A New Center for the Printing of Living Tissue Inaugurated at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology
An innovative center for the printing of cells, tissues, and organs has been established in the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
Faculty Dean Professor Shulamit Levenberg, who heads the center, said that “the new center is open to all Technion researchers and will lead the Technion’s tissue engineering department into new areas.”
The field of tissue engineering has undergone dizzying progress in recent decades – and the Technion has filled a significant role in this revolution. Technion researchers are developing complex and precise artificial tissues that significantly improve their integration in the target organ. This involves, among other things, the creation of tissue containing a developed system of blood vessels that quickly connect to the patient’s blood vessels.
The 3-D Bio-Printing Center for Cell and Biomaterials Printing will provide a significant boost to the field of tissue engineering. The center operates an innovative printer that prints three-dimensional scaffolds and the cells that grow into tissue. The printer translates the information obtained from the patient’s CT scans into three-dimensional tissue suited to the injury area. The system has additional tools to design scaffolds or cells to make 3D tissues, Levenberg said. “You can design as you wish and seed cells in the proper orientation to allow them to better organize into the right tissue structure.”
The printer is relevant to all areas of regenerative medicine and makes possible the printing of various tissues and the integration of controlled- release systems. It has several different printing heads, enabling the simultaneous creation of printed tissue from different materials. It is equipped with precise motors of variable speed and accuracy of 0.001 mm, as well as a built-in camera that improves the exactitude of the printing needle.
The system is suitable for a wide range of raw materials, such as hydrogels, thermoplastic materials and ointments, with precise temperature and radiation control (ranging from 0 to 70 degrees Celsius and 30 to 250 degrees Celsius and ultraviolet radiation). The printing can be carried out directly into the culture dish.
They still can’t drive, but they’re already building autonomous cars
The 10th Robotraffic Competition, named for Nadav Shoham, took place on 21st March at Technion, with the participation of a thousand students from around the world with dozens of autonomous cars.
For the 10th consecutive year, the Robotraffic Competition named for Nadav Shoham was hosted at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The contest invites participants to build autonomous vehicles for an environment that simulates a city.
This year, some 1,000 students participated in the competition; from countries that included Israel, the United States, Argentina, Russia, Mexico, and Ukraine.
Nadav Shoham Robotraffic participants, 2019
The Nadav Shoham Robotraffic contest is a joint project of the Technion’s Leumi Robotics Center, World ORT, Kadima Mada, and the World Zionist Organization, along with Ytek and Eytam Robotics. The competition strives to provide students with the knowledge and skills associated with safe driving in order to lower the number of young drivers involved in traffic accidents. The students build robots that are in essence autonomous vehicles required to perform tasks on a simulated road. The most challenging part of the contest, aimed at high school students, involved elements of safe driving, advanced safety methods, speed, general road safety, driving laws, and design the vehicles using SolidWorks. This year another challenge was added only for the Highschool students: driving in a defined trajectory without markings on the ground
The competition was hosted by Head of the Technion’s Leumi Robotics Center Prof. Moshe Shoham, along with Director of the Center Dr. Evgeny Korchnoy.
All hands on deck, at the 2019 Nadav Shoham Robotraffic Competition
“The first competition that was held ten years ago, brought together groups from five schools. Now, we have about 100 teams in an international competition, and in recent years there have also been regional competitions in Russia and in Ukraine,” said Prof. Shoham, “Tens of thousands of students have already passed through the program and many have gone on to [study at] the Technion and have continued in the robotics industry. This is your natural route and I hope to see you here in the future.”
Tova Shoham, the wife of Prof. Shoham, congratulated the participants and wished them success. She told the students about her son, Nadav Shoham after whom the competition is named. “Nadav was an engineer from birth, she said. He put together a lot of things, such as a bicycle with a lawnmower engine, and his friends called him ‘Nadav hands of gold’. He naturally came to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion, and here, in parallel to his studies, he continued to volunteer to help disabled children, as he did as a teenager. He came to the Robotraffic Competitions and enjoyed the enthusiasm, dedication and investment of the various teams in building the robots.” Nadav was tragically killed in an avalanche on the Annapurna ridge in 2014.
“I am pleased to see the heads of three Councils here- Beit Je’an, Majar, and Jat – whose presence is important here. The Technion has been open and will continue to be open to all sectors and to all populations,” said Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development Prof. Boaz Golany.
Tova Shoham
The Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Prof. Oleg Gendelman addressed the audience in Hebrew, English and Russian, saying that”: “Robots are used today in many fields. In order to design a smart robot, you need to know mathematics, chemistry, physics, engineering and more. This competition is the beginning of an interesting way for you, and I hope that you will continue and succeed on this path.”
Shmuel Cohen, director of scientific programs at Kadima Mada said that: “Israeli hi-tech has become what it is thanks to good technological education, and our job is to prepare you to be the best engineers in the world. My relationship with Dr. Korchnoy and Prof. Shoham extends all through the year, and we are proud to support the program.”
Dr. Nadav Betzer of the Education Ministry thanked the Technion staff and said: “Robotraffic was born here at the Technion as an Israeli competition and has become an international one. The tools you receive here will stay with you and will accompany you in the future.”
