Month: September 2023

Rinat Hadashi Gannon, a master’s student in the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning under the supervision of Faculty Dean Professor Guedi Capeluto, has developed an approach designed to improve health outcomes in inpatient rooms through the use of daylight.

Light significantly affects our physiological and psychological health, wellbeing, and performance and plays a substantial role in regulating the circadian rhythm, modulating the cycle of sleep and wakefulness, and neurological and hormonal processes that affect our health.

Life in modern Western society is marked by a lack of exposure to natural light. Around 90% of our time is spent indoors where we are exposed to artificial light, which disrupts our biological clock and is liable to take a toll on our health. Previous research has shown that the incorporation of daylight in inpatient wards contributes to lower consumption of medications, reduced length-of-stay, improved sleep quality, a reduction in depression and stress, and even a decrease in mortality.

The Technion researchers developed new tools and methods to evaluate daylight in inpatient rooms and to provide design guidelines for improved inpatient health. According to their findings, even architectural means that are relatively simple may improve daylight availability in inpatient wards, including full-opening windows, overhangs and adjustable blinds, and light shelves. The researchers emphasize that the evaluation of daylight availability in the hospitalization period must take into consideration seasonal changes in different orientations.

Hadashi Gannon and Prof. Capeluto believe that their model could contribute to the evaluation of daylighting performance in the built environment and can also be applied in other contexts such as work environments and educational institutions. They also think their model can guide and benefit design and positively impact the psychological and physical state of users, their alertness and concentration, and aspects such as performance, health, and wellbeing.

The location chosen for conducting the research is a side lit two-bed inpatient room that is common in Israeli hospitals. The semi-private patient room was chosen, since patients in the beds far from the window are exposed to insufficient daylight due to the distance from the window, the screens between the beds, and control of the curtains and blinds by the patient whose bed is near the window.

To ensure that the computer simulations reflected real-life conditions, seasonal measurements of daylight were made in inpatient rooms at Soroka Medical Center. These measurements were used to calibrate the computer model.

Technion Schulich Chemistry Faculty’s Researchers Now Holds 7 Prestigious ERC Grants

The European Research Council announced last week that researchers at the Technion – Israeli Institute of Technology have been awarded a noteworthy five ERC Starting Grants, which are awarded to talented early-career scientists who completed their doctoral degrees only two to seven years ago, and have already produced excellent work, showing great promise.

With two of the five Starting Grants awarded to researchers at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, the faculty now holds a remarkable total of 7 active ERC Grants, including three Advanced Grants and two Consolidator Grants.

The ERC Advanced Grant is given to the best proposals by researchers who have a track-record of significant research achievements in the last 10 years.

The ERC Consolidator grant aims to help excellent scientists, who have 7 to 12 years’ experience after completing their PhDs, strengthen their research teams and pursue their most promising ideas.

The latter two types of grants, part of the EU’s Horizon Europe Program, are awarded to exceptional Principal Investigators who are demonstrated leaders in terms of originality and significance of their research contributions.

The Schulich Faculty of Chemistry Researchers and Their Grant-Winning Projects are:

 

 

 

 

 

Distinguished Professor Ilan Marek currently holds his second consecutive active Advanced Grants. The first focused on selective carbon-carbon bond activation through remote functionalization, creating complex scaffolds in a convergent and unified strategy whereas the current Advanced Grant focuses on the selective functionalization of unsaturated hydrocarbons, seeking a practical strategy for the synthesis of complex target molecules to strongly impact the fields of fine chemical synthesis, materials science and pharmaceutical industry.

 

 

 

 

 

Professor Ashraf Brik likewise holds an active ERC Advanced Grant. His and his group’s research specializes in developing synthetic methods for chemical synthesis of proteins with post-translational modifications in quantities that allow for them to be studied thoroughly. The grant focuses on the delivery and on-demand activation of chemically synthesized and uniquely modified proteins in living cells. They are developing a general approach for enabling considerably more detailed in-cell study of uniquely modified proteins by preparing proteins having the following features: 1) traceless cell delivery unit(s), 2) an activation unit for on-demand activation of protein function in the cell, and 3) a fluorescence probe for monitoring the state and the fate of the protein.

