Month: July 2019

Design Meets Technology in the First Design-Tech International Conference at the Technion, Israel

“Design-Tech 2019”, the first International Design and Technology Conference hosted at Technion Israel, took place on 18-19 June 2019. The conference attracted over 150 participants and showcased over 40 featured presentations of innovative projects by designers and researchers.

The 2-day gathering was an inspiring, diverse and interesting platform for sharing ideas, knowledge, and questions to improve and deepen the understanding of the links between design and technology in the present era.

The conference was initiated by Prof. Ezri Tarazi, Head of the Industrial Design Graduate Program at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning In his opening words, Prof. Tarazi spoke of the meeting point of design and technology: “We urgently need to move fast towards humane-centered design and nature-centered design. We need to shift quickly our minds, awareness, values, and goals,” he said.

Keynote Speakers were Prof. Dr. Gesche Joost, from the Design Research Lab at the Berlin University of the Arts – who spoke of “Civic Design for an Inclusive Digital Society”; and Prof. Kalevi “Eetu” Ekman from Aalto Design Factory, Finland, who shared his thoughts on “Passion based Learning”.

Prof. Barry Katz, from the California College of the Arts and the Stanford University Design Group said that: “the last 10 years have seen deeper and more far-ranging changes than any previous decade in human history”. The keynote speaker then posed the question: Do the theories and methods that designers have applied so successfully in the past provide give a reliable guide to the future?”

The conference attracted leading Israeli designers and researchers, such as Tamar Yehezkel, Yaniv Glozman, Michal Greenberg Abrahami, Tami Warshavski, Safi Hefetz, Merav Perez, Arielle Blonder, Shira Shoval, Romi Mikulinsky, Matan Zohar, Alon Shikar, Raz Elias, Liron Lavi Turkenich, Yonatan Assouline and Asaf Cohen.

Technion students and researchers presenting their work included: Ezra Ozery who got the audience on their feet with their hands in the air during his presentation on “The Gamification of Physical Therapy in Virtual Reality”; Alexander Geht, who presented his initiative “Anatomic Mass Customization and Assistive Technology”; Avishag Shemesh who shared her investigation of the question “How does Geometry of Space Affect our Emotions”; Ofer Berman spoke about 3D printing of “Digital Tabular Coral”; Offri Lotan presented “Re-Design the Modern Surfboard”; Dr. David Behar shared research with Ronen Eidelman on “Community Surveillance and Mass Surveillance”; and Tom Shaked presented his work on “Autonomous Robotic Stone Dressing”.

From overseas, the conference hosted Alessia Buffagni and Francesca Toso from Italy; Deepshikha from India; Denisa Reshef Kera from Spain; Philip Meier, Ute Hilgers-Yilmaz, Bianca Herlo, from Germany; and Isabella Molloy from New Zealand. Israeli Marine Zorea presented her Japanese research on “Sonic Mapping of Everyday Interactions at the Elderly Home”; and Indian Kartikeya Date presented his Israeli research on “Designing Archives in The Digital Age”.

Prof. Wendy Ju – a special guest from the Jacobs Technion Cornell Institute in New York City – gave a presentation on: “Addressing Cross-Cultural Differences in Design”.

Design Tech 2019  was managed by Valeria Geselev, produced by Meital Gotfrid and Limor Abas Or, and supported by The Firefly Scientists’ Foundation.

All the conference lectures were documented, and are to be shared on the Design-Tech YouTube Channel and Website designtech.net.technion.ac.il

Photography by Lauren Blumenthal.

Innovative technology developed by researchers at the Technion and Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi Research and Innovation Institute at Maccabi Healthcare Services (KSM) is expected to improve and make more efficient the giving of antibiotic treatments. It will also hinder the development of resistant bacteria. The technology, which was presented in a study published in Nature Medicine, was made possible by a unique collaboration between the KSM Institute of Maccabi, headed by Professor Varda Shalev, and Technion researchers Professor Roy Kishony and Dr. Idan Yelin.

The use of antibiotics globally is extensive and leads to bacteria developing antibiotic resistance. As a result, antibiotics lose their effectiveness, leading to concerns that in the future, bacterial infections will become refractory to antibiotics. Infections that are now considered mild and not dangerous will become treatment resistant and deadly.

One of the factors that speed up the evolution of antibiotic resistance is the widespread use of broad-range antibiotics, drugs designed to kill a wide spectrum of bacteria. Reducing this dangerous trend can potentially be achieved by prescribing antibiotics specifically aimed at the infection causing bacteria for each particular patient.

