Month: July 2022

The process of sexual reproduction in plants and animals, as it is familiar to humans, requires the fusion between egg cells and sperm cells. The emergence of sexual reproduction is usually dated back about 1-2 billion years ago. But Technion – Israel Institute of Technology researchers, in collaboration with expert teams abroad, now speculate that the mechanisms that allow for this fusion event to occur appeared as early as 3 billion years ago.

The research, published in Nature Communications, was carried out by Professor Beni Podbilewicz and doctoral student Xiaohui Li from the Technion’s Faculty of Biology, along with researchers from Uruguay, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Great Britain, and Argentina.

The fusion of sperm and egg marks the climax of fertilization – and the onset of embryonic development. Since both cells contain exactly half of the genetic information needed for the offspring, aberrant fusions of multiple sperm to one egg will have abnormal development. The process is therefore tightly regulated. Specialized proteins called ‘fusogens’ must be present at the precise time and place to allow the egg and the sperm to merge into one.

The Podbilewicz Laboratory studies fusogens in several organisms, and first identified and characterized two such proteins in the nematode C. elegans (EFF-1 and AFF-1). These proteins are involved in organ development, but not in fertilization. Surprisingly, structural analysis revealed that these proteins have a very similar three-dimensional structure to another fusogen involved in fertilization in plants (GCS1/HAP2). This family of similarly structured fusion proteins has been named Fusexins and includes representatives in plants, animals, viruses, unicellular algae, and parasites.

In order to expand upon and to characterize the origin and evolution of the Fusexin family, research collaborator David Moi and a team of researchers from Argentina and Switzerland conducted a bioinformatic search on genetic sequences sampled from different environments. After screening samples from soil, saline lakes, freshwater, and marine sediments, they discovered 96 sequences belonging to archaea, which showed some similarities with known fusion proteins. The sequences were named fusexin1 (Fsx1), and an expert team led by Pablo S. Aguilar, Hector Romero, and Martin Graña confirmed that they belong to archaea species from lineages estimated to originate 3 billion years ago. However, it remained unclear whether the protein that Fsx1 encodes looks similar to members of the fusexin family and whether it is truly capable of mediating cell-to-cell fusion.

To determine the structure of an Fsx1 protein, Shunsuke Nishio of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden used crystallographic methods to decipher the three-dimensional conformation of the Fsx1 protein. Nishio showed that the Fsx1 protein contains three structural domains very similar to known Fusexin members and is arranged in a three-piece complex – known as a trimer – as do other known fusogens. Surprisingly, Fsx1 has an additional fourth domain not found in any known Fusexin member. Professor Luca Jovine, leading the crystallographic structure analysis, also used novel machine-learning software (AlphaFold2) to determine the structure of the Fsx1 protein.

To prove that the protein Fsx1 carries a fusogen role, doctoral student Xiaohui Li from the Podbilewicz Laboratory conducted an experiment in which she expressed the Fsx1 protein in a cell culture derived from mammals, which typically do not fuse. In collaboration with lab manager Clari Valansi and lab members Dr. Nicolas Brukman and Kateryna Flyak, Li showed that Fsx1 from archaea does induce the fusion of these mammalian cells that diverged 1-2 billion years ago.

Known Fusexin proteins in viruses serve to mediate viral entry into the host cell (as is the case for coronavirus), while in eukaryotes (cells with nuclei) – plants, nematodes, and protists – they play roles in organ sculpting, neuronal repair, and sex. But who came first? Was a fusogen used for sexual reproduction snatched by a virus, or was a viral protein used for infection adopted by plants? Since Archaea predate the origin of eukaryotes, the study by Moi, Nishio, Li, and others raises a possible third scenario: all fusexins originate in archaea, from which the lineage split into a variety of functions, from viral infection to sperm and egg fusion – a billion years before sexual reproduction.

An important next step will be to study what Fsx1 proteins are doing in nature. Do they fuse archaeal cells like their plant and animal fusexins counterparts fuse gametes (e.g., eggs and sperm) to promote a sex-like DNA exchange? Parallel studies will also be needed to understand the evolutionary history connecting the Fsx1 protein and GCS1/HAP2 in order to establish their origin. Archaeal fusexins and other still undiscovered fusogens might help us to understand how cells evolved from apparently simple forms sharing discrete pieces of DNA between them to today’s complex life forms undergoing sexual reproduction. Thus, the discovery that ancient creatures like archaea can also contain fusexin proteins now raises the intriguing possibility whereby the Fsx1 protein is the ancestral version from which viral, plant, and animal fusogens derived.

The study was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program, the Marie Curie Grant, the Israel Science Foundation, and others. Some sample analysis was conducted at the European Synchrotron (ESRF) facility.

For the full article in Nature Communications click here.

Can immunotherapy treatment help this cancer patient? And, if it can, which specific treatment should be applied? Oncologists routinely ask themselves these questions. Insurance companies also pose these questions since immunotherapy is expensive. Patients ask if this novel treatment could save their lives. Now, a new study by Professor Keren Yizhak, from the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, uses Artificial Intelligence to create a simple and inexpensive method of answering this question for each individual patient. Prof. Yitzhak’s findings were recently published in Nature Communications and selected to be featured in the “Editor’s Highlights” about cancer.

Immunotherapy is a recent development within the world of cancer treatments. It has provided full remission to patients who could not be helped by other means, and it reduces many of the side effects of chemotherapy. There are multiple immunotherapeutic treatments. The principle under which they all operate is stimulation of the patient’s immune system to attack the cancerous cells.

