 faculty members include three Nobel Laureates. The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is a major source of the innovation and brainpower that drives the Israeli economy, and a key to Israel’s reputation as the world’s “Start-Up Nation.” Technion people, ideas and inventions make immeasurable contributions to the world including life-saving medicine, sustainable energy, computer science, water conservation and nanotechnology. In December 2011, a bid by Technion with Cornell University won a competition to establish an applied science and engineering institution in New York City; the Jacobs Technion Cornell Institute. In 2013, the Technion signed with China’s Shantou University (STU) to establish the Technion Guangdong Institute of Technology in China. T3 – Technion Technology Transfer is the technology transfer arm of the TRDF Ltd. T3 is responsible for the commercializing of Technion IP. For more information please visit http://t3.technion.ac.il/

The ubiquitin system produces a protein that greatly restricts the development of cancerous tumors.

A new study by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology could hold one key to control cancer cell growth and development. In a paper published in the April 9, 2015 edition of CELL, the team reports on the discovery of two cancer-suppressing proteins.

The research was conducted in the laboratory of Distinguished Professor Aaron Ciechanover, of the Technion Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. The team was led by research associate Dr. Yelena Kravtsova-Ivantsiv and , included additional research students and colleagues, as well as physicians from the Rambam, Carmel and Hadassah Medical Centers, who are studying tumors and their treatment.

The heretofore-undiscovered proteins were found during ongoing research on the ubiquitin system, an important and vital pathway in the life of the cell, which is responsible for the degradation of defective proteins that could damage the cell if not removed. The ubiquitin system tags these proteins and sends them for destruction in the cellular complex known as the proteasome.  The system also removes functional and healthy proteins that are not needed anymore, thereby regulating the processes that these proteins control.

Usually, the proteins that reach the proteasome are completely broken down, but there are some exceptions, and the current line of research examined p105, a long precursor of a key regulator in the cell called NF-κB. It turns out that p105 can be broken down completely in certain cases following its tagging by ubiquitin,  but in other cases it is only cut and shortened and becomes a protein called p50.

NF-κB has been identified as a link between inflammation and cancer. The hypothesis of the connection between inflammatory processes and cancer was first suggested in 1863 by German pathologist Rudolph Virchow, and has been confirmed over the years in a long series of studies. Ever since the discovery (nearly 30 years ago) of NF-κB, numerous articles have been published linking it to malignant transformation. It is involved in tumors of various organs (prostate, breast, lung, head and neck, large intestine, brain, etc.) in several parallel ways, including: inhibition of apoptosis (programmed cell death) normally eliminates transformed cells; acceleration of uncontrolled division of cancer cells; formation of new blood vessels (angiogenesis), which are vital to tumor growth; and increased resistance of cancerous cells to irradiation and chemotherapy.

As noted, the precursor p105 is “handled” by the ubiquitin system in one of two parallel and equally prevalent ways. It is either destroyed completely, or shortened and transformed to p50. The current research deciphers the decision-making mechanism that determines which process will be applied to the protein: when a ubiquitin system component called KPC1 is involved in the process and attaches ubiquitin to p105, the protein is shortened to become p50. When ubiquitination is mediated by another component of the system (and without KPC1), p105 is degraded.

The decision between these two options has significant implications on the cell, as the presence of high levels of KPC1 (which generates p50) and p50 (the product of the process) – with the accompanying disruption of the normal ratios between the processes – suppresses the malignant growth and apparently protects the healthy tissue. The current research was conducted on models of human tumors grown in mice, as well as on samples of human tumors, and a strong connection was discovered between the suppression of malignancy and the level of the two proteins, clearly indicating that the increased presence of KPC1 and/or p50 in the tissue can protect it from cancerous tumors.

Professor Ciechanover, who is also the president of the Israel Cancer Society, notes that many more years are required “to establish the research and gain a solid understanding of the mechanisms behind the suppression of the tumors. The development of a drug based on this discovery is a possibility, although not a certainty, and the road to such a drug is long and far from simple.”

Professor Ciechanover won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004 (jointly with Professors Avram Hershko – also from the Technion – and Irwin Rose, of the Fox Chase Cancer Center) for the discovery of the ubiquitin system. The current line of research is a continuation of that discovery.

For further details: Gil Lainer – 058-6882208, Doron Shaham – 050-3109088.

The moon is thought to have formed from the debris of a small planet that collided with the Earth. Since the composition of other planets in the Solar system differs from that of the Earth, it was expected that the moon composition would also differ from that of the Earth.