Establishment of a National Center for the Promotion of Smart Transportation Research
The Planning and Budgeting Committee has announced the winners of their proposal request: a joint proposal by the Technion and Bar-Ilan University
The establishment of the national research center will encourage research and development, initiatives and industry in the field of smart transportation in Israel as well as streamline transportation services through the integration of advanced technology.
Prof. Yoram Shiftan
Chair of the PBC, Prof. Yaffa Zilbershats: “The establishment of a national center for the promotion of smart transportation research will enable researchers from various institutions to leverage the knowledge and renown of Israeli academia, link academia to industry, and continue to lead world technology in a wide range of relevant fields. I congratulate the Technion and Bar-Ilan University on their joint winning of the proposal request. The center they will unite the scientific community within this area, and together they will bring Israel to impressive achievements in the field.”
Dr. Anat Bonstein, Head of the Alternative Fuels and Smart Transportation Administration in the Prime Minister’s Office: “I congratulate the Technion and Bar-Ilan University. The government’s vision is to continue strengthening Israel as a center for research and industrial know-how in the field of alternative fuels and smart transportation. One of the most significant factors in Israel’s achievements is the talented manpower that its academia produces. With the help of the new center, we will be able to continue to ensure that the State of Israel will be a significant force in the advancement of the smart transportation revolution in Israel and worldwide.”
Further to Government Resolution 2316 regarding establishing a national program for smart transportation, the Planning and Budgeting Committee declared this week that the Technion and Bar-Ilan University (joint proposal) won the bid to establish the National Center for the Promotion of Smart Transportation Research, at a total cost of approximately NIS 25 million.
In the proposal request that was distributed several months ago to Israel’s research universities, it was emphasized that one of the center’s primary roles would be to bring together Israel’s research community for the purpose of encouraging and promoting smart transportation research and development.
The center will work to encourage cooperative ventures between all interested parties, including researchers from academia and R&D centers, in Israel and overseas, in fields relevant to smart transportation. Likewise, the center will work to encourage and promote cooperative ventures between Israel’s scientific community, on the one hand, and entrepreneurs and industry in the transportation field, on the other, from Israel and throughout the world.
The establishment of the center significantly contributes to the implementation of the government resolution in the national plan for smart transportation, that is being jointly advanced by the Ministry of Transport and Road Safety and the Prime Minister’s Office. The plan has two main goals: The first is to encourage R&D, initiatives and industry for smart transportation in Israel and the second is streamlining transportation services by the integration of advanced technology. Smart transportation incorporates a broad vision that emanates from the social and technological changes that are expected to fundamentally change the field of transportation as we know it today. These changes include installation of technological devices in vehicle safety and driving control, vehicle computerization, and the widespread use of smartphones and databases that together should bring about integrated transportation that is autonomous, cooperative, and electric.
Research in the field of smart transportation is interdisciplinary in its essence, and cooperation between researchers in different institutions and between academia and industry is of utmost importance. Therefore, for there to be progress in the field, research cooperation is needed in a broad constellation of fields, such as mathematics, business administration, computers, engineering, architecture, and geography, and subfields such as smart transportation systems, big data, programming and optimization, robotics, artificial intelligence, human behavior, digital image processing, network optimization, cyber security, etc.
National Center for Research of Smart Transportation Goals:
To strengthen the smart transportation field in Israeli academia, including the organization of an active academic community in this field.
To serve as a center of knowledge for smart transportation R&D, both in academia as well as in the academia-industry interface (Point of Contact (POC)) in Israel and similar entities throughout the world.
To encourage smart transportation cooperative ventures in the academia-industry interface, in Israeli academia, and with such entities worldwide.
To advance and encourage research in the smart transportation field on a national level, by initiating programs based on the center’s products, analysis, and identification of requirements and familiarity with the academia-industry interface.
Head of the new center, Prof. Yoram Shiftan, from the Technion’s Transportation Research Institute: “The transportation system in Israel and worldwide is about to undergo an enormous and fundamental change – the smart transportation revolution – due to technological and social changes and the constant rise in traffic congestion. This revolution poses significant challenges to academia, industry, and decision makers. I view the future center as an opportunity to unite the relevant community – researchers, industry players, entrepreneurs, local authorities, R&D centers, and interested parties from Israel and abroad – to advance interdisciplinary and interinstitutional studies that will contribute to smart transportation that is safe, effective, and green, and that will position Israel as an international leader in the field.
Prof. Doron Aurbach, from Bar-Ilan University, Center for Research of Smart Transportation staff: “We currently have in Israel all the information needed to implement autonomous transportation based on artificial intelligence systems and sensors. Israeli universities are at the forefront of research in the field and we intend, together with our partners at the Technion, to develop this know-how into a knowledge infrastructure that will lead to practical solutions in the field.”
Baroness Ariane de Rothschild with Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie at the Honorary Doctorates ceremony
On February 28th, the Swiss Friends of Technion held an event honoring Baroness Ariane de Rothschild following her confirmation as a Technion Honorary Doctor during Technion – Israel Institute of Technology’s annual meeting of the International Board of Governors in Israel.