How does the immune system distinguish between the cancer cells it should attack and the healthy cells of the body? The more mutations the tumor has amassed, the more it differs from the “normal” cells, and thus immunotherapy can be more effective. This characteristic is called Tumor Mutation Burden (TMB). A higher TMB means more new mutations. Prof. Yizhak’s method significantly simplifies measurement of the TMB.

Currently, in order to measure TMB, cells are taken from the tumor and their DNA is compared to DNA from the patient’s healthy cells. Prof. Yizhak and her group propose two significant modifications to this process.

The first modification, already explored in a previously published article by the group, is comparing RNA molecules rather than DNA molecules. This makes a difference because DNA molecules contain the entirety of the human genome, while RNA molecules are small parts of the genetic code, copied out to be used as instructions within the cell. In their previous study, the group showed that RNA molecules can also be used to identify the cancer-specific mutations.

The innovation in the group’s most recent article is two-fold: first, eliminating the need to compare the RNA from the cancerous tumor to DNA from healthy cells. As a result, a smaller amount of genetic material needs to be sequenced, so patients can be subjected to fewer procedures. Instead of comparing the genetic material from the tumor to the patient’s own healthy genetic material, Prof. Yizhak’s team developed a machine-learning algorithm which was trained to recognize aberrations from the healthy genome and to tell them apart from the natural variation that exists between people. Second, using these predictions, they were able to compute an RNA-based TMB metric. In fact, this method proved to be more effective than the standard method in estimating the predicted effectiveness of immunotherapy for a given patient. This is thought to be the case because the RNA contains the parts of the genome that are in constant use and can therefore initiate an immune response. Mutations in parts of the genome that are not in use are less likely to affect the cell’s operation.

The development of the algorithm was made possible by using a large existing database of sequenced RNA from cancer patients, on which the algorithm could be trained. In fact, Prof. Yizhak’s laboratory is a computational, “dry,” lab. Computational labs make use of the large amounts of clinical data collected by the scientific community around the world, using it to achieve new discoveries and to develop new tools to assist patients. The study was led by Dr. Rotem Katzir and B.Sc. student Noam Rudberg, both from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science.

For the full article in Nature Communications click here.

Bareqet Hadad got married at the age of 18, and after giving birth to her first child, the next step seemed clear: studies at a religious college to become an English teacher. She grew up in an ultra-Orthodox community, finished high school with a complete matriculation certificate and discovered that she was good in English. But one evening, while she was on her way to friends in Haifa, her husband stopped her and said, “Bareqet, here’s something that looks interesting.” It was an advertisement for graduates of Beit Yaakov School for girls who want to study for a degree at the Technion.

“It was a possibility that I couldn’t have imagined,” she said several days after receiving her bachelor’s degree from the Technion. “I came from Haredi education and never thought that studying at the Technion was an option for me. But I called and discovered that there was an opening in the pre-academic course for ultra-Orthodox women at the Technion.”

From Torah to industrial engineering 

Bareqet grew up in Elad. “At home, studying was at the forefront – general studies for girls, Torah studies for boys. When I decided to take five units of English I needed special approval, and together with four other girls I took the matriculation exam and passed. I also wanted five units in mathematics, but I had to be satisfied with three, so the preparatory program opened an unexpected opportunity for me.”

At the start of the course at the Technion, Bareqet felt that she was back in her natural setting – studying with other women. “Not that it was easy. The studies are high-level and very intensive, but from the beginning, I felt a guiding hand from above. The lecturers were simply amazing and did everything they could to help us succeed. I insisted on understanding every detail and their door was always open, even after study hours.”

And then – a second pregnancy. “I remember struggling. It was difficult and challenging. I studied day and night, and fortunately the director of the course at the time Mooly Dotan gave me all the help I needed, including mentoring at the Technion and externally, anything that could help me finish the course. Without Mooly’s help I wouldn’t have been able to finish the course.” Bareqet successfully passed the pre-academic program and gave birth to her second son a few days later. Now she was ready to become a full-time Technion student, strengthened by her success in the program.

Bareqet chose the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management – and dove right in. “The path was clear, but I knew the road was difficult,” she said. “Sitting in a mixed classroom, men and women – was a very new experience for a woman from an ultra-Orthodox background. But I learned that to succeed you need partners, and the task is to study and nothing else, so why not? Ultimately, it was an important lesson for me.”

Bareqet chose as many courses as possible related to manufacturing. “This is the field that interested me most, because my father worked in sales in companies that developed and manufactured, so that was present in my life growing up,” she explained. “When you add to that my love for communicating with people, identifying problems, situation analysis and creating solutions – you get the Manufacturing and Service Systems Program.” So, she deepened her study into various topics, among them productivity and maintenance quality, quality engineering, industrial engineering incidents, service systems engineering, and production systems.

“On the personal level, studying at the Technion was a roller coaster. I started the first semester enthusiastically. At first everything went smoothly, it was all fresh in my mind from the preparatory course, but as the weeks went by the intensity grew and so did the workload. At some point I understood that I wasn’t keeping up, I was starting to hand in work late, but I continued, sat for exams…and then suddenly – fail, fail, and another fail,” she recalls. “At this point, just before registering for the second semester, I broke down.  My husband and I realized that maybe we were wrong, that maybe it wasn’t for me. In the morning we dropped the children off and sat on a bench, shattered, trying to come to a decision. At that time, we lived in the Technion dormitories, and we knew that stopping my studies meant leaving the dorms – and how would we get by?”