Surprisingly, the composition of the Earth and the Moon are very similar, raising a major challenge to the “giant impact” origin of the Moon. A new study by researchers from the Technion and Nice University explains the origin of such composition similarity and helps to solve this conundrum  

The Moon has fascinated human kind since the earliest days of history. It has played a central role in the making of annual calendars in Muslim, Jewish and other cultures; and was considered one of the gods in many pagan traditions.  Questions regarding the origin of the Moon, its shape and composition gave rise to myths and legends that have accompanied humanity for thousands of years, and even today many children ask themselves – and their parents – whether the moon is made of cheese.

In the modern era such millennium-old puzzles have been replaced by scientific exploration that raised no-less challenging questions, which continueto perplex us – even 40 years after man first landed on the moon. Now, a research done by Technion researchers sheds a new light on the origins of the Moon and its composition. The research, published in Nature, was lead by post-doctoral researcher Dr. Alessandra Mastrobuono-Battist and her adviser Assistant Prof. Hagai Perets from the Technion, in collaboration with Dr. Sean Raymond from Nice University.

 “Many models for the Moon origin were suggested by scientists, but since the 1980s the scientific community has been focusing on the most promising model  – the so called ‘giant impact’ paradigm,” explains Perets. “According to this model, the moon was formed following a collision between a small Mars-like planet (usually called Theia) and the ancient Earth. Some of the debris from the collision fell back to Earth, some was scattered far into space and the rest went into orbit around the Earth. This orbiting debris later coagulated to form a single object: the moon.”.

 Based on complex simulations of such collisions, researchers have found out that most of the material that eventually forms the Moon comes from the impactor,  Theia, and only a smaller fraction originates from the impacted body (in this case, the Earth). Measurements of the composition of other bodies in the Solar system such as asteroids and Mars have shown that they have a very different composition from that of the Earth. Given that most of the Moon material came from another body in the Solar system, it was xpected that the composition of the Moon should be similarly very different from that of the Earth, according to the “giant impact” model. However, analysis of samples brought from the moon by the Apollo missions showed otherwise – in terms of composition, the Earth and Moon are almost twins, their compositions are almost the same, differing by at most few parts in a million.

This contradiction has cast a long shadow on the ‘giant impact’ model, and for some 30 years this contradiction was a major challenge to physicists grappling with the  formation of the moon. Now, Mastrobuono-Battisti, Perets and Raymond have suggested a new solution to this mystery.

 Simulations of the formation of planets in the solar system, showed that different planets indeed have distinct compositions, as found from the analysis of material from different planets in the Solar system. Such studies have traditionally focused on studying only the compositions of the final planets, in the new research, Perets and collaborators have considered not only the planets, but also the composition of the impactors on these planets. Consequently they have discovered that in many cases, the planets and the bodies that collide with them share a very similar composition, even though they formed independently. Thus, conclude the researchers, the similarity between the moon and Earth stems from the similarity between Theia – from which the moon was formed – and Earth. “It turns out that an impactor is not similar to any other random body in the Solar system. The Earth and Theia appear to have shared much more similar environments during their growth than just any two unrelated bodies,” explains Mastrobuono-Battisti. “In other words, Theia and Earth were formed in the same region, and have therefore collected similar material. These similar living environments also led them eventually to collide; and the material ejected mostly from Theia, ultimately formed the moon. Our results reconcile what has been perceived as a contradiction between the process whereby moons are formed (from matter from the impacting body) and the similarity between Earth and the moon”. “The Earth and the Moon might not be twins born of the same body”, summarizes Perets, “but they did grow up together in the same neighborhood.”

 

Glorious, red pomegranates and their Middle Eastern sister, luscious toffee-like dates, are delicious, increasingly trendy, and healthy to boot. As it turns out, when consumed together they are a winning combination in the war against heart disease.

Just half a glass of pomegranate juice a day with a handful of dates can do the trick!

A team of researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, led by Professor Michael Aviram of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Rambam Medical Center, has discovered that the combination of pomegranate juice and dates along with their pits provide maximum protection against atherosclerosis (plaque buildup or hardening of the arteries), which can cause a heart attack or stroke. The findings were published in the most recent issue (March 26, 2015) of Food & Function, a journal of The Royal Society of Chemistry.

A number of risk factors are involved in the development of atherosclerosis, including cholesterol oxidation, which leads to accumulation of lipids in the arterial wall. Natural antioxidants can slow down the oxidation process in the body, and serve to reduce the risk of heart attack. For the past 25 years, Prof. Aviram and his research team have been working on isolating and researching those antioxidants, in order to keep plaque buildup at bay.

Going into the most recent study, the team was aware of the individual benefits provided by pomegranates and dates. Pomegranate juice, rich in polyphenolic antioxidants (derived from plants), has been shown to most significantly reduce oxidative stress. Dates, which are rich sources of phenolic radical scavenger antioxidants, also inhibit the oxidation of LDL (the so-called “bad cholesterol”) and stimulate the removal of cholesterol from lipid-laden arterial cells. Prof. Aviram had a hunch that since dates and pomegranate juice are composed of different phenolic antioxidants, the combination could thus prove more beneficial than the sum of its parts.