Prof. Roy Kishony, one of the leading experts in the field of antibiotic resistance, developed methods for genetic mapping of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. These techniques make it possible to predict the resistance of a given bacterium to various antibiotics in the present and, even to the level of resistance that bacteria may develop in the future.

The current study focused on a specific type of infection – in the urinary tract – which affects more than half of women at some time during their lives. These infections involve various bacteria, including Klebsiella pneumoniae, E. coli, and Proteus mirabilis.

In the joint study conducted by the Technion and researchers at the KSM Institute of Maccabi, a system was developed to help the doctor choose the optimal antibiotic for treating urinary tract infections. The researchers found that antibiotic resistance levels were different for each patient and that a certain antibiotic will be effective in one patient and not in another.

The reasons for this are related to each patient’s personal characteristics and medical history.

“It is now possible to computationally predict the level of bacterial resistance for infection-causing bacteria,” said Dr. Yelin. “This is done by the weighting of demographic data, including age, gender, pregnancy or retirement home residence, together with levels of resistance measured in the patient’s previous urine cultures as well as their drug purchase history.”

The study is a significant step in the innovative field of medical studies based on machine learning and Big Data. Prof. Kishony emphasized that the study was made possible thanks to the cooperation with Maccabi.

“The collaboration between Maccabi and the Technion – one of the most innovative research institutes in the world – and the combination of deep understanding of medicine, Big Data and innovative research methods has enabled a real breakthrough in the field of antibiotic resistance,” said Prof. Shalev. “We look forward to a continued fruitful cooperation with the Technion and Prof. Roy Kishony.”

The study analyzed more than five million cases of antibiotic purchases made over 10 years and measurements of antibiotic resistance in more than 700,000 urine cultures. A sophisticated algorithm was able to find a clear link among the various data and thus predict the level of antibiotic resistance for each infection and provide a recommendation for the best type of antibiotics. The researchers found that the use of the technology could reduce the likelihood of choosing the wrong medication by about 40%. Therefore, they estimate that this system will contribute greatly to the global effort to delay the “resistance epidemic.”

Prof. Varda Shalev, who was elected in 2018 to the 100 Most-Influential list of The Marker newspaper, is a professor of medicine at Tel Aviv University and director of the KSM Research and Innovation Institute. The Institute is based on the professional knowledge of the best researchers and Maccabi’s unique database. Since its establishment, hundreds of studies have been carried out that have contributed to far-reaching improvements in the medical treatment provided to the community. The Institute studies Maccabi’s database, which includes hundreds of millions of doctor visits, various types of lab samples and other medical data. It maintains long-term cooperation with researchers at the Technion, with the aim of developing new ways to analyze medical data and its application to the welfare of patients.

Prof. Roy Kishony is a member of the Technion Faculties of Biology and Computer Science, and the head of the Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering. His research has been published in leading journals, including Nature and Science, focusing on the development and prevention of antibiotic resistance.

 

The first detection of an interstellar asteroid/comet-like object visiting the Solar system two years ago has sparked the ideas about the possibility of interstellar travel. New research from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology suggests that such objects also raise far-reaching implications about the origins of planets across the galaxy, and possibly even the initial formation of the Solar system itself. 

The asteroid/comet-like object named “’Oumuamua” confirmed decades-old scientific expectations that suggested that the interstellar medium is full of loose chunks of rock flying around. Such debris was thought to be ejected from planetary systems in the aftermath of planet formation, when large planets formed and kicked out some of the leftover minor-planets and planetesimals still lying around.  From time to time, some fraction of these ejected rocks can still encounter foreign stars. In fortunate instances, this phenomenon can be observed as it swooshes through the Solar system.

The Technion researchers, Evgeni Grishin, Hagai Perets and Yael Avni wondered what would have happened if these ‘Oumuamua-like interstellar rocks were flying around 4.5 billion years ago, when our star was young and wild, and a gaseous disk was present instead of our planetary system? Their findings could be critical to answering some of the biggest puzzles regarding planet formation and the origin of planets in the Solar system  

Forming planets with foreign (planetesimal) currency

Planets are formed in protoplanetary disks, mostly made of gas and dust. The dust grains are thought to grow into pebbles, coagulate into bigger planetesimals, and finally, form planets. Once the objects reach km-size, they can survive and eventually coagulate and accrete smaller rocks/pebbles as to form planetary embryos and full-fledged planets. The main obstacle for such growth appears to occur before km-size objects form, in the stage when smaller rock and pebbles initially form. Indeed, several culprits conspire to destroy pebbles and meter-sized boulders before they can ever grow into larger planetesimals. Such pebbles and rocks move through the gaseous disk in which they are initially embedded and experience a headwind that slows them down.  The continuous push of the headwind might eventually lead them to quickly spiral inward into the Sun and be destroyed. In addition, collisions between small pebbles can lead to their fragmentation into smaller pieces halting their growth into larger planetesimals. In other words, pebbles and small rocks encounter a so-called “meter-size barrier” in their ability to grow into even larger planetesimals.    