Top of the world

Bareqet decided to stop for a semester, to think and get organized, and then she returned. “I realized that life had toughened me up and I came back ready for the winter semester – my second at the Technion.” Here, Galit Eisig came into the picture. A counselor at the Technion’s Student Counseling Center, she accompanied Bareqet throughout the semester, and the trailblazing student passed all her exams the first time around, no need to retake them. “I felt on top of the world. It gave me the strength to continue.”

Her final project, which took the entire academic year, took place at Strauss, under the guidance of Dotan Rodensky, a faculty lecturer and CEO of consulting firm IE&P Group. Rodensky worked with the Technion Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center, and so the project had two teams – from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, and a team of four students from the Henry & Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, who provided artificial intelligence-based solutions. “Dotan’s guidance helped me submit an excellent project and we presented an end-product that will help Strauss’ excellence team,” says Bareqet.

In summary, she says, “there’s no doubt that the effort was worth it. Today I see that what they say about us, Technion graduates, is true: we stand out, we are equipped with an array of relevant skills for industry. Today, I am already in my second position in the industry, and I can quickly enter any role, work on the most complex production floors with the most advanced production lines. The skills that I learned at the Technion – thinking, analysis, systemic approach – are reflected in the field.”

Bareqet completed her degree with a third child, and let’s not forget that on the way, there were Zoom studies while holding children. “All this required me to improve my time management and planning. I also keep the Shabbat, so I have to be much more efficient during the week. I think that the Shabbat enabled me to survive the rest of the week. I learned how to manage myself on a daily basis, to ask for help, for advice, even to ask a hundred times until I’m sure I understand, to submit work on time, and think two steps ahead.”

Her belief in a guiding hand from above made it possible to overcome everything. “It’s a belief that gives enormous power to overcome small and big obstacles.” She has no doubt that there is no way she could have been able to get her degree without the tremendous help of her husband, a Yeshiva student and Torah Scribe, who took upon himself most of the care for their children. “During that time, he was also studying for accreditation exams of the Chief Rabbinate, and I’m happy that he passed them successfully at the same time as I did.”

The near future is completely obvious to her. “I have no doubt that I will be integrated in a senior position in the operational excellence division of a large enterprise like Strauss, a large company or a leading consulting firm. I will have a black belt in training for excellence and will be involved in projects that reach the CEO level,” she says.

An exceptional university in terms of support

 

The Technion, she says, is “an exceptional university in terms of support. I always remind myself that no matter how much and what we are given, in the end we, the students and graduates, have to meet the challenges by ourselves. No one will be tested in my place, and no one will be interviewed in my place. And yet – the help was and still is essential. Accommodation in the dormitories was critical both economically and in terms of proximity to the faculty.  The scholarships, with which I received the immense support of Naama Dror from the Office of the Dean of Students, were a great help. The lecturers, the tutors, dedicated their time far beyond the formal definitions.  And finally, Iris Moshkovitz, who we were fortunate to have thanks to Mooly and the Technion. Iris, an expert in business communication and career success, give us VIP service even after graduation in helping to find a job, CV, preparation for interviews, accompaniment in entering a new job and LinkedIn skills, and all with exceptional professionalism. That’s a great help.”

“Bareqet has shown remarkable determination, dedication to achieve her goals, and coping abilities,” says Mooly Dotan of the Technion Center for Pre-Academic Education. “Throughout her studies, she experienced several crises but managed to rise above, to complete all her assignments and finish her studies admirably as a woman with a family and mother of three. She is a Technion graduate and as such she deserves all the accolades,” he said. “More and more ultra-Orthodox girls are now showing an interest in studying engineering and medicine at the Technion. They are accepted in the regular admission process, like any other student, according to the “sechem” grade (average of matriculation exams and psychometric exam grades). Some of the ultra-Orthodox students choose medicine and some go to other faculties.”

Today, there are 100 ultra-Orthodox men and 20 ultra-Orthodox women studying at the Technion. Bareqet is one of the pioneers, and she hopes to influence girls in the ultra-Orthodox community and at least to present them with the possibility to study engineering, sciences, and medicine at the Technion.

The award, presented for multidisciplinary research in human health, is given on behalf of the Adelis Foundation and honors the memory of Mr. André Cohen Deloro (z”l). Prof. Wolosker received the award from Technion President Professor Uri Sivan and the Trustees of the Adelis Foundation Mrs. Rebecca Boukhris and Mr. Sidney Boukhris.

The new award is recognized by the André Cohen Deloro Institute for Transformative Biomedical Sciences and Engineering. The Adelis Foundation currently supports the construction of a new Technion center – the André Cohen Deloro Institute for Transformative Biomedical Sciences and Engineering. The new institute will serve as the epicenter of the Technion’s multidisciplinary research activities in human health and will feature state-of-the-art infrastructure necessary to drive innovation, including cutting-edge laboratories and equipment.

The André Cohen Deloro Institute will also serve as a hub of the newly established Technion Human Health Initiative. This large-scale initiative will further facilitate innovative research at the Technion by focusing on the next level of medical innovation through partnerships with Technion-affiliated hospitals and cutting-edge pharmaceutical and biomedical companies.

“Today’s recipient, Prof. Herman Wolosker of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, exemplifies this, as he uses a wide range of techniques to advance his research.” said Rebecca Boukhris on behalf of the Adelis Foundation. “We’d like to congratulate Prof. Herman Wolosker,” she continued. “His remarkable work has been cited in many prestigious academic journals and we’re happy and proud that he is the recipient of the first André Cohen Deloro Prize.”