 

 

 

 

Assistant Professor Graham de Ruiter, who holds an ERC Consolidator Grant, is at the forefront of developing new environmentally benign chemical methodologies for organic synthesis. His research focusses on using cheap, non-toxic, and readily available earth-abundant metals as catalyst in chemical transformations that have hitherto been unknown via a classical organometallic approach with these metals. Reactions such as cross-coupling, alkene cross-metathesis, and C-H bond functionalization are now within research with these earth-abundant metals and are set the revolutionize the way chemistry will be performed in the future. The overall impact of these discoveries will influence many existing processes in the agricultural, fine-chemical, and pharmaceutical industry, where the use of earth-abundant metals in catalysis carries enormous potential.

 

 

 

 

 

Associate Professor Nadav Amdursky, yet another ERC Consolidator Grant holder, studies biological electron and proton transfer. In his new study, he will develop tools to explore the transfer of protons within proteins. To date, there are no direct means to measure specific proton-transfer pathways within proteins, and most research is based on following the end-product of the reaction. Among other applications, these tools will enable the group to answer questions relating to cellular respiration – the process by which cells convert nutrients into energy.

 

 

 

 

 

Associate Professor Lilac Amirav, an ERC starting Grant recipient, studies plasmon-enhanced photocatalytic nano-lithography. Her and her group’s research is concerned with unique design of innovative nano scale particles, which harness nano phenomena for improved activity, and methodologies for the construction of sophisticated heterostructures tailored for photocatalysis and energy conversion. The laboratory’s cutting-edge synthetic effort is combined with fundamental research focused on the dynamic and mechanism of photo-induced charge transfer processes, across the different components of 1the photocatalyst system and further into the solution.

 

 

 

 

 

Assistant Professor Yuval Shagam, a 2023 ERC Starting Grant recipient, focuses on understanding molecular chirality: a molecule or ion that cannot be superposed on its mirror image. Such molecules are often distinguished as either “right-handed” or “left-handed.” Molecular chirality plays a central role in many fields, ranging from reaction dynamics to drug development. The Starting Grant will allow Prof. Shagam and his team to realize the first trapped chiral molecular ion experiment in order to measure parity violation and detect the structural differences between enantiomers. The outcome can lead to an improved understanding of molecular physics as well as important applications for quantum-controlled chemistry experiments and quantum information technology.

 

 

 

 

 

Assistant Professor Charlotte Vogt, likewise a 2023 ERC Starting Grant recipient, works to solve problems of climate change and pollution by improving or inventing more sustainable processes. Metal nanoparticle-based catalysts are essential to shifting societal reliance away from fossil-fuel resources. Nearly all of these catalysts are currently found by slow, trial-and-error-based processes. The Starting Grant will allow Prof. Vogt and her team to advance the field through the development of a methodology to generate fundamental understanding of supported metal nanoparticle catalyst dynamics at work under relevant high-pressure conditions.

Every 40 seconds, someone, somewhere in the world is taking their own life. In Israel alone, 500 people die by suicide every year. In 2003, the International Association for Suicide Prevention, in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO), chose September 10 to be World Suicide Prevention Day, aiming to focus attention on the issue, reduce stigma and raise awareness. What can be done that hasn’t been tried already, to find these people, and offer them help in time?

“We have the tools to try and help,” says Dr. Shiri Daniels, Professional Director at ERAN, Israel’s Emotional First Aid service. “But even professional psychologists struggle to recognise suicidal ideation ahead of time. In retrospect, those close to a suicide victim often say there were signs. But then and there, they couldn’t recognise those signs.”

