Author: shlomi ben-oz

Technion-developed technology will protect the respiratory tract of premature infants who need assisted ventilation

Researchers from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering are the first to point to the damage of the jet of air exiting from the endotracheal ventilation tube

A new artificial model of premature infants will facilitate experiments that could reduce injury to infants on respirators. The study, published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface was conducted by doctoral student Eliram Nof and Professor Josué Sznitman of the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Dan Waisman, director of the Newborn Unit at the Carmel Medical Center.

More than 10 percent of babies worldwide are born prematurely. Infants in general, and premature babies in particular, are limited in their function in various aspects since their organs have not been able to develop properly. One of these is the respiratory system, which reaches full function only late during fetal development. This is the reason why premature birth is often characterized by respiratory distress, in part due to the lack of a unique soapy substance (surfactant), that prevents the collapse of the lungs and facilitates breathing.

Fortunately, modern medicine is able to cope with this problem and save premature infants, mainly by providing an exterior surfactant that is delivered in conjunction with a ventilation machine – a breathing apparatus that pumps air into the baby’s respiratory tract through an orally inserted tube.

However, in its current form, the use of a respirator is not without problems. One of the possible side effects in premature infants using a ventilation machine is damage to the lung tissue. There is no standardization for choosing ventilator operating parameters like the percentage of oxygen in the infused air, the volume of air, the pressure, the rate, and more. Doctors do their best to make adjustments based on each infant’s condition and to minimize injury. Yet, many infants are injured during this process that is nevertheless vital to saving their lives.

This is where the unique model developed by Technion researchers comes into the picture. After prolonged research activity at the levels of mathematical modeling of respiratory airflows, Mr. Nof and Prof. Sznitman developed a physical silicone model that simulates – in 3D and in real size – the upper respiratory tract of a premature baby.

The researchers were surprised to discover a phenomenon not mentioned at all in the medical literature: an air jet at the exit of the tube inserted into the mouth of the baby.

“Until now, it was known that the tube could cause abrasive injury to the delicate tissue but the effects of the airflow were overlooked,” said Nof. “In the present study, we discovered for the first time, that due to its location inside the baby’s trachea, this jet exerts strong shear forces on the epithelial tissue – the layer of cells that covers the upper airways. These forces can cause damage, including inflammation, which poses a real risk to the premature infant.”

The researchers examined these findings in a silicon model and found that indeed, the jet exerts friction on the lung tissue that can cause significant damage. With further study, they intend to grow live biological cells onto the model and examine the effect of the jet on them.

The good news, however, is that from the findings, the researchers have made recommendations as to the desired respiratory protocols. In their estimation, adjusting respiratory protocols to the flow configuration in the baby’s respiratory system may reduce the damage described here and improve the chances of these infants to develop a proper respiratory system.

These conclusions are in line with the overall trend in the premature department of the Rambam Health Care Campus – a trend to reduce invasiveness in treatment and to reduce the use of invasive respiration as much as possible.

According to Dr. Liron Borenstein, senior physician in the Department of Neonatology and Neonatal Intensive Care at the Rambam: “With advances in medicine, we are today able to treat younger premature infants and more complex illnesses. However, respiratory morbidity is still a significant factor in premature infant mortality and morbidity. The technology presented in this article – creating a model of a healthy, specific area and exploring the forces exerted on the tissue by an air jet created under invasive respiration – can advance us in understanding the mechanisms leading to the damages of ventilation that we want to prevent and in developing gentler breathing techniques that are appropriate for the premature infant population.”

Professor Josué Sznitman was born in France and raised in the United States and Switzerland. In the Summer of 2010, with a doctorate from ETH Zurich, he made aliyah to Israel and joined the faculty of the Technion. He has won numerous awards including the Young Researcher Award from the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine (ISAM) for a researcher under the age of 40. He currently heads the Biofluids Lab at the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. Prof. Sznitman developed the first diagnostic tool that allows quantitative monitoring of the dynamics of inhaled particles in the respiratory system. This “acinus-on-chip” is relevant for both health risk assessment (infections, etc.) and for evaluation and planning of medication for the respiratory system.

Eliram Nof made aliyah from the United States at the age of 18 to enlist in the IDF. After completing his military service, he pursued bachelor’s and master’s degrees through a fast track at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Ben Gurion University. His master’s work, under the guidance of Prof. Oren Sadot and Prof. Gabi Ben-Dor at the Shock Wave Research Laboratory, investigated the effects of supersonic flow in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense. In preparation for his Ph.D., Eliram decided to apply his background in fluid dynamics to problems in the medical world, thus the collaboration with Prof. Sznitman, who advises him on his doctoral degree.