Prof. Wolosker’s research focuses on the unique and atypical neurotransmitters that are essential for brain function and which are also involved in neurodegenerative diseases. Based on a new mouse model, he studies the roles of amino acid-based neurotransmitters and the blood-brain barrier in brain development.

Mrs. Rebecca Boukhris put the new prize in a broader context: “74 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, we might ask ourselves what would have happened to the Jewish people without Israel. The answer is anyone’s guess, but the following question is much simpler to answer: What would have happened if the Technion had not been established 36 years prior to the formation of the State of Israel? Here we all know the answer: Israel could not have become the tremendous Startup Nation it is today, it would not have the thriving economy it has today, and I even doubt it could have defended itself the way it has throughout all these years. These two questions were at the heart of André Cohen Deloro’s thoughts and philosophy, and it is on this basis that the Adelis Foundation was created – to support science and help build the security of the country and its future.

We rely heavily on Technion researchers to transcend the boundaries between disciplines, bringing together doctors, engineers, and scientists from different fields to make our dreams come true and meet the challenges of medical research. The future of research lies in the ability of researchers to remove barriers between research fields and to create strong synergies between different scientific disciplines.”

Prof. Ilan Marek, Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Chemistry was the Master of Ceremonies. He stated, “On a personal note, it is a huge pleasure for us to have you here. Your love for the Technion and Israel is clear, and this is your second home. I travel a lot and meet many people – Mr. Cohen Deloro had a strong impact on me, and I still remember our first meeting. He had a smile in his eyes.”

President of the Technion Uri Sivan said, “André Cohen Deloro passed away in 2012 but his legacy continues to flourish in the skillful, loving hands of Mrs. Rebecca Boukhris and trustees of the Adelis Foundation. It gives us special pleasure to inaugurate this prize by awarding it to Prof. Herman Wolosker for his groundbreaking work on unconventional transmitters and their role in brain development and neurodegeneration. Wolosker epitomizes the type of scientist of whom the Technion is so proud and so blessed to be home.”

Prof. Herman Wolosker

Prof. Wolosker completed his M.D. and Ph.D. at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and did his postdoctoral fellowship at John Hopkins University. His research studies novel and atypical neurotransmitters in the brain that are important for normal brain function and can cause neurodegeneration. His research aims to fully characterize the role of the serine shuttle in various human diseases and to identify all, yet unknown, components of this metabolic pathway using genetically modified mice.

Brain diseases are often incurable, but metabolic imbalances can be corrected by either supplementing or restricting a missing amino acid. By focusing on metabolic disorders caused by the malfunction of the serine shuttle, Prof. Wolosker hopes that the knowledge gained about this metabolic pathway can be translated into new treatments.

Wolosker won the Teva Award on Rare Diseases (2012), the One Mind Rising Star Award from the International Mental Health Research Organization USA (2010), and the Yigal Alon Scholarship (2002).

 

THE ADELIS FOUNDATION

The Adelis Foundation is an Israeli foundation that was created in 2006 by an exceptional man, André Cohen Deloro (z”l) (1933 – 2012). A graduate of the prestigious École Polytechnique and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, André Cohen Deloro (z”l) had a brilliant career in construction. Realizing his unbreakable link with the State of Israel, he built the Adelis Foundation – the most important work of his life. The Adelis Foundation was built so that André Cohen Deloro (z”l) could contribute in his own way to the wellbeing of the Jewish People and to the security of the State of Israel.

The Adelis Foundation was created based on the conviction that the security and future of Israel, its economic development, and its influence among the nations depended on the excellence of its universities and research centers. The Adelis Foundation believes that it is crucial to guarantee the knowledge of Israel’s next generations through the high level of education of its human capital to improve its future. But a strong nation is also a nation that knows how to take care of its weakest links.

Thus, the Adelis Foundation intervenes in the following key areas: scientific and medical research of excellence (65%), education – mainly in the social and geographical periphery (25%), and social well-being (10%).

In the field of science, the Adelis Foundation has a desire to help Israel through preserving its position among the world leaders in research and innovation through exploring new technological frontiers. The Adelis Foundation promotes these directives by financing research infrastructure in the country’s most promising academic institutions, as well as by granting research budgets to excellent researchers from the best universities in key areas where the State of Israel has added value. Research is likely to create scientific breakthroughs that improve the well-being of Israel’s citizens and of humanity as a whole as our Jewish values ​​teach us.

A team of researchers from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has developed a proof-of-concept for a novel rechargeable silicon (Si) battery, as well as its design and architecture that enables Si to be reversibly discharged and charged.

Led by Professor Yair Ein-Eli of the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, the team proved via systematic experimental works of the graduate student, Alon Epstein and theoretical studies of Dr. Igor Baskin, that Si is dissolved during the battery discharge process, and upon charging, elemental Si is deposited. Several discharge-charge cycles were achieved, utilizing heavy doped n-type Si wafer anodes and specially designed hybrid based ionic liquid electrolytes, tailored with halides (Bromine and Iodine), functioning as conversion cathodes.

This breakthrough could pave the way towards an enrichment of the battery technologies available in the energy storage market, with the technology potentially easing stress on the ever-growing market and serving the increasing demand for rechargeable batteries.

Developments Leading to This Breakthrough

The increased demand for sustainable energy sources prompted the scientific community to focus on battery research capable of storing large scale grid energy in a manageable and reliable manner. Moreover, the rising demand of the EV industry, which mainly relies on current Li-ion battery (LIBs) technology is expected to strain current Li production and divert it from more widespread use in portable consumer electronics. Currently, no technology has proven to be competitive enough to displace LIBs. Metals and elements capable of delivering multi-electrons during their oxidation process have been the focus of the research community for a long time due to their associated high specific energy densities.