Can AI tools help put together the signs that slip under the radar? “People put more of themselves on social media than they realise,” says Prof. Avigdor Gal from the Technion – Institute of Technology Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences. “In a three-day hackathon, students of the faculty tackled the challenge, looking for ways to recognize suicidal ideation and offer assistance. The hackathon is always dedicated to helping with a specific social issue. We cannot be blind to society around us, what is done with the tools we develop, how the data we collect is used. Our values must be part of the work we do.”

Hackathons are an opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience tackling the kind of challenges they would face in their future careers. In that vein, Bachelor’s students from all study tracks (Industrial Engineering and Management; Information System Engineering; Data Science and Engineering) at the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences take part in the department’s annual hackathon.

This year, 70 students, split into 16 teams, took part in the event, each comprising students from different years and tracks. Each team was given $50 to use on GPT API, offering students an opportunity to get familiar with the tool, as well as to learn budget management.

The data used in this hackathon is part of the research of Ph.D. student Shir Lisak and M.Sc. student Ilanit Sobol, who both work on recognising suicidal behaviors online under the supervision of Prof. Roi Reichart in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) lab at the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences.

First place went to Ziv Barzilay, Liad Domb, Omri Lazover, and Jonathan Wolloch, who proposed a system that would use information gathered from social media to target the inner circle of individuals displaying suicidal ideation with ads and banners related to the subject. The team’s hope is that those closest to the individuals at risk would be more aware of, and sensitive to, the signs which come before acts of self-harm, and would be best positioned to help.

 

Two teams tied for second place. Idan Horowitz, Lian Fichman, Shir Geisler, and Ariel Cohen used facial expression identification and NLP tools to analyse the video and transcription of posted videos, providing real-time insights to mental health professionals about the emotional well-being and suicide risk of their patients, aiding their diagnosis.

Ariel Novominsky, Alexander Freydin and Vladislav Comantany attempted to characterize the emotional process a person undergoes before deciding they want to commit suicide and proposed a quantitative measurement method for the abstract concept, an emotional process, in order to allows for mathematical analysis.

The Data for Good Israel, ERAN, Gila’s Way and Bishvil Hahayim (Path to Life) associations enthusiastically joined the event and gave the students the information and motivation to develop solutions that may save lives in the future. With the help of these organizations, the students were able to approach the difficult subject of suicide with maximum information.

No less importantly, they could begin to discuss this difficult and painful topic in an open and sensitive manner. Being alert to the signs of people suffering from suicidal ideation and signs of deterioration before taking action could, the organisations hope, be useful beyond the narrow scope of the Hackathon.

The event was funded with the help of the, the Israel Data Science Initiative (IDSI), Technion Social Hub and Tech-AI.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded five early-career Technion researchers with Starting Grants, recognizing the great promise in their research fields. These grants, part of the EU’s Horizon Europe Program, are awarded to talented early-career scientists who completed their doctoral degrees only two to seven years ago, and have already produced excellent work, showing great promise. The grants, totaling €628 million across Europe, aim to support groundbreaking research across various disciplines, fostering scientific excellence and innovation.

Technion Researchers and Their Projects are:

Assistant Professor Assaf Zinger from the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering is a member of the Global Young Academy. Drawing from the elegance of biological systems, Prof. Zinger and his team emulate the intricate designs perfected by evolution over eons, using nanoparticles. By harnessing the intricate blueprints nature has sculpted over millennia, the Zinger lab forges novel pathways toward targeted drug delivery and disease detection of multiple cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, and traumatic brain injuries. This ERC grant will allow Prof. Zinger and his team to engineer human breast milk biomimetic nanoparticles, dubbed “MILKOSOMES,” with the aim of shuttling oral medicines into the body that under other conditions could not be distributed properly.