For the full article in Interface Journal of The Royal Society click here

Threading ultralong DNA through a nanopore

Researchers at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology disentangled and threaded a DNA molecule that is hundreds of thousands of nucleobase base pairs long through a nanopore. This breakthrough is expected to facilitate the study of genomic DNA.

The nanopore device was developed by Professor Amit Meller, Dr. Diana Huttner, and PhD student Adam Zrehen of the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. Their pioneering research was described in a paper published in the November 2019 issue of ACS Nano.

Nanopore sensors are used to read the genetic code in DNA, which is composed of bases or “letters.” The sensor consists of a nanoscale pore about 1/10,000 the diameter of human hair, through which a single DNA is threaded and read. While reading short DNA strands such as that of viruses is routine, it is especially difficult to thread intact ultralong human DNA through such a tiny aperture because DNA forms a random coil in solution. The process can be likened to threading tangled yarn through a needle. 

Prof. Meller and his team successfully disentangled and threaded a DNA molecule that is hundreds of thousands of base pairs long through a nanopore. The DNA was labelled by using light-emitting dyes so that it can be tracked and manipulated in real-time by pressure and electric fields in a glass-sealed silicon chip about the size of a coin. 

The device developed by the researchers is designed for simultaneous electrical and optical detection and sorting of ultralong (~500 kilobase pair) genomic DNA. Fabricated in silicon, it features a central pillar array for stretching the ultralong DNA and a narrow channel for funneling the linearized molecule to the nanopore. The nanopore is “drilled” directly in the channel by using a focused laser that controllably etches minute amounts of material. The low height profile of the device permits high numerical aperture and high magnification imaging of individual DNA molecules. 

As the first direct visualization of DNA threading through a nanopore while recording its electrical signal, the study furthers the understanding of the DNA capture and threading process,. It also promotes the development of all-in-one micro/nanofluidic platforms for nanopore sensing of biomolecules. Extremely low concentrations (50 fM) and sample volumes (∼1 μL) of DNA can be processed, making the device highly compatible with clinical samples. 

Since reading long, intact DNA is less prone to error compared with assembling many small DNA fragments, the researchers anticipate their design will play an important role in studying genomic DNA.

The project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and was also supported by the i-Core program of the Israel Science Foundation.

Click here for the paper in ACS Nano.

Bauhaus on the Carmel: Modern Architectures and the Challenge of Co-Existence in Haifa

The Avie and Sarah Arenson Built Heritage Research Center’s annual symposium, co-sponsored by Technion and the City of Haifa, took place in Haifa’s City Hall on November 28th. The Center is a research hub located in Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, and it is dedicated to studying the design traditions of Israel’s built environment. The full-day event paid homage to the 1993 book “Bauhaus on the Carmel and the Crossroads of Empire” by Gilbert Herbert and Silvina Sosnovsky, and was moderated by Prof. Alona Nitzan-Shiftan of Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, who heads the Avie and Sarah Arenson Built Heritage Research Center. The symposium was part of a series of events marking 100 years of Bauhaus in Haifa. 

 

During the 1920s and 1930s, approximately 100 European architects made Aliyah and many proceeded to design buildings in pre-State Palestine in what has been labeled the International Style, inspired by German and Austrian schools, including Bauhaus. Although Tel Aviv is better known for its Bauhaus architecture, Haifa is actually home to a larger number of buildings built in this style, including the neighborhood of Hadar HaCarmel, which was designed by German-immigrant architect Richard Kauffmann. Unfortunately, most of these buildings have not been preserved and Haifa’s role as a center of Bauhaus architecture has largely been ignored. 

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Prof. Jacob Grobman, Dean of Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, announced at the symposium that this year would be the “Year of Haifa” at the Faculty. “We are sitting on a jewel. We want to help the city uncover the treasure and make Haifa shine again,” he said. 

In her opening remarks, Haifa mayor Einat Kalisch-Rotem noted that one of her first steps upon taking office a year ago was to plan the Bauhaus centennial celebrations in Haifa. The subject is close to her heart, as she herself is a Technion-trained architect and urban planner who served as the chair of the Haifa Architects Association. “Haifa needs to rethink its economic development. One of its biggest assets is its architectural heritage, and we must convince residents and developers to preserve this gem,” she said. The mayor revealed that her dream is for Haifa to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, just like Tel Aviv.

Sarah Arenson, who is a Technion Honorary Fellow, spoke about how architecture is a major tool in shaping public space. “It is important to preserve the past while building the future, and this is where academic research meets public interest,” she said. Arensen is grateful to Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, which “understands that our future must grow from our diverse past heritage.” She believes deeply in the importance of strong town-gown relations between Technion and the city of Haifa.