Magnesium, calcium, aluminum and zinc received much attention as potential anode materials with varied levels of progress; yet none of them has managed to revolutionize the energy storage industry beyond LIBs, as all of these systems suffer from poor kinetic performance to lack of cell stability, and therefore, much is left to be explored. Silicon (Si), as the second most abundant element on earth’s crust (after oxygen), was left relatively unexplored despite a high energy density of 8.4 kWh kg-1 on par with metallic Li 11.2 kWh kg-1; Si possesses stable surface passivation, low conductivity (dependent on the doping levels), and, until now, no established rechargeable cell chemistry comprising elemental Si as an active anode has been reported, outside LIB alloying anode.

In the past decade several publications (initiated originally in 2009 by Prof. Ein-Eli) reported the incorporation of active Si anodes in primary, non-rechargeable air-battery designs. Thus, despite its high abundance and ease of production, the possibility of using Si as an active multivalent rechargeable anode was never explored, until the team’s recent breakthrough.

The Technion team is made up of researchers from the Faculties of Materials Science and Engineering (A. Epstein, I. Baskin and Y. Ein-Eli), and from Mechanical and Chemical Engineering (M. Suss).

For the full article in Advanced Energy Materials, click here.

On June 22, 2022, the Formula Technion team unveiled its new car. For the first time, in view of the upcoming summer 2022 motor racing season, the team presented an autonomous electric vehicle (A-EV).

The Formula Technion project was established in 2012 in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and has grown steadily since. Today, the project is open to students from a variety of faculties at the Technion, who work together to build a car that competes in the Formula Student competitions in Europe. To date, the cars built by the Formula Technion teams have met with great success in the competitions, and now, the team is presenting its first-ever A-EV.

Muans Omari, current leader of the team, stated: “The car world of today is shifting to electric and autonomous vehicles, and the Formula Student competitions have embraced this trend. In the new car we just unveiled, we expressed the tech revolution through a change of color, from red/black to blue, white, and light grey, colors that today stand for electric propulsion. Making the transition from an internal combustion engine to an electric propulsion system is far from easy and took a lot of work and learning. But we believe in our chances of achieving good results in the upcoming competitions, which will take place in Germany and Spain.”

The Formula Student competition is a platform for new technological developments. Teams’ vehicles are tested and their performance is rated based on a combination of engineering challenges, and driving skills demonstrated on the track. The goal of the project is to enable engineering students – and students in other fields – to acquire practical knowledge in planning as well as manufacturing vehicles, and in this way, to prepare them for their professional life.

Last year, following travel restrictions imposed due to the pandemic, the first Israeli Formula Student Race was held, with the participation of the Technion, Tel Aviv University, and Ben-Gurion University. The Technion team won first place.

The global population is rapidly growing; on average, 2.5 new inhabitants are born each second. Indeed, it is estimated that by 2050, our planet will be inhabited by more than 10 billion people. To maintain and improve quality of life standards on a global scale while meeting the needs of an expanding world population, the production of food, medicine, consumer goods, and new technologies must be accelerated. This begs the question: can the world sustain our growing population in the same way it has up until now without causing additional ecological damage or further depleting natural resources?

One example of the increasingly far-reaching environmental consequences of modern life is that, over the past 70 years, the production of plastic increased from 1.5 million tons per year in 1950 to 350 million tons per year in 2020. This statistic might have been fine if people had known how to handle and treat plastic after use. Unfortunately, this has not proven to be the case as only 9% of plastic is recycled. In 2020 alone, more than 20 million tons of plastic ended up in the ocean, creating a floating mass that is twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. If humanity continues with its consumption patterns, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the water than fish. If that’s not enough, recent studies found microparticles of plastic in people’s blood and lungs. In order to ensure that future generations can continue to flourish on this planet, novel solutions are desperately required.

Drastic changes are needed

“We are in a situation where drastic changes are needed,” Distinguished Professor Ilan Marek of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry says. “To support the needs of the growing population, to maintain and improve the life expectancy and life quality we take for granted, we cannot just produce more. We need to produce better.” The answer to sustainable production, he believes, lies in catalysis.

A catalyst is any substance that triggers or speeds up a chemical reaction. Catalysts are crucial for sustaining life itself; they control our cells, are responsible for performing our digestive processes, and form a part of our immune systems. Catalysts also make modern life possible; they play key roles in food production, drug and materials manufacturing, energy production, and many other fields. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the world today or the concept of civilized society without catalysis and its notable impact on fundamental aspects of our lives.

Catalysis stands at the nexus of many disciplines, enabling discoveries that impact areas as diverse as health (e.g., medicine, imaging), food (agrichemicals), energy (efficiency, storage, sustainable manufacturing) and more, thereby assuming a critical role in the global economy. As a process, catalysis is generally associated with underpinning several trillions of dollars of the global GDP, and it is central to the production of 90% of all manufactured products.

We need new discoveries that would change the world. But without the environmental impact

In order to identify catalyst-based solutions to humanity’s sustainability challenges, the Technion is inaugurating its Center for Sustainable Processes and Catalysis. The Center will develop new catalysts to allow for more sustainable processes, and will ultimately aim to solve environment-related global problems.