The Baroness was confirmed as a Technion Honorary Doctor: “In recognition of her extraordinary commitment to promoting international philanthropy; in gratitude for her steadfast devotion to the advancement of higher education in Israel; in admiration of her leadership in the Edmond de Rothschild Caesarea Foundation (IL) and for her generous support of the Technion and the State of Israel.”
Baroness Ariane de Rothschild leads the activities of the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation (Israel) and serves as chair of the Philanthropic Committee.
The event was held at the residence of Jacob Keidar, the Israeli Ambassador to Switzerland, and attended by Friends of Technion in Switzerland, academics, industry leaders, and official representatives of the State of Israel. During the event, the strengthening of the partnership between Technion and the Rothschild Caesarea Foundation was announced which will include Foundation’s support for Technion’s “Engineers without Borders” (EWB) chapter.
The Baroness generously supports two of the flagship programs for outstanding Technion students: The Arian de Rothschild Women Doctoral Program, which promotes equal opportunity in academia and in society; and the Rothschild-Technion Program for Excellence.
“The State of Israel must ensure its place at the forefront of research and development in the aerospace industry,” said Dr. Ami Appelbaum, Chief Scientist and the Chairman of the Board of Israel Innovation Authority, as he opened the 59th Israel Annual Conference on Aerospace Sciences (IACAS) held in Tel Aviv and Haifa and led by the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
The most important event in Israel in the fields of aviation and space, it was attended by some 600 engineers, scientists and other experts from Israel and abroad. The conference was led by the Technion – the only academic institution in Israel that has a faculty of aerospace engineering. The Technion Faculty, founded in 1954, has trained and continues to train the engineers who have led and are still leading Israel’s aviation and space industries. The event takes place under the leadership of Prof. Emeritus Mordechai (Moti) Karpel of the Technion’s Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.
Lectures included:
Innovation Beyond the Horizon, from Dr. Ami Appelbaum, Chief Scientist and chairman of the board of the Israel Innovation Authority.
The Beauty of Turbulence and Transitions in Reactive Flows, from Prof. Elaine Oran of the University of Maryland.
Industrial Shape Optimization Applications Using Adjoints and HPC: A 25-Year Perspective, from Prof. Juan Alonso of Stanford University.
The Role of Established Space Industry in a New Space Environment, from Opher Doron, VP & General Manager of Israel Aerospace Industries’ Space Division.
Scientific Applications of Global Satellite Navigation Systems, from Prof. Penina Axelrad of the University of Colorado.
Very Flexible Aircraft: Performance Promises and Aeroelastic Challenges, from Prof. Carlos Cesnik of the University of Michigan.
Aviation’s Third Revolution: Challenges and Opportunities, from Dr. Susan Ying, President of the International Council of Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS).
Dr. Ami Appelbaum, Chief Scientist and the Chairman of the Board of Israel Innovation Authority
Dr. Appelbaum presented the meteoric pace of innovation in recent decades. “We are in a place similar to that at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,” he said. “The innovations that await us in the coming years will completely change our lives, including the social and cultural aspects. There is no doubt that one of the areas in which a revolution is expected is space exploration, and the State of Israel must ensure its place at the forefront of this industry in order to preserve its economic and security strength.”
“Aeronautics is rapidly evolving into new directions, such as unmanned vehicles, where Israel is definitely leading, and there are many challenges of implementation, coordination, and security,” added Prof. Karpel of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, chairman of the 59th IACAS Organizing Committee.
On the second day, which was held at Technion City, Technion’s Senior Executive Vice President Prof. Adam Schwartz said: “The field of aviation engineering is an excellent example of cooperation between academia and industry. The industry is a source of interesting practical questions, and academia has the resources to develop answers to these questions.”
The dean of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Prof. Itzchak Frankel, said that “this conference is a powerful demonstration of the aerospace world and an expression of that vital cooperation.”
Speaking on the theme “Aviation’s Third Revolution: Challenges and Opportunities”, ICAA President Dr. Susan Ying said: “We are at the threshold of the third revolution in aviation, a revolution that will bring upon us countless developments and opportunities. The first stage began with the Wright Brothers and ended with the invention of the jet. We are now moving on to the next generation – electric aircraft. After 70 years of jet aircraft, we are moving on to the next stage, because conventional planes produce inconceivable pollution and by the middle of this century, it could become the most polluting industry.”
Ying was born in Taiwan and grew up in Indonesia. After graduating high school, she moved to the US, and on one of her bicycle trips she came upon a flight school where she enrolled in flight lessons, and later went on to work there. At the same time, she completed her undergraduate studies in aeronautical engineering at Cornell University in New York and received her doctoral degree at Stanford University in California.
Dr. Susan Ying
In the following years, she worked in various organizations in the field – including NASA – and was even accepted into an astronaut training course. From there she moved on to Boeing, where she worked for 20 years. She left Boeing a few years ago and in 2016 joined the start-up company Ampaire, where she serves as Vice President of Technology Strategies. The company employs 15 people and develops electric aircraft that will reduce operating costs and environmental damage from pollution and noise.