Several models were suggested as to overcome the meter-size barrier, but these typically require fine-tuned conditions that are unlikely to exist in most planetary systems; nevertheless, it is common knowledge that most if not all stars host planetary systems. The question is then how this came to be.

In their recently published paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Grishin and collaborators showed that interstellar objects are the key. They suggested that most systems do not need to go through the difficult stage of forming km-size planetesimals. Instead, most systems can capture interstellar km-size planetesimals that were originally ejected from other planetary systems. But how can an object moving at tens of km per second velocity through a Solar system be captured? It turns out the answer is simple – the same headwind that drives small rocks to inspiral into their sun can slow down bigger, km-size interstellar planetesimals and thereby capture them into a newly formed protoplanetary disk. 

In this way, even a single planetary system can eject km-size planetesimals that then serve as seeds for the formation of many new planetary systems. As a result, even a very small number of planetary systems can seed the formation of many other systems – all it requires is just a few lucky rare cases to begin the process, and then these systems can spawn planetesimal “seeds” across the galaxy, which in turn can be captured into a newly forming protoplanetary disks and provide them the basic km-size building blocks needed for planetary growth. Planet formation no longer occurs in isolation; no planetary system is an island,  but rather the reservoir of ejected rogue interstellar planetesimals serves to continuously initiate the birth of new planetary systems. In turn, any newly formed planetary systems eject their own rogue planetesimals and help rebuild the reservoir of interstellar planetesimal seeds. The question becomes: what are the odds of capturing these planetesimals, and how many successful formations are required to populate the entire birth cluster with planetesimals?

Nature vs nurture: Where you live matters!

To estimate the odds of planetesimal seeding and its implications for planet formation, the researchers developed a mathematical and numerical model for capture probability, depending on the properties of the interstellar planetesimal population and the disc. They found capturing small pebbles is extremely efficient, and that capturing larger bodies is more challenging, but still reasonable.

In the dense regions of stellar clusters where tens, hundreds, or even thousands of stars are born and live in a small regions (the “Manhattan” of star formation), around 10^6 of ‘Oumuamuas are captured in the birth cluster, and the largest body captured can be as large as ~10 km.
In the galaxy’s countryside, the galactic field environment, capture is more challenging, but still around ~10^3 ‘Oumuamuas can be captured, and bodies up to ~1 km are captured per system – enough to serve as the seed for planet formation in each system. 

One is enough, planetesimals bring joy and life!

The researchers summarize that only a small fraction of the stars in a cluster (less than 1%) are required to form the primordial planetesimals, which eventually seed the entire birth cluster of ~1000 stars. Roughly similar numbers are expected also for field environments. Both estimates are conservative. The interstellar reservoir, therefore, works in tandem with the main planet formation models, providing the initial seeds for many of the planetesimal formation models.

Another interesting side aspect is that biologically active material, in the form of bacteria, can survive the tough interstellar environment if the rock in which it is embedded is large enough (larger than a few cm scale). Although only a minute fraction of ejected rocks might harbor these hardcore bacteria, a  large number of such potentially biologically active rocks can be captured. This gas-assisted capture is a far more efficient mechanism for widespread panspermia, and most systems have probably gained their first life building blocks from somewhere else.

Read all about it! New leadership, sustainability, and the scientific revolution arising around matter and light from the research labs of Prof. Motti Segev.

Dozens of academic prizes were awarded to outstanding Technion researchers in a festive ceremony held as part of the 2019 Board of Governors’ events.

“Today we award prizes for excellence in teaching, research and innovation and honor researchers who have received grants from the European Research Council (ERC).” said the host of ceremony Prof. Steven Frankel of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. “We are grateful to the people, the families, the foundations, and the organizations that fund the prizes. For us, it is an opportunity to cherish excellence and nurture excellent research to help tackle the challenges of modern life and to advance science and technology.”