The fruits of this endeavor are expected to strengthen the State of Israel, as well as further elevate the Technion’s reputation as a leading center of science and innovation. Israel as a nation, and particularly the Technion, should be very proud of the achievements of the last 70 years. The average life expectancy in Israel increased by 15 years since the state’s establishment, serving as a testimony to improved healthcare systems and healthier lifestyles, which have been amplified by access to advanced technological tools.

Towards a more sustainable future

There are many challenges to overcome on the journey to achieving the catalyst-based vision of a sustainable future. One challenge seems to be developing solutions that continue to advance our civilization while preserving the planet’s ecology and natural resources. The future of the planet depends on our ability to think outside the box and discover new ways to address global sustainability issues. The Center for Sustainable Processes and Catalysis will address and attempt to identify ways to reinvent global production processes so that they are more sustainable, cost-effective and efficient, in order to minimize continued harm to the environment.
The Center will have several goals. The first will be to acquire necessary, state-of-the-art equipment that will enable adequate and advanced investigation into catalytic processes, in real-time. To this end, the Center will consist of several core facilities: a reaction discovery and catalyst development facility, an advanced analytical and spectroscopy facility, a heterogeneous processes facility, and a computational chemistry and Big Data facility – serving the entirety of the Technion’s catalysis community.

The future of the planet depends on our ability to think outside the box and discover new ways to address global sustainability issues

The second aim is to create and promote multidisciplinary collaboration and partnerships among industry, startup companies, and government agencies. The Center will harness the Technion’s resources in chemistry, biotechnology, physics, biology, computer science, chemical engineering, materials engineering, food engineering, and civil engineering, among other fields, providing more than 100 professors with access to essential equipment, as well as a unified facility or platform through which to interact. One of the cornerstones of the Center will be the interdisciplinary nature of the collaboration between faculty members involved in studying various areas and applications of catalysis. A seed funding program, Innovative Research Ideas Startup (IRIS), will support innovative collaborative research ideas for a one-year period, providing initial funding to proposals that have the potential to be commercialized. In short, the Center will serve as an incubator for catalysis-based talent, ideas, and solutions.

The third aim of the center will be to assist Israeli industry sectors that rely on the Technion’s vast and diverse expertise in catalysis. Using the most sophisticated lab equipment, Technion experts in the field will be able to provide catalytic solutions for industry partners that will boost Israel’s industrial exports and will allow the Israeli economy to benefit from the development of more efficient and sustainable industrial processes and applications.

Nurturing young talent

One of the most important novelties of the Center will be the Incubator for Young Talents. In contrast to the traditional laboratory setup – in which researchers work in isolation from each other – this Center will feature an innovative open-space research laboratory model, providing lab space for eight new faculty members and their teams. This approach has several aims: to enhance multidisciplinary collaboration in a field that is rapidly evolving, to pool the use of advanced pieces of equipment among multiple researchers, and to encourage researchers of different academic disciplines to combine their expertise to solve major problems in the field. It is the Technion’s belief that the pace of innovation and discovery made possible by this open-space laboratory setup is likely to exceed that of a conventional lab arrangement.

This new faculty incubator will be established to nurture rising stars and ensure a steady flow of junior research faculty. A dedicated ad hoc committee, in close collaboration with all of the Technion’s faculties, will identify the ideal talents. After a rigorous selection process, researchers will be offered a tenure-track position. The incubator will serve as a home for junior faculty for up to six years, where they will be provided with research funding, equipment, the ability to recruit graduate students and technical staff, select a mentor of their choice, and receive administrative support. After this period, each researcher will integrate into a Technion faculty of their choice. This structure will enable a positive turnover in the incubator, where new and fresh ideas will be constantly investigated.

Ensuring continued prosperity

The Technion is uniquely positioned to realize this vision. For nearly a century, the Technion has spearheaded research programs in science and technology designed not only to expand the boundaries of knowledge, but also to ensure the continued prosperity of Israel, the Startup Nation, and its people. The Technion has a long history of pioneering new fields of research, which are subsequently developed through special programs and dedicated national projects. For example, the Technion’s international renown in the fields of civil engineering, aerospace engineering, computer science, and nanotechnology paved the way for the thriving corresponding industries that lead Israel’s economy. The university’s commitment to promoting sustainability is evident in the research being conducted in its Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program and the Grand Water Research Institute.

“New molecules and new processes can change the way we live, much like the Haber-Bosch process changed it in the past, supporting almost half of the world’s population through increased food production,” says Prof. Marek, referring to a process of fertilizer production. “It is perhaps one of the most significant inventions of the 20th century. But it is also a process that consumes a large amount of energy and is responsible for considerable CO2 emissions. Now we need new discoveries that would change the world just as much, but without the environmental impact.”
As we urgently need to give back to our planet what we took from it, to nurture and preserve it, we also need to correct our past mistakes by developing new and sustainable catalytic transformation. The Technion aims to become a leading global innovator in the catalysis field, guided by the fulfillment of this critical mandate.

This article was originally published in the June 2022 President’s Report. 

The conventional pedagogic approach is constantly being questioned. New technologies have generated many important benefits in the field of education and have designated the traditional paradigm as only one facet of a multi-dimensional spectrum. You might ask – if academic lectures are widely available on YouTube, why go to class? In fact, why get a university degree at all?

Realizing that the Technion must redefine its approach to remain relevant and a worldwide leader in science and technology, the university is devising a broad strategy to update the teaching and learning processes across all faculties. The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated this process, sparking a worldwide overnight switch to digital learning.