“The technological acceleration in the world of aviation, as in other fields, creates a space of unlimited opportunities – Wide Open Space – in a market estimated at $260 billion over the next decade,” she said, adding that the revolution will begin with short flights, where the advantage of the electric plane is particularly noticeable. “We’re talking about an 80 percent drop in energy costs and about 50 percent in maintenance. There are many moving parts in a regular plane, but the plane we are developing has only one moving part – the rotor.”
The conference also featured a Student Project Competition. The first prize went to the Technion’s Formula project aerodynamics team, supervised by Michael Kuchenko. The second went to Kadmiel Karsenty for his research project on “An improved diesel circuit of small aircraft flying at high altitudes”, supervised by Prof. Eran Sher.
The prizes were given in memory of Dr. Shlomit Gali. Born in Haifa in 1945, Dr. Gali completed three degrees at the Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. During her undergraduate studies, she was the only female student in all of the four graduating classes studying at that time.
In 1964, she met Dov, her future husband, who was a student in the Faculty of Architecture. After her post-doctoral studies at Imperial College in London, she worked in the US Air Force laboratories until she was asked to join the Lavi project at Israel Aerospace Industries. She went on to Israel’s Ministry of Defense, where she headed the department of technological infrastructure in MAFAT (the Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure). She passed away in 2011.
The Technion Faculty of Education in Science and Technology recently held the closing event of “Intelligent Robotics” in which all participants gathered at Technion City to present their projects.
Among the skills exemplified by the robots were autonomous mapping and navigation, communication using IoT (Internet of Things); and drones that could photograph the terrain from the air and transfer data through a ground station to a ground-based robot that designated to deal with detected problems.
The final event took place at the Technion with the participation of high school students, parents and mentors from the Technion and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MIT student Keila Holman with ORT Technikum-Givatayim pupils
The “Intelligent Robotics” project was born in 2017 at the initiative of the Center for Robotics and Digital Technology Education as a collaboration between the Technion and MIT. The CRDTE conducts research focusing on technological learning environments, experiential learning, modeling and analogy, educational robotics, human-robot interaction, museum education, learning mathematics with applications and in cultural context. One of its activities is to actively engage high school students with the field of intelligent autonomous systems.
“We want to provide school students in Israel with real engineering skills that are relevant to the new world of employment, skills that not yet taught in regular school programs,” said CRDTE Head Prof. Igor Verner, who explains how he was inspired by the MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute program in which he participated as a researcher. “We see this project as an innovative model for the interdisciplinary specialization that combines computer science, electronics and mechanics. In the coming summer, we will present the project at a closing ceremony of the robotics program at MIT.”
In collaboration with the global company PTC and with the involvement of students from MIT, the CRDTE has developed an environment for the experiential learning of advanced technologies. “You have built a truly amazing lab that enables you to experience an environment that is very similar to the real world,” said PTC Israel CEO Ziv Belfer at the event: “The world has become autonomous, connected and controlled, and here, you experience all this.”
This year, following the success of last year’s pilot, Israel’s Education Ministry and ORT Israel also became involved. 66 students from five schools participated: Hugim in Haifa; ORT Technikum in Givatayim; ORT Gan Yavne; Bosmat Haifa; and the Israel Air Force Technical School in Haifa.
Presentation of a drone robot on a photography mission
The project’s activities were coordinated by Dr. Dan Cooperman of the Technion and Gadi Herman of ORT Israel. At the end of 2018, the pupils underwent a preparatory course in which they learned robotics; programming in Python; IoT; working principles in Linux; and the Robot Operating System. In January 2019, three MIT students who came to Israel as part of the MISTI Global Teaching Labs program joined the teaching staff and taught the students robot programming in ROS.
“In our age, interdisciplinary cooperation is needed to develop complex things,” said Technion Senior Vice President Prof. Adam Schwartz, “and this is what we do here at the Technion – learning the most complicated things to build together complex, successful and useful technologies – to benefit mankind.”
The project’s activities were coordinated by Dr. Dan Cuperman of the Technion and Gadi Herman of ORT Israel. At the end of 2018, the students underwent a preparatory course in which they learned robotics, programming in Python, IoT, working principles in Linux, and the Robot Operating System. In January 2019, three MIT students who came to Israel as part of the MISTI Global Teaching Labs program joined the teaching staff and taught the students robot programming in ROS.
“In our age, interdisciplinary cooperation is needed to develop complex things,” said Technion Senior Vice President Prof. Adam Schwartz, “and this is what we do here at the Technion – learning the most complicated things to build together complex, successful and useful technologies – to benefit mankind.”
“The best path to social, economic and employment advancement is to study,” said Prof. Yehudit (Judy) Dori, Dean of the Faculty Education in Science and Technology. “That’s why we’re cooperating with the educational system. We want the best students here at the Technion.”
“The project nurtures the 21st century students’ performance and exposes them to new fields,” said Milena Meron, who is Principal of the Hugim High School, from where students are participating in the project for the second time.
“I was so impressed by how motivated and enthusiastic the students were to learn about robotics and autonomous systems,” said Ariel Levy, an MIT student who taught in the project. “The students quickly picked up the necessary skills for the project. I was so proud to see everyone’s presentation at the end! I had so much fun teaching in Israel and I hope I can return soon.” ”
The parents of Noya, a student at ORT, wrote: “We want to thank everyone who made this project happen. Thank you for the meaningful, challenging and extraordinary education that made our daughter tell us each day with great excitement about the project’s progress. We sensed the desire to learn, the commitment and the responsibility that you gave her. There is no doubt that it is a special experience. We’re already waiting for the next project!”