In a trial performed on arterial cells in culture, as well as in atherosclerotic mice, the Technion team found that the triple combination of pomegranate juice, date fruits and date pits did indeed provide maximum protection against the development of atherosclerosis because the combination reduced oxidative stress in the arterial wall by 33% and decreased arterial cholesterol content by 28%.

The researchers conclude that people at high risk for cardiovascular diseases, as well as healthy individuals, could benefit from consuming the combination of half a glass of pomegranate juice (4 ounces), together with 3 dates. Ideally, the pits should be ground up into a paste and eaten as well, but even without the pits, the combination is better than either fruit alone.

For further details: Gil Lainer – 058-6882208, Doron Shaham – 050-3109088.

Hundreds of runners participated in the First Technion Challenge

Hundreds of lecturers, students and employees from the Technion and other academic institutions participated in the First Technion Challenge race, held today (Wednesday). The five-kilometer race was held on the Technion campus as part of the Academic Sports Association field race league activities. “In this race there are no losers, only winners,” said Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie a few seconds before he signaled the start of the race. “A few of you will be more victorious than others today, but no one will be a loser.”

“I am proud of the Technion’s students,” said Technion Student Association Chairman Danny Magner. “The Technion is No.1 not only in academics but also in sports.”

The Technion’s hilly terrain made for a particularly challenging route. “It was a difficult route, with a lot of ups and downs, and I am happy that I managed to achieve a time of less than 20 minutes,” said Helen Wolfson, who won first place in the women students division and second place in the overall women’s division. Helen, a master’s degree student in the Faculty of Bio-Medical Engineering, trains the Technion’s staff team in her spare time. “Combining running and studying has always been a challenge for me, and I have to run even on days with the most lectures,” said Helen. She praised the race’s organizers for the race’s high level of organization.

“This was the toughest and most challenging route of all the races in the student’s league,” said Kim Darmon, a fifth-year student in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, who came in third overall in the women’s division. “I have been running since age 12, and this race was difficult and challenging, as befits the Technion.”

First place among the senior lecturers was won by Dr. Ari Gero of the Department of Science and Technology Education, who recorded a time of21:58 minutes and came in 50th overall. He has been training for years, ever since he was a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Physics. His training buddy, Assistant Prof. Netanel Lindner of the Faculty of Physics came in second.

Prof. Alon Hoffman, dean of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, took third place among the senior lecturers. “I am on the Technion’s running team and participate in the 220-kilometer Mountain-to-Valley Ultra-Man Marathon every year, so today’s race wasn’t particularly difficult for me, despite the hilly route.”

Assistant Prof. Alex Szpilman, also from the Faculty of Chemistry, admits that “there were some tough sections, but we know that whatever is not difficult – is not interesting. After all, we are experienced at coping with scientific challenges, and it’s good that we now also have an athletic challenge like this.” He will also soon be participating in the Mountain-to-Valley race in one of the three teams of chemistry professionals that the Israel Chemical Society is sending to the race.

The winner of the race is Or Shilon of ASA Tel Aviv, who crossed the finish line in just 17:19 minutes. The women students trophy was won by Irena Konovalov, of Wingate College, who recorded a time of 19:34 minutes. Barak Zinger, a student in the Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science, was the fastest Technion student, with a time of 17:52 minutes, and came in fourth overall.

The race was organized jointly by the Technion’s administration, Technion Student Association, the dean of students, the sports department – ASA Technion Academic Sports Association and the Technion Sports Center.

“The race is being held for the first time at the Technion,” said Technion COO Zehava Laniado, “and we hope that it will become a tradition. This is an event for everyone and its goal is to bring the various groups at the Technion closer to one another and promote athletic activities on campus.”

For Photos click here

Photo captions

7899 + 7903 – Runners on the starting line.

7934 – Student Helen Wolfson

7938 – Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie and Student Association chairman start the race.

7982 + 8013 + 7975 – Runners during the race

7860 – Winners in the women’s division. (Right to left: Helen Wolfson, Irena Konovalov, Kim Darmon)

7882 – Winners in the men’s division. (Right to left: Steven Taylor, Or Shilon, Moshiko Yesharim)

8026 – Winning staff members: (Right to left: Assistant Prof. Netanel Lindner, Dr. Ari Gero, Prof. Alon Hoffman)

5458 – Aerial view of the starting line

7747 – Student Zafrir Ozer, who ran the race with his dog Lego.

Photo Credit: Spokesperson’s Office.