Prof. Oded Rabinovitch, Senior Executive Vice President of the Technion, explains that the university is indeed in the midst of a broad conceptual change: “We are shifting from a focus on teaching and learning to a wider mission that also includes educating. Education is much more than simply transmitting knowledge; it is also about social and environmental awareness, ethical values, understanding historical context and realizing the full potential of all faculty members. In fact, education is just as much about values as about skills. The broader look at university-level education and the availability of a variety of digital means point to the need to rethink and perhaps leverage the added value of our faculty and the meaning and value we contribute to the development of the next generation of scientific and engineering leadership.”

A window of opportunity

The Technion’s plan to support new modes of teaching and learning is being developed by the Steering Committee for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Undergraduate Studies, under the leadership of Prof. Hossam Haick, Dean of Undergraduate Studies. The committee recently submitted a report describing the need to upgrade the students’ educational experience both on and off-campus. According to the report, the pandemic has generated a window of opportunity, facilitating processes of deep change in academia and encouraging the implementation of new approaches.

One of the most fundamental changes recommended by the committee’s report is to teach Technion students 21st-century skills crucial for thriving in the contemporary workplace. Among them are leadership, complex problem solving, teamwork, entrepreneurial skills, and a heightened awareness of social and environmental issues. Tools that encourage the acquisition of these skills will be incorporated into courses throughout the Technion.

Education is much more than simply transmitting knowledge; it is also about social and environmental awareness, ethical values, understanding historical context and realizing the full potential of all faculty members

The Technion Center for Promotion of Learning and Teaching, which is spearheading implementation of the plan, has been significantly bolstered to meet the challenge. Headed by Dr. Olga Chuntonov, the Center has recently launched an innovative pilot program: assigning pedagogic change agents to specific faculties. These education specialists are tasked with upgrading and modernizing the learning experience in their faculty. They are highly qualified academic professionals with expertise in the discipline where they are embedded and well suited to work with the teaching staff to update the curricula and teaching models. Faculty members are urged to receive training in modern teaching technologies and up-to-date pedagogic approaches using the Center’s resources.

“Until now, faculty members interested in upgrading their teaching methods had to consult the Center voluntarily. Now we are investing in the Center’s professional team. The education specialists proactively act within the faculties and bring the needed resources and skills to train lecturers, develop new content and embed digital components in the curriculum. All the Deans are very enthusiastic,” notes Assoc. Prof. Ido Roll of the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology. This program will be evaluated at the end of the one-year pilot period and will hopefully be expanded to include more faculties.

Reaching a digital equilibrium

One of the university’s biggest challenges is finding equilibrium on the spectrum that spans from 100% traditional face-to-face to 100% digital learning. “Students may prefer Zoom, but face-to-face classes are critically important,” explains Prof. Haick. “Our vision is that large introductory courses will include significant online components, while more advanced courses will be ‘blended’ – meaning that they will be in person but will include digital technologies to enhance the inter-action between students and teachers.” These include tools such as online simulations, virtual labs, interactive assignments, etc. Introducing digital tasks throughout the semester will encourage students to learn continuously rather than “cram” before exams.

One of the models of blended learning that is gaining traction at the Technion is the “flipped class-room,” where students learn the course material at home through digital platforms and then meet in classroom settings to discuss the material under the teacher’s guidance. The Technion is also encouraging professors to develop MOOC courses, which are free online courses typically attended by tens of thousands of people worldwide. This is an excellent way to promote the Technion internationally and draw attention to the unique achievements and knowledge of its teaching faculty.

According to the Steering Committee for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the primary motivation for promoting digital learning in academic courses is the understanding that digital elements such as flipped classrooms can significantly improve the teaching quality and make classes more accessible to a larger audience. They enable greater collab-oration among students, including students from different faculties and universities. Furthermore, they create spaces for diverse and complementary knowledge that connect students and faculty members. These virtual platforms can also be used as spaces that encourage collaborations among undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students, enabling a vertical integration.

‘Blended’ learning includes digital technologies to enhance the interaction between students and teachers

Another key aspect of the current strategic change involves a new approach to teacher evaluations. Several pilot programs are testing various ways to obtain meaning-ful feedback from students. One example entails testing students six months after completing a course to see what they remember. Another innovative program uses a digital platform to ask students every half hour during a lecture whether they understand the material, with the professor receiving their feedback in real time. These are among the new tools that the Center for Promotion of Learning and Teaching is training lecturers to use and are part of the Technion’s new strategic approach to enhance its students’ overall education.

This article was originally published in the June 2022 President’s Report. 

In an age of self-driving cars, industrial robots, and intelligent systems that help humans in a variety of situations, time and computational resources are valuable assets. These systems are required to react quickly to circumstances in a changing environment, and under conditions in which information is lacking (i.e., conditions of uncertainty). Furthermore, economic constraints limit the complexity of elements such as hardware, and the systems must be cheap enough for potential consumers to be willing to pay for them.

Research conducted at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and published in the International Journal of Robotics Research presents a theoretical and computational breakthrough in this context: the simplification of planning problems and decision-making under uncertainty in a way that reduces the amount of data that the computer is required to analyze.

The study was headed by Professor Vadim Indelman, head of the Autonomous Navigation and Perception Lab (ANPL) in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, and Khen Elimelech, who recently completed his doctorate in the Technion Autonomous Systems Program (TASP).

“We demonstrate that we can significantly reduce computation time, without harming the successful execution of the task,” explained the researchers. “We also demonstrate that computation efforts can be reduced even further if we accept a certain loss in performance – loss that our approach can evaluate online. In an age of self-driving cars and other robots, this is an approach likely to enable autonomous online decision-making in challenging scenarios, reduce response times, and achieve considerable savings in the cost of hardware and other resources.”