New Study Published In Nature Medicine Reveals An Immune-Age Clock For Assessing One’s Immune Health
Associate Professor Shai Shen-Orr
If those ubiquitous TV infomercials are to be believed, a person’s age can be determined solely by outward signs, like wrinkled skin, gray hair, and yellow teeth. But according to a team of researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Stanford University, the state of a person’s immune system provides a far more accurate measurement of a person’s health than physical signs or even chronological age. The team has also developed a way to gauge “immune age,” which could bring about new frontiers in personalized medical treatment, drug and vaccine clinical development, and health management and insurance processes.
Over an individual’s life, the immune system declines in function, a process accompanied by an increase in inflammation. This ultimately leads to an inability to cope with infections and a higher risk of chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease, the leading causes of death among older people. Due to the high complexity of the immune system, no real metric of immunological health exists in the clinic beyond the Complete Blood Count. This lab test, which has been in existence since 1957, enumerates the abundance of immune cells, but at a resolution too low to identify anything but extreme conditions.
Enter the new monitoring system developed by the Technion-Stanford team. Their study characterized annually, at high resolution and with thousands of different parameters, the immune systems of 135 healthy people at different ages over a period of nine years. The researchers collected rich longitudinal data that allowed for the capture a pattern of immune cellular changes occurring over time that are common to all adults, irrespective of individual differences between peoples’ immune systems.
Doctoral student Ayelet Alpert
“Individuals varied only at the rate their immune system changes, not in the actual pattern of change,” said Shai Shen-Orr, Associate Professor in the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and lead co-senior author of the study. “This allowed us to map a path of how the immune system ages and to quantify an individual’s immune age. Unlike your actual chronological age, the immune-age is intimately tied to the state of one’s immune system, the body’s chief sentinel. We can, therefore, capture medically relevant information using immune age that physicians would otherwise miss.”
Using the new method, the researchers quantified the immune age of more than 2,000 adults who participated in the Framingham Heart Study, which has been carried out among people living in the Boston area for more than half a century. By analyzing the data collected on this large sample, the researchers showed that advanced immune age predicts mortality at an older age beyond known risk factors. In other words, although they may be in the same age group, people with an “older” immune system are at higher risk of dying than people with a “young” immune system.
Dr. Yishai Pickman
“This paper represents a very important step towards developing useful measures of immunological health, especially as it could help to identify who is at risk for cardiovascular and other diseases,” said Professor Mark M. Davis, Head of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection and the other co-senior author of the study. “It’s been sixty years since the last immunological benchmarks (CBCs) were introduced into general medical practice and so it’s high time we had something much more sophisticated such as we describe here, that reflects the tremendous explosion of knowledge that we have had in the field in this time.”
Because immune age is also affected by genetics, the researchers want to characterize the immune age of populations with a genetic predisposition to a long life, such as descendants of people who passed the age of 100. “By doing so, we may characterize genes that affect immune age,” said Prof. Shen-Orr. “In addition, the method we developed will make possible identification of lifestyle, habits, and medications that affect immune age positively or negatively.”
The research was published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine and was led by Prof. Shai Shen-Orr of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Prof. Mark Davis of Stanford University, with co-first authors, doctoral student Ayelet Alpert and Dr. Yishai Pickman of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, together with other Technion and Stanford researchers. The research has been supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH-NIAID), the Ellison Foundation, the Howard Hughes Institute, the Israel Science Foundation, the Rappaport Institute, and the Kollek and Taub Family Awards.
Super Sensitive, Groundbreaking Smart Sensor “Tastes” and “Sniffs”
Professor Hossam Haick
Researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have developed an innovative sensing system capable of identifying and distinguishing different stimuli. The system is based on origami (the art of paper folding) combined with ink developed at the Technion.
The Israeli researchers have developed an innovative sensing system capable of identifying and distinguishing different stimuli. The research, just published in the journal Nature Communications, was led by Professor Hossam Haick of the Technion’s Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, and Dr. Min Zhang, who did his post-doctoral fellowship with him. Dr. Zhang is currently an associate professor at East China Normal University.
“Today, there is significant demand for multi-purpose sensing systems for specific purposes,” said Prof. Haick. “These systems have great potential as applications in medicine, counterterrorism, food safety, environmental monitoring, ‘The Internet of things’ and more. The problem is that existing technologies, such as gas chromatography, have many disadvantages, including high cost.”
The challenge facing the researchers was to develop a single system sensitive enough to identify and distinguish among different stimuli. They say they developed a solution inspired by nature. “When we think about the human sensory system, we think of a whole that brings all the data to the brain in a format that it understands. That inspired our development, which is meant to concentrate in a different place all the environmental data we want to monitor. It is a multi-purpose sensory system that absorbs the stimuli and distinguishes among them.”