Although the Bauhaus School was located in Germany, its impact was strongly felt in Austria as well. For this reason, the symposium included lectures by Bauhaus experts and architects from both Germany and Austria. Arno Mitterdorfer, the Cultural Attaché at the Austrian Embassy in Israel, spoke eloquently about the connection between Austria and Haifa. In the 1902 book Altneuland, Theodor Herzl, who was of course Austrian, wrote about Haifa as a futuristic utopian city. Later, in the 1930s, numerous Jewish architects who were trained in Vienna found safe haven in Haifa and were influential in building the city.

Prof. Werner Möller of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, described how the Bauhaus School wanted to change society by encouraging communal living, and drew a parallel between the Bauhaus ideology and that of the early pioneers in pre-State Palestine, especially the kibbutzim. Prof. Rudolf Lückmann of Anhalt University of Applied Science in Germany spoke about Bauhaus’ extensive Jewish connection. Numerous Jews were trained at the school and a large share of the architects’ clients was Jewish. His lecture focused on Leopold Fischer, a Jewish Bauhaus-trained architect. Prof. Alfred Jacoby, also from Anhalt University, spent a year at Technion 25 years ago and has a deep relationship with Haifa and Technion. He also spoke about the Jewish roots of Bauhaus. 

Matthias Dorfstetter from the Vienna University of Technology, discussed the work of Vienna-trained architects in Haifa in the 1930s. “Around 100 architects came from Europe, many of them from Austria. Six were Bauhaus students,” he noted. Vienna-trained architects who designed buildings in Haifa in the International (Bauhaus) style during the 1930s included Paul Engelmann, Leopold Krakauer, Alfred Goldberger and Gideon Kaminka. 

The filmmaker Amos Gitai gave a fascinating talk about his father, Munio Weinraub Gitai, who studied at the Bauhaus School and immigrated to Haifa, eventually designing over 8,000 buildings around the country, including the central synagogue in Haifa. 

Prof. Or Aleksandrowicz, an expert on building climatology from Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, described how, in early 20th-century Palestine, a scientifically rigorous attempt was made for the first time to include climate in building design. In 1909, architect Alexander Baerwald, who immigrated to Haifa from Germany, took into account the importance of sun and wind when designing the first Technion building. The well-known architect Arieh Sharon, who studied at the Bauhaus School under Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer, also saw climate as a crucial component of healthy design, although several of his premises proved to be erroneous.  

Waleed Karkabi, head of Haifa’s Building Conservation Team, provided an interesting overview of Arab-Jewish architectural cooperation during the British Mandate. He explained that the British designated Haifa to be their main administrative center in the Middle East and that the city’s population grew exponentially during the 1930s and 1940s. One of the main projects in those years was the construction of Haifa’s new port, which was built in the International Style. Many of the architects who escaped from the Nazis and moved to Haifa designed homes for Haifa’s Arab elite. One of the most prolific was Moshe Gerstel, who also designed the iconic Talpiot Market on Sirkin Street.  

The Haifa-based architect Adeeb Daoud Naccache, an expert on restoration and preservation in Israel’s Arab sector, spoke about an architectural style developed in the late 1930s and known as Levantine Modernism. The style was exemplified by Haifa’s Garden Mansions project, which was designed by the Lebanese architect Antoine Tabet. 

Technion researchers have developed the world’s first system using solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen at two separate sites

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed a prototype system for the efficient and safe production of hydrogen using only solar energy. Published in the journal Joule by the Cell group, the study was led by doctoral student Avigail Landman of the Grand Technion Energy Program, together with master’s student Rawan Halabi from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering. The study was conducted under the joint guidance of Professor Gideon Grader of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Professor Avner Rothschild of the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Adélio Mendes and Dr. Paula Dias of the University of Porto in Portugal.

The innovative system contains a tandem cell solar device, which enables more efficient utilization of the light spectrum. Some of the sun’s radiation is absorbed in the upper layer, which is made of semi-transparent iron oxide. The radiation that is not absorbed in this layer passes through it and is subsequently absorbed by a photovoltaic cell. Together, the two layers of the system provide the energy needed to decompose the water.

From Theory to Application

The innovative system is a continuation of the theoretical breakthrough by the Technion research team, presented in a March 2017 article in Nature Materials. In that article, the researchers introduced a paradigmatic shift in hydrogen production: Instead of one production cell where the water is broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, the researchers developed a system where hydrogen and oxygen are formed in two completely different cells. This development is important in part because mixing oxygen and hydrogen creates an explosive and dangerous interaction. The researchers presented the proof of feasibility in a laboratory system operated with a conventional power source. 