“We are the tip of the iceberg of research,” said Associate Prof. Mirella Ben-Chen of the Faculty of Computer Science, speaking on behalf of the award winners. “Research is not the work of a single researcher but the result of close and long-term collaborations. I thank the generous donors who support research and the development of new ideas, as well as the other people without whom our research would not have been possible: Graduate students, who do most of the work in practice; laboratory managers and other technical personnel; and the people who keep our sanity and remind us that there is life outside the laboratory – spouses, family, and friends.”

This year was the first time that the Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF) Research Award for Transformative Technologies for Africa was awarded. The prize is intended to strengthen academic ties and the exchange of information between researchers in Israel and in Africa and to harness new technologies for the benefit of humanity. The award is open to researchers from the Technion and other universities in Israel.

Prof. Emeritus Uri Shamir of the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering headed the professional evaluation committee, which submitted its recommendations to the MFF’s management committee. He said that the committee received eight proposals, from which two research groups were selected: From the Technion – Prof. Yehuda Agnon, Associate Prof. Mark Talesnick and Dr. Guy Ramon. From the University of Ben Gurion in the Negev – Prof. Yoram Oren, Prof. Zeev Ronen, and Prof. Jack Gilron.

Jonathan Yach, a trustee of the fund, said that: “Technology and high-tech are wonderful things… our grandfather, Morris Mauerberger, founded the award to make technology available to people who do not normally enjoy it. As noted, this is the first year that the prize was awarded, and this year we focused on water. Water is a vital resource, and as the biologist, Sylvia Earl said: ‘There may be water without life, but there can be no life without water.’”

The Technion’s Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development Prof. Boaz Golany thanked Jonathan Yach, Stephen Seiden and Renie Carniol for being “the next generation of Friends of the Technion.”

The Cooper Award for Research in Excellence 

Awarded to Prof. Shaul Markovitch of the Faculty of Computer Science for the development of a new methodology for automatic processing of natural languages.

The Diane Sherman Prize for Medical Innovations for a Better World 

Awarded to Prof. Jackie Schiller of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine for her contribution to understanding the dynamics of the basic computational units in the brain.

The Norman Seiden Prize for Academic Excellence 

Awarded to Associate Prof. Guy Bartal of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering for the development of nanoscale “Nano-Hedgehogs of Light” that pave the way for new applications in information processing, transmission, and storage. Steven, the son of Norman Seiden, explained that the prize was created in honor of his father’s 90th birthday and said that “unfortunately my father was unable to attend the ceremony this year, but it is important for us to note that the Technion has been, and still is, a central part of his life.”

The Henry Taub Prizes for Academic Excellence 

Awarded to Prof. Efrat Lifshitz of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry for her achievements in the development of nanoscale semiconductors and magnetic materials, including quantum wells and semiconductor nanoparticles; to Prof. Oded Béjà of the Faculty of Biology for the discovery of a new family of rhodopsin – light-sensing proteins; to Associate Prof. Mirela Ben-Chen of the Faculty of Computer Sciences for her achievements in algebraic representation of geometer information; to Assoc.Prof. Alex Leshansky of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering for his theoretical contribution to understanding the movement of artificial nanometer swimmers; to Associate Prof. Dan Mordehai of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering for his achievements in calculations relating to nanocrystals; and to Assoc.Prof. Meytal Landau of the Faculty of Biology for discovering the mechanism of attack of the violent bacteria “Staphylococcus aureus.”

The Uzi and Michal Halevy Innovative Applied Engineering Award 

Awarded to Asst.Prof. Yoav Shechtman of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering for his work on the subject – High Throughput Three-Dimensional Multicolor Localization.

The Uzi and Michal Halevy Innovative Applied Engineering Research Grants

Awarded to Asst.Prof. Amir Gat of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering for his work on Etafoils – Morphing airfoil skins and to Associate Prof. Gilad Yossifon for innovative technology for the analysis of sperm sampling and screening of live sperm cells.

The Hilda and Hershel Rich Technion Innovation Awards

Prof. Assaf Schuster and Mr. Ilya Kolchinsky of the Faculty of Computer Science, to Prof. Gershon Elber and to Fady Massarwi of the Faculty of Computer Science, to Asst.Prof. Shai Berlin of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, to Prof. Hossam Haick and Mr. Mohamed Khatib of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering, and to Asst.Prof. Michal Rahat of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine.

European Research Council Grants 

Noted recipients: Assoc. Prof. Ronen Talmon of the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Asst.Prof. Yuval Filmus of the Faculty of Computer Science, Asst.Prof.  Yoav Shechtman, Prof. Shulamit Levenberg and Prof. Amit Meller of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering and Assoc. Prof. Kinneret Keren and Assoc. Prof. Oren Cohen from the Faculty of Physics.