(L-R) Dr. Min Zhang and Professor Hossam Haick
The system developed by Prof. Haick and Dr. Zhang, called “origami hierarchical sensor array” (OHSA), is an integrated array of grouped sensors written on the target object in conductive ink that the two scientists developed. It is a single device that demonstrates sensing abilities and detecting physical and chemical stimuli – temperature, humidity, light and volatile organic particles – at high resolution of time and space. Since it also distinguishes between isomers and chiral enantiomers (forms that are mirror images of each other), it paves new avenues for medical diagnosis. It is worth noting that volatile particle monitoring can be useful in a variety of areas including the diagnosis of disease and monitoring of dangerous substances.
There are many advantages to this unique ink – its low price, the ability to produce it in large quantities and the simplicity of its application on the target surfaces. The researchers conducted experiments that included control groups (other types of ink) and showed that the special ink attaches itself tightly to materials such as aluminum foil; glass; photo paper; Kapton tape (a polyimide film developed by DuPont in the late 1960s that remains stable across a wide range of temperatures and is used in, among other things, flexible printed circuits and thermal blankets used on spacecraft, satellites, and various space instruments; nitrile (the material used to make disposable gloves); and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS, used to make contact lenses and for medical technologies and cosmetics).
The ink also allows writing on human skin and nails in a kind of conductive tattoo, waterproof – which may allow, for example, constant monitoring of relevant physiological variables. In addition, it can also be used on human skin and fingernails as a kind of water-resistant, conductive tattoo – which can make possible, for example, constant monitoring of relevant physiological variables.
“We can say that our system identifies the ‘fingerprints’ of chemical and physical stimuli and supplies information about them,” said Prof. Haick. Its low cost will make possible its application in many places, including poor areas, for medical and other uses.”
Optical Microscope images of composite made of melanin-analogous polydopamine and graphene, coating (a) paper; and (b) flexible substrate made of Kapton
New Research Capitalizes on Therapeutic Promise of Programmed Cell Death
Assistant Professor Yaron Fuchs of Technion Israel awarded Sartorius & Science Prize for Regenerative Medicine & Cell Therapy
Assistant Professor Yaron Fuchs
Yaron Fuchs of Technion Israel is the 2019 grand prize winner of the Sartorius & Science Prize for Regenerative Medicine & Cell Therapy, for work that reveals a role for programmed stem cell death in wound healing and tissue regeneration. The findings, described in his prize-winning essay, “The therapeutic promise of apoptosis,” could potentially pave the way to novel regenerative medicine and tumor therapies that target stem cells undergoing apoptosis – a type of programmed cell death.
Adult stem cells are characterized by their ability to self-renew and transform into distinct cell types, positioning them as critical drivers of tissue replenishment and repair. While great strides have been made in researchers’ understanding of the many molecular pathways that control the fate and function of stem cells, very little is known regarding the specific processes underlying their elimination.
To address such unknowns, Fuchs, who now heads the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, further investigated how seemingly “immortal” stem cells committed cellular suicide. He closely examined the proteins involved in apoptosis using a model system known to be dependent on stem cells: the hair follicle.
Fuchs discovered that loss of ARTS in mice, a protein involved in promoting apoptosis, resulted in hair follicle stem cell expansion and lead to a dramatic improvement in skin repair. Mice lacking ARTS were able to regenerate hair follicles and formed smaller scars following wound infliction. What’s more, inactivation of the protein XIAP, which is targeted by ARTS reversed these observations and impaired wound healing.
Fuchs verified that ARTS and XIAP exerted similar effects in the intestinal epithelium, a system rapidly replenished by actively dividing stem cells. In this context, loss of ARTS function also protected intestinal stem cells against apoptosis, increased their numbers and enhanced intestinal regeneration.
“These studies demonstrate the importance of apoptosis in restricting stem cell expansion and enabling proper repair, suggesting that it serves as a defense mechanism against irreparably damaged stem cells and the emergence of cancer. The findings also suggest that transiently targeting pathways that encourage apoptosis in hair follicles or intestinal stem cells may offer therapeutic benefits to promote wound healing and regeneration,” said Fuchs.
In Fuchs’ award-winning essay, which will be published in the 8 March issue of Science, he highlights his quest to understand how epidermal stem cells use apoptosis-promoting proteins. Fuchs observed that a large number of proliferating cells within the sebaceous gland (a mini-organ which releases oily secretions) expressed an active form of caspase-3, a protein that triggers programmed cell death. Interestingly, these cells did not show any of the hallmark morphological characteristics of an apoptotic cell.
To Fuchs’ surprise, deletion of caspase-3 caused reduced proliferation and cell number, decreased organ size, and impaired sebaceous gland regeneration. Intrigued by this result, Fuchs found that caspase-3 controls the activity of YAP, a fundamental regulator of tissue regeneration and organ size.
“This discovery is particularly important, as it sheds light on standard-of-care cancer treatments like radiation and chemotherapy, which intentionally accelerate caspase-3 activity to execute tumor cell apoptosis. It also may hold promise in other applications, such as promoting wound healing by manipulating caspase-3,” said Fuchs.
“Stem cells are well known to promote tissue regeneration, but it’s less clear how stem cell elimination could impact disease,” said Science biomedicine editor Dr. Priscilla Kelly, who chaired the prize jury. “Dr. Fuchs revealed the unexpected connection between cell death pathways and the ability of stem cells to govern wound healing, skin repair and tumor growth. This is an excellent example of how state-of-the-art research can be applied to advance regenerative medicine and model new therapeutic interventions.”