Assistant Professor Yuval Shagam from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry is a member of the Helen Diller Quantum Center. He focuses on understanding molecular chirality: a molecule or ion that cannot be superposed on its mirror image. Such molecules are often distinguished as either “right-handed” or “left-handed.” Molecular chirality plays a central role in many fields, ranging from reaction dynamics to drug development. Molecules of opposite handedness, known as enantiomers, can have different smells and different medicinal properties among other things. For example, in thalidomide, while one enantiomer is used to sooth nausea, the other enantiomer was found to be toxic for a fetus. This makes development of sensitive tools for detection of chiral contaminants particularly important. The ERC grant will allow Prof. Shagam and his team to realize the first trapped chiral molecular ion experiment in order to measure parity violation and detect the structural differences between enantiomers. The outcome can lead to an improved understanding of molecular physics as well as important applications for quantum-controlled chemistry experiments and quantum information technology.

Assistant Professor Charlotte Vogt from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry established the Vogt Laboratory of Catalysis for Fuels of the Future. She is also a member of the new Resnick Sustainability Center for Catalysis. Prof. Vogt works to solve problems of climate change and pollution by improving or inventing more sustainable processes. Metal nanoparticle-based catalysts are essential to shifting societal reliance away from fossil-fuel resources. Most of these catalysts are currently found by slow, trial-and-error processes. This grant will allow Prof. Vogt and her team to advance the field through the development of a methodology to generate fundamental understanding of supported metal nanoparticle catalyst dynamics at work under relevant high-pressure conditions.

Assistant Professor Hila Peleg from The Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science focuses on interaction models for program synthesis. Program synthesis is the task of automatically finding a program that satisfies the user intent expressed in the form of some specification. The ERC grant will allow Prof. Peleg to create program synthesis for exploratory programming, and boost the productivity and correctness of programmers even when their initial specification of the task is lacking. The algorithms and interaction models developed will significantly improve programmers’ ability to write correct code quickly.

Assistant Professor Ben Engelhard from the Department of Neuroscience in The Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine focuses on the brain’s dopamine system, which has been shown to be involved in many cognitive and behavioral processes. The ERC grant will allow him and his team to investigate his theory that learning is implemented by multiple dopamine-based learning systems working in parallel circuit loops. Success of this project will enable a new understanding of how the brain learns complex tasks, as well as pave the way for the development of new brain-inspired deep reinforcement-learning algorithms.

Technion’s talented researchers will embark on these projects with significant grant support, forming their teams and catalyzing advancements in their respective fields. The ERC Starting Grants are expected to create over 2,600 jobs across Europe and represent an impressive overall success rate of 14.8%.

ERC President Professor Maria Leptin congratulated the recipients: “It is part of our mission to give early-career talent the independence to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven research that can shape our future.”

At the end of a full and uplifting month of summer science camp, it’s time to take stock.

SciTech 2023 just ended, a cohort of 48 students, brought together from all around the world for an unforgettable learning and bonding experience at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

From July 17th to August 8th, the students engaged in a hands-on learning experience at the Technion and Madatech, sprinkled with a lot of travel around Israel and Haifa – and, of course, lots of opportunities to taste Israeli cuisine.

This year’s SciTech made a comeback after 3 years offline, due to COVID.

Throughout the summer, students visited professors’ labs in numerous faculties, including Medicine, Biotechnology, Bioengineering, Chemistry, Aerospace, Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering.

They experienced entrepreneurship workshops at t:Hub, and went on tours of Haifa, Akko, Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot and day trips to Jerusalem and the Galilee.

The students visiting Jerusalem

And of course, the students had lots of time to wind down from the science with lots of social activities, swimming at Technion’s pool and Shabbat dinners.

The program staff and guides executed a detailed program that brought the campers close together, despite their differing backgrounds and worldviews.

For at least some of the campers, including Shayne Cytrynbaum of northern New Jersey, this was not their first visit to Israel, but rather the first one with a less curated, more complex and mature experience of the land, the people and the geopolitics.