Prof. Indelman’s research deals with autonomous decision making under uncertainty – a fundamental problem in AI and robotics. This capability is particularly essential for autonomous agents that are required to perform reliably over time, under conditions of uncertainty and in a changing environment. Furthermore, in many cases the agent does not have direct access to the problem’s state variables, and it functions based on a probability distribution or “belief”. This belief reflects the knowledge that the agent possesses about itself and its environment, based on probabilistic models, actions performed, and measurements obtained from its sensors.

One of the key directions explored by the research group is computationally efficient decision-making under these conditions, also known as “belief space planning” (BSP). Solving this problem (i.e., calculating the entire set of optimal actions or policies necessary to achieve the goal) requires that potential actions be evaluated under a reward or cost function, such as the distance to the goal or an “uncertainty” measure. According to the researchers, this challenge requires the prediction of how the “belief” will develop in the future for different possible actions, while predicting different future scenarios. As a result, decision-making under these conditions is computationally costly, which challenges the autonomous action of intelligent agents in real time. Additionally, in problems with numerous state variables (for example, when the environment changes or is not known in advance), the computational challenge is even greater. All the above are accompanied by economic considerations, time constraints, and computation time, which mandate a reduction in the necessary computational resources. Therefore, the simplification of decision-making under uncertainty problems is an important goal in these research directions.

Prof. Indelman’s research group refers to all these aspects in the development of simplification approaches, which enable these problems to be solved in a way that is more computationally efficient, for example, through the sparsification of matrices. Crucially, these approaches are accompanied with performance guarantees that quantify the worst-case degradation in performance as a result of the simplification process; such guarantees are of key importance in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving.

The researchers’ findings lay the foundations for solving decision-making problems through simplification and demonstrate that these approaches are able to lead to considerable savings in computation times, without significant loss in terms of outcomes.

Recently, it was announced that doctoral student Khen Elimelech, who led the study, will receive the Outstanding Ph.D. Research Award, The Israeli Smart Transportation Research Center (ISTRC).

The study was sponsored by the Israel Science Foundation.

For the full article in the International Journal of Robotics Research click here.

 

On June 30th, 2022, we held the graduation ceremony of the Technion’s 93rd cohort, awarding 1869 students with their university degrees; 40% of the graduates were women. Our guest of honor, Dr. Albert Bourla, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, gave the commencement speech. The graduation ceremony was preceded by the Honorary Doctorate Conferment Ceremony for Dr. Bourla.

Watch the full graduation and honorary doctorate ceremony:

Dr. Bourla’s commencement speech:

To watch the film on Dr. Bourla we aired at his Honorary Doctorate Conferment Ceremony on June 30, 2022, click here (a subtitled film is also available):

The festive ceremony – the first in almost 3 years because of the COVID-19 pandemic – took place during the annual Technion Board of Governors meeting, and three distinguished individuals received an Honorary Fellowship. The ceremony was held in the presence of Technion President Professor Uri Sivan, Chairman of the Board of Governors Mr. Scott Leemaster, members of the Technion management and Faculty deans.

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan expressed his joy at being able to finally hold the ceremony in-person again and talked about the transitions to digital teaching that were forced upon them during the pandemic and the new challenge of using digital mentoring technologies. Despite great leaps in this area, he went on to say that no matter how advanced we are in digital terms, students love to be on campus. “Person to person interactions are near and dear to our hearts, as they clearly are to our three awardees celebrating here with us tonight.”

Scott Leemaster, Chairman of the Board of Governors, also expressed his joy in being able to meet in person with like-minded Technion supporters from all over the world. And reminding everyone that we are approaching the 100^th anniversary of the Technion, he identified (with the help of former President Peretz Lavie) five remarkable individuals who had an extraordinary impact on the Technion. From Dr. Paul Nathan who established the Technion in its first building; to Eliezer Kaplansky, Technion’s general manager from 1931 to 1950; General Yaakov Dori, the first President of the Technion; Prof. Sydney Goldstein, the first Dean of Aeronautical Engineering and as Academic Vice President; and finally Major General Amos Horev, whose life is intertwined with the Technion’s to this day.

Mr. Leemaster also congratulated Prof. Adi Salzberg, on taking up her senior position as Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, a new post created by Prof. Uri Sivan to safeguard the fundamental principles of the Technion as being open to all, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or gender.

Finally, he reminded us that the Technion makes history every single day with its innovations and achievements. He spoke of the historic Abraham Accords which are already leading to new collaborations with our neighbors, and mentioned the next Space-IL’s mission to the moon, which will be a joint Israeli-Emirates project.

 

Robert (Rob) Polak

With gratitude for your enthusiastic support of Israel and the Technion; in honor of continuing your rich family legacy while creating your own niche; in appreciation of your vision to advance Technion’s most commercially promising research; in recognition for all you do for students and soldiers; and in thankfulness for the many contributions that have made you a Technion Guardian.

Ira Taub

In appreciation of your passionate concern for Israel and advancing Technion’s global impact; in honor of furthering your parents’ historic vision; in recognition of your active leadership in the American Technion Society and your community; and in gratitude for your pivotal role in directing philanthropic funds to priority areas across the Technion, especially computer science, and institutions throughout Israel and the United States.

Gal Haber

In recognition of your achievements as an entrepreneur, innovator, and industry leader; in gratitude for your contributions to the Technion and to Israeli society, in particular to the education and personal empowerment of youth; and in appreciation of your position as a role model who continues to inspire Technion students and graduates as they embark on their professional journeys.