Fuchs noted that he is currently in the process of developing specific inhibitors and activators of apoptotic proteins to improve stem cell-dependent skin and intestinal regeneration. Ongoing work indicates that the interplay between caspase-3 and YAP contributes to both skin wound healing and tumorigenesis. As such, his team is currently developing novel strategies for targeting caspase-3 activation in different tumor settings and regenerative models.
Next steps will include zeroing in on the myriad of molecular signals emanating from apoptotic cells, to better understand the effect they have on their surrounding environment. Fuchs hopes to harness such processes to drive tissue regeneration and block tumor development. Taking a different research direction, too, he seeks to uncover new stem cell populations, pinpointing the role they play in tissue homeostasis, repair, and tumor formation.
Established in 2017, the Sartorius & Science Prize for Regenerative Medicine & Cell Therapy – now in its second year – is an annual prize geared toward researchers focused on basic or translational research that advances regenerative medicine and cell therapy (including cell-, gene-, or immunotherapy, tissue engineering, and materials engineering). The winner is awarded $25,000 and publication of his or her essay in Science. The award is announced and presented at a ceremony for which Sartorius will provide financial support to help enable the grand prize winner to attend the ceremony.
Fuchs, along with all finalists, will be recognized during an award ceremony for invited guests only the evening of 25 April at AAAS Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
2019 Grand Prize Winner
Yaron Fuchs, for his essay ” The therapeutic promise of apoptosis.” Yaron Fuchs received his undergraduate degree from Haifa University and pursued a direct Ph.D. track at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. He next carried out his postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Upon completion, he returned to the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, where he now heads the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. His research is focused on different modes of cell death and how they regulate diverse aspects of stem cell biology and stem cell-dependent processes.
FinalistDaniele Tauriello, for his essay “From poor prognosis to promising treatment.” Daniele Tauriello studied at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and did his Ph.D. at the University Medical Centre Utrecht. Dr. Tauriello has been a postdoctoral fellow at IRB Barcelona, Spain, working on the role of TGF-β in the tumor immune microenvironment in colorectal cancer metastasis. This year, he will set up his lab at the Radboudumc, Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences, in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
FinalistRitu Raman, for her essay “Modeling muscle.” Ritu Raman received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Raman is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she is developing and integrating novel responsive biohybrid materials into implantable devices.
FinalistFlorian Bentzinger, for his essay “Best supporting actors.” Florian Bentzinger received his undergraduate degree and Ph.D. from the University of Basel in Switzerland. Following his post-doctoral studies at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in Canada, Dr. Bentzinger moved back to Switzerland and joined the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences. In 2016 he was appointed as an assistant professor at the Université de Sherbrooke in Canada where he is conducting research on the skeletal muscle stem cell niche in health and disease.
Nature is always a profound inspiration, and the field of biomimicry – developing products inspired by nature – has now been officially established at the Ramat Gan Safari Zoo by doctoral student Michal Topaz of the Technion’s Faculty of Education in Science and Technology.
Sewing thread for surgical sutures inspired by porcupine spines; air conditioning systems based on the structure of termite colonies; and insect repellants and bacterial disinfectants based on hippopotamus sweat – all these are the products of bio-inspiration. On display at the Safari Zoo in Ramat Gan, they are just examples of the ingenuity of doctoral student Michal Topaz, who is part of the environmental education research group led by Prof. Tali Tal of the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology.
For the past 15 years, Topaz has worked in the Ramat Gan Safari’s education department. After completing her master’s degree in sociology and anthropology at Tel Aviv University, former Safari director Yehuda Bar told her about a new field of research called biomimicry. “Go and read about it,” he suggested, “and maybe we’ll do something with it.”
Topaz accepted the challenge and plunged into what she describes as a whole world of thinking that combines innovation, entrepreneurship and nature conservation. “Biomimicry is an interdisciplinary field that regards nature as a boundless source for applicable ideas and developments and solutions for existing human problems. Instead of asking how we can use nature, we ask what we can learn from it,” says Topaz.
“We imitate nature – and are inspired by its mechanisms, structures, processes, and biological and ecological principles – while deeply admiring nature and understanding that we have a lot to learn. This thinking provides significant additional justification for preserving nature,” she adds.
Based on extensive and in-depth learning, Topaz established the field of education for biomimicry at the Safari, making it into the only zoo in Europe to be engaged with the science of biomimicry. With the accumulating amount of knowledge and experience gained from training others, Topaz began her doctoral research on zoo-based adult science education in this field.
Activities such as courses, seminars, and workshops are offered in the Safari, just across from the animal courtyards. Through guided observations, creating games to enrich the animals’ environments and unmediated encounters with animals, participants learn about wildlife, apply critical and creative thinking and gain experience in biomimicry-inspired thinking in the zoo.
As one of the participants said: “It’s easier to be inspired by the giraffe’s tongue after it licks you – when you feel the roughness of its tongue – and by an elephant’s trunk after you plan, build and carry out a game meant for it to play using its trunk. We gain from learning from close up. This is experiential, near and exciting learning that also contributes to enriching the animals’ lives.”
