Month: November 2021

The use of robots in construction and architectural manufacturing is a vision steadily becoming a reality and is perceived as a key trend in the next revolution in the construction industry. For years, complex architectural projects have been planned by computer. On the ground, however, these projects continue to be executed using construction methods that have remained virtually unchanged for decades.

In recent years, thanks to continuous development, robotic instrumentation has begun to close the gap between the level of planning sophistication and practical execution on-site. Consequently, anyone who has seen videos of robotic manufacturing processes in architectural projects will find it hard not to be swept up in the tide of enthusiasm. The good ones show robotic arms in motion, lifting building parts that interlock with ease. The pace of production is accompanied by accurate cutting and precise detail.

Despite the impressive tempo of the robots and the infinite possibilities inherent in these production processes, human intervention is usually necessary behind the scenes from the production aspect as well as in calculating and planning the various deliverables. This is especially true when architectural planning is based on complex spatial systems such as thin, doubly-curved surfaces, also known as “shells.”

A research group from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is working on narrowing the gap between the promise and reality. The researchers, Professor Mirela Ben Chen, Dr. Kacper Pluta, and Michal Edelstein, together with their colleague, Professor Amir Vaxman of Utrecht University, responded to a request from an architect and developed an algorithm that finds automated solutions that meet robotic manufacturing needs for complex surfaces. The researchers created a computational framework that takes as input complex and diverse doubly curved surfaces and computes its segmentation into planar panels. The researchers have shown that the planar segments can be assembled from cardboard, a first step towards robotically manufactured shells made from timber.

“It’s important to recognize that industrial robotic manufacturing is not a technological whim,” Prof. Ben Chen explained. “It has numerous advantages in different aspects of sustainability such as material savings, reducing construction time and mitigating the environmental impacts of the construction process. The algorithm we developed can take complex surfaces and break them down into small segments, hexagons, in a way that increases the surface’s mechanical advantages. Further development of the computational tool will enable an optimal implementable solution to be devised.”

“In order for the computational system to be applicative in the ‘real world’ as well, collaboration with architects is necessary,” Prof. Ben Chen continued. “Ultimately, we hope that our research will lead to the development of a system that can compute and manufacture building segments through automation, so that they can be assembled on-site without detracting from or compromising on architectural or structural complexity.”

To read the researchers’ paper in ACM Transactions on Graphics, click here

The prestigious 2021 Landau Award in Bioinformatics has been awarded to Prof. Roy Kishony of the Faculty of Biology and the Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The prize is awarded annually by the Mifal HaPais Council for the Culture and Arts to outstanding artists and scientists who made significant impact in key areas.

The award committee noted that “Prof. Roy Kishony is one of the most brilliant and respected scientists working in Israel. His research combines bioinformatics, mathematical models, machine learning, and experimental work in a creative and innovative way to study basic questions in areas of crucial importance to human health.”

His work focuses on bacterial resistance to antibiotics and ways to prevent it. Prof. Kishony’s many contributions to science include “describing the interactions between antibiotics and their impact on the development of bacterial resistance, understanding how, through antibiotic monitoring, the development of resistance can be delayed or prevented, and even discovering why antibiotic resistance is uncommon in bacteria growing in natural ecosystems,” the committee noted.

In recent years, Prof. Kishony has channeled his scientific insights into advancing health systems. He developed a computational learning system for predicting the most appropriate drug based on the patient’s personal medical record. Most recently, Prof. Kishony “greatly contributed to the understanding and improvement of the testing and vaccination for COVID-19,” the committee noted. “Prof. Kishony is an original and creative world-renowned scientist in the field of systems and computational biology.”

In conclusion, the committee wrote: “His multidisciplinary research takes advantage of bioinformatics as a tool for a better understanding of biological and medical systems.”

 

The Harvey Prize in the Science and Technology category will be awarded to Professor James R. Rice of Harvard University this year. Prof. Rice was chosen for the Technion’s most prestigious award for his fundamental and long-standing contributions to the fields of mechanics of materials and geophysics, particularly for the development of the J-integral and for his leadership, which has broadened the understanding of friction and earthquakes.

Prof. Rice was born on December 3, 1940, in Frederick, Md. He studied at a Catholic school that recruited science and math teachers from the nearby army base. These teachers inspired his love of engineering and science.