While he already speaks Hebrew and came twice previously on trips, Shayne came a month before the program’s start to visit family and to travel.

“My favorite parts of the experience were faculty visits. The education was really great, deep and holistic,” he said in an interview.

A visit to the Electrical Engineering faculty

For others, it was their first time. Lana Correa, a student from Brazil who came to Israel for the program after a month in Nuremberg, Germany, of all places, admitted she arrived with lots of stereotypes in mind.

Most surprising for her, these stereotypes were quickly dispelled. Visiting a synagogue for the first time, then touching the Western Wall, she found the experience to be truly eye-opening and inspiring.

“Israelis are super nice. I made lots and lots of friends. We had amazing food. I learned about many different perspectives people have of their own countries,” she said in an interview at the graduation ceremony.

Both Shayne and Lana spoke at length about the thrill of learning directly from the foremost experts in their disciplines in technology and science. They likewise both sang praises of the friends they made from all over the world, as well as the amazing guides and staff that ran the program.

And while Technion is always at the cutting edge of many subjects, it’s the people behind the science and tech that make the place so special.

The students and staff won’t soon forget the special experience that was SciTech 2023.

Professor Yosi Shamay and his group at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering have made major headway in a remarkable new approach to cancer treatment. Based on a new concept called “meta-synergy,” the group developed a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tool that makes it possible to find drug combinations that are significantly more powerful than each drug individually.

Cancer treatments often employ combination therapy, where different drugs work together in synergy to combat a tumor more effectively than they would do individually. This approach may also prevent the tumor from developing resistance to treatment.

Prof. Shamay’s group has taken this idea to the next level by identifying pairs of drugs that do more than work together biologically to attack the tumor. They also chemically assemble into combined nanoparticles. The researchers describe this synergy of synergies as “meta-synergy,” a cooperative interaction that produces a greater combined effect beyond standard synergy. The resulting nanomedicines are particularly effective at targeting cancer cells and highly successful in fighting tumors, while being less toxic to the patient and causing fewer side effects.

The AI system developed by the team uses text mining to gather information about biological synergy from published articles, compiling the pairs it finds into a comprehensive database. It then predicts which drug duos can chemically self-assemble or join together to form nanoparticles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like a talented matchmaker, this AI model pairs drugs based on their biological compatibility and their potential to create nanoparticles together, leading to effective “meta-synergistic” drug pairs. It also feeds an online tool that identifies the most promising drug pairs for different types of cancer. It has proposed 1,985 drug combinations for synergistic nanomedicines for 70 types of cancer.

One example of the model’s abilities is a highly effective drug pair for treating head and neck cancer that it discovered. The two drugs, Bortezomib and Cabozantinib, are already approved for cancer treatment – the first for blood cancers, and the second for liver, kidney, and thyroid cancers. The combination of the two was proven effective and produced fewer side effects than using either of the drugs individually.

“The development of meta-synergy on the nanometric level is a very complex challenge,” Prof. Shamay explained. “It necessitates the introduction of (at least) two drugs simultaneously into the same delivery system that would lead them to the desired destination in the body. Our research has shown, both in a computational demonstration (cheminformatics and artificial intelligence) and in live experiments, that the combination we proposed indeed leads the drugs to the tumor and releases them there — and that this therapy is very effective in treating the disease. Beyond the specific combination we demonstrated in our paper, we believe that the concept of meta-synergy will lead to additional breakthroughs in the fight against cancer.”

The study was conducted at the Shamay Lab for Cancer Nanomedicine and Nanoinformatics. It was led by Ph.D. student Dana Meron Azagury, whose focus was on the biology and chemistry side of the research, and M.Sc. student Ben Friedmann, whose developed the AI model. Combining the two disciplines in perfect synergy could enable the lab to break new ground and benefit cancer patients.

The study was published in the Journal of Controlled Release.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (ISF).

For the article in the Journal of Controlled Release, click here.