The field of education of biomimicry brings a new kind of audienceto the zoo – visitors who usually don’t come to the Safari such as professionals from a variety of fields including medicine and aeronautics – and, of course, teens.
For example, what can wildlife tell is about aeronautics? An engineer came looking for ways to minimize the weight of the wings of an aircraft. Biomedical engineers come, seeking to learn about the structure of honeycombs in beehives. Turtle shell armor can be an inspiration to develop better stents for heart patients.
Based on extensive and in-depth learning, Topaz established the field of education for biomimicry at the Safari and turned it into the only zoo in Europe that deals with biomimicry. With the accumulated knowledge, and the additional experience she gained in the training, Topaz began her doctoral research on adult science education in zoos in this field.
“We present a variety of technologies in various fields, such as surgical sutures by the quills of porcupines (for medical uses); the structure of a shopping mall that uses air conditioning based on the piles of earth of termites (architecture); and, of course, the robotic snake developed in the Technion lab of mechanical engineering led by Prof. Alon Wolf for medical use and search and rescue missions. We present these biomimicry developments in the context of science in everyday life. For example, a stick to help a blind person that is inspired by the sonar of bats, or an antibacterial insect repellant inspired by hippo sweat. Even Velcro, which we all use to attach and detach things easily, is based on biomimicry from the thorns of plants.”
Topaz notes that biomimicry is also used “to bring man closer to nature and especially to living creatures.”
In her research, Topaz examines the results of biomimicry activities in the zoo. “What each participant will take from the biomimicry course depends on his background and interests. A physician, an architect, an entrepreneur and a physiotherapist – each will take away something else. Some with focus on scientific or technological issues; others will learn from the environmental aspects behind the developments; while others would be interested in social issues connected to both topics.”
There is much importance in the personal history of the participants, their curiosity and interests and the know-how they bring with them. Like other extracurricular studies in Prof. Tal’s group, the research examines different aspects of learning among adults in unique educational conditions, which adds to a better understanding of the characteristics of science learning in an informal environment. This subject that has been studied very little around the world. In addition, biomimicry education programs – especially in the informal environment of the zoo – offer an innovative approach to environmental education.
Doctoral student Limor Arbel-Ganon of the Technion has won the first place in the poster competition at the Israeli Society of Physiology and Pharmacology (ISPP). The conference was held in Jerusalem on February 14, 2019.
Limor Arbel-Ganon
Limor’s research is focused on how mechanical overload can modulate sinoatrial node function. The sinoatrial node is the heart’s primary heart pacemaker, and it controls heart rate and rhythm. Sinoatrial node failure is associated with increased mortality in heart failure patients and in patients suffering from other cardiovascular diseases, where rhythm disturbance is associated with over 40% of sudden deaths. To date, the mechanisms that lead to sinoatrial node failure remain unclear. Increased venous return, which for example has been documented in heart failure patients, affects right atrial filling, distending the atrial wall where the sinoatrial node is located. Thus, it is possible that stretch is involved in sinoatrial node dysfunction in heart failure. In line with this hypothesis, a preoperative analysis of right atrial pressure and sinoatrial node function in children scheduled to undergo a Fontan operation showed that sinoatrial node dysfunction was absent in patients presenting normal right atrial pressure, but present in those with elevated right atrial pressure.
Limor has developed a system to stretch mouse sinoatrial node tissue and measure in parallel the beating rate using advanced imaging techniques. The system was tested on tissue dissected from control mice at different stretch levels. She found that stretching the SAN tissue from healthy mice led to an increase in the beating rate and a decrease in its variability around the mean. To understand the internal mechanisms that connect between the mechanical load and pacemaker function, we simulated the effect of stretch on sinoatrial tissue from a heart disease patient. The research showed that changes in calcium and phosphate signaling are responsible for the rhythm disturbance in unhealthy sinoatrial node tissue and for the increase in beating rate in healthy sinoatrial node tissue.
The 3-D Bio-Printing Center for Cell and Biomaterials Printing will provide a significant boost to the field of tissue engineering. The center operates an innovative printer that prints three-dimensional scaffolds and the cells that grow into tissue. The printer translates the information obtained from the patient’s CT scans into three-dimensional tissue suited to the injury area. The system has additional tools to design scaffolds or cells to make 3D tissues, Levenberg said. “You can design as you wish and seed cells in the proper orientation to allow them to better organize into the right tissue structure.” 
Fuchs discovered that loss of ARTS in mice, a protein involved in promoting apoptosis, resulted in hair follicle stem cell expansion and lead to a dramatic improvement in skin repair. Mice lacking ARTS were able to regenerate hair follicles and formed smaller scars following wound infliction. What’s more, inactivation of the protein XIAP, which is targeted by ARTS reversed these observations and impaired wound healing. 
To Fuchs’ surprise, deletion of caspase-3 caused reduced proliferation and cell number, decreased organ size, and impaired sebaceous gland regeneration. Intrigued by this result, Fuchs found that caspase-3 controls the activity of YAP, a fundamental regulator of tissue regeneration and organ size. 