In 1958 Prof. Rice began studying at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn., and within just six years he completed three consecutive degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. He went on for a postdoc at Brown University, where he began working in 1964. In 1981, he accepted a position at Harvard University, where he serves as the Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics.

Prof. Rice has won numerous awards, including the Timoshenko Medal and the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Medal, and was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, as well as to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the U.S. National Academy of Science. In honor of his contributions to the engineering sciences, the Society of Engineering Science established the James R. Rice Medal in 2015. He received an honorary doctorate from the Technion in 2005.

Prof. Rice is an expert in solid and fluid mechanics, i.e. stress analysis, deformation, fracture and flow – applied to seismology, tectonophysics and surface geological processes. He focuses on theoretical mechanics in earth and environmental science, including earthquake source processes (research carried out together with his wife, Dr. Renata Dmowska), fault and crack dynamics, tsunami and landslides. One of his greatest achievements, which is also noted by the Harvey Prize Council, is the J-integral, which has become a standard in fracture mechanics, to analyze the crack-tip fields and the crack’s propensity to propagate (fracture). He named this particular integral the “J-integral”, with the uppercase letter “J” coinciding with his nickname “Big Jim,” respectfully used by his students – but the “J” also being a standard notation for energy fluxes in solids, in studies he pursued in the same area with senior Brown Univ. colleagues such as Daniel C. Drucker, Joseph Kestin and also with Rodney Hill at Cambridge Univ., UK.

The $75,000 Harvey Prize, established in 1971 by Leo Harvey (1887-1973), is awarded by the Technion each year for outstanding achievements in science and technology, human health, and significant contributions to mankind. Over the years the Harvey Prize has become a predictor of the Nobel Prize, with more than 30% of Harvey laureates ultimately receiving the Nobel. Three of them – Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier, Prof. Jennifer Doudna, and Prof. Reinhard Genzel – won the Nobel Prize in 2020.

The European Union’s EIT Food organization awarded the “Innovation Impact Award” to a project led by Prof. Yoav D. Livney of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, in collaboration with Amai Proteins and the global Danone and PepsiCo companies.

The EIT Food Innovation Impact Award was given to them for the development of a healthy sugar substitute based on the smart enhancement of sweet proteins found in tropical fruits. The name of the project is “Sugar-Out, Prote-In, Application of Microencapsulated Sweet Proteins as Sugar Substitutes.”

Amai Protein produces designer proteins using computational protein design and production through precise fermentation. Since these proteins are between 4,000 and 11,000 times sweeter than sugar, they can be used in minute amounts hence would be more affordable than sugar per sweetness unit. Furthermore, they have glycemic value of 0 and do not adversely affect the population of intestinal bacteria (the microbiome).

The winning technology is based on adding natural food ingredient agents – termed MicroPatching agents – or other food ingredients to produce a protein flavor as similar as possible to that of sugar. This should result in a significant reduction of sugar consumption, which is harmful not only to human health – most obviously in obesity and the development of metabolic syndrome – but also to the environment, and is unsustainable. The new technology uses more environmentally friendly production processes than the traditional sugar industry.

The researchers tackled several challenges including improving the taste and eliminating an aftertaste; protein stability; competitive pricing and adverse health effects. According to Prof. Livney, “winning the Impact Award will help us advance towards commercialization of the technology and consequently reduce sugar consumption in Israel and around the world.”

According to Dr. Ilan Samish, founder and CEO of Amai Protein, “the multidisciplinary R&D project led by the Technion allows us to combine groundbreaking technologies with applied R&D from leading international beverage and food companies for the purpose of introducing a product that consumers really long for.”

Our Faculty of Biology marks 50 years of academic and research excellence. Founded in the fall of 1971, the faculty started out as the Horace W. Goldsmith Institute of General and Industrial Microbiology. Now, most of its labs are housed in the the Emerson Life Sciences Building, which was completed in 2011.

Over the years, the faculty has grown from six professors to 30 senior faculty members and eight active Emeritus faculty members, who work at the forefront of modern biology. The faculty’s location in the heart of the Technion campus promotes interdisciplinary research that combines life sciences, medicine, exact sciences and engineering, and spans diverse topics from biochemistry to biophysics.

The faculty’s vision is to continue to lead interdisciplinary research at the Technion and to position itself among the best biology faculties in Israel and around the world.

To read more about the jubilee, click here.