Now, in the current study in Joule, the researchers present the realization of the theory in applied development – a photoelectrochemical prototype system that produces hydrogen and oxygen in two separate cells using only sunlight. As part of the experiment, approximately 80 working hours (10 days of about 8 hours) were conducted, demonstrating the efficiency of the system in natural sunlight. The experiment was conducted in the Faculty of Chemical Engineering at the Technion.

Background

Hydrogen is a highly sought-after material in many areas of our lives. Most of the hydrogen generated today is used to make ammonia for the production of fertilizers that are essential for modern agriculture. Additionally, hydrogen is one of the leading alternative fuel sources, especially in the context of automotive propulsion. In the context of transportation, hydrogen has several advantages over mineral-based fuels:

• it can be generated from water using green energy such as solar energy, reducing dependence on mineral fuels and dependence on countries rich in oil reserves;
• hydrogen production from water allows the storage of renewable energy such as solar and wind, which are not available all hours of the day;
• unlike diesel and gasoline engines that emit large amounts of air pollution, the only byproduct of hydrogen engines is water.

Today, most of the world’s hydrogen is produced from natural gas. But with this process comes the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), whose environmental damage is well known. An alternative production method is electrolysis – decomposition of water (H2O) for hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2). Although the electrolysis process was discovered more than two hundred years ago, not many electrolysis technologies have been developed. In recent years, with the vital transition to alternative energies, it has become clear that the electrolysis process needs to be refined to fit these energy sources.

Against this backdrop, the photoelectrochemical process developed, which breaks down the water directly using the Sunlight radiation. Although here too, there are various technological challenges. For example, the production of hydrogen using the conventional method of electrolysis – the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen in the same production cell – involves risk because the encounter between hydrogen and oxygen leads to an explosion. Moreover, in large-scale solar fields, it is very difficult to produce hydrogen in this configuration. Hence the importance of the current breakthrough presented in Joule.

The researchers hope that academics and industry will continue and advance the system into a commercial product.

The research was supported by the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP), funding from U.S. donor Ed Satell, the Adelis Foundation, Ministry of Energy and the European Commission (two ERC grants), and the National Science Foundation PAT Excellence Center.

For the full article in Joule click here

Breakthrough in Understanding Brain Function

Pioneering research conducted at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology proves the importance of individualized models for understanding brain function

New research conducted by Prof. Christophe Bernard and Prof. Viktor Jirsa of Aix Marseille Univ, Inserm, Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes, Marseille, France and Prof. Itamar Kahn of Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine demonstrates the importance of personalized brain models. The research team’s findings show that individual variations in the brain’s structural connectome (map of neural connections) define a specific structural fingerprint with a direct impact on the functional organization of individual brains.

By using a connectome-based model approach, Prof. Kahn and his partners aimed to understand the functional organization of the brain by modeling the brain as a dynamic system,

then studying how the functional architecture rises from the underlying structural skeleton. Taking advantage of mice studies, they systematically investigated the informative content of different structural features in explaining the emergence of the functional ones.

Whole brain dynamics intuitively depend upon the internal wiring of the brain; but to which extent the individual structural connectome constrains the corresponding functional connectome is unknown, even though its importance is uncontested. After acquiring structural MRI data from individual mice, the researchers virtualized their brain networks and simulated in silico functional MRI data. Theoretical results were validated against empirical awake functional MRI data obtained from the same mice. As a result, the researchers were able to demonstrate that individual structural connectomes predict the functional organization of individual brains. 

While structural MRI is a common non-invasive method that can estimate structural connectivity in individual humans and rodents, it is not as precise as the gold standard connectivity mapping possible in the mouse. Utilizing precise mapping available in mice, the authors identified which missing connections (not measurable with structural MRI) are important for whole brain dynamics in the mouse. The researchers identified that individual variations thus define a specific structural fingerprint with a direct impact upon the functional organization of individual brains, a key feature for personalized medicine.

For the full article in PNAS click here

 

Green energy, sustainability, meat without animals, honey without bees and cannabis for healing.
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Automated System Supplies Continuous Information About Patient’s Health

Researchers from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and China present a hybrid sensing system for the continuous monitoring of health data, integrating artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and China’s Xidian University have presented a comprehensive review of smart systems to provide continuous information on a subject’s health. These systems are based on advanced hybrid sensing, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. The research has been published in the prestigious journal Chemical Reviews

Much of the review is based on the authors’ research, which is led by Professor Hossam Haick and Dr. Yoav Broza of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering at Technion and Professor Weiwei Wu of Xidian University in China.

“Wearable monitoring” is an inclusive term for innovative technologies that provide information on a person’s health, based on continuous monitoring of a series of biomarkers. The speedy development of this field is very important news, especially at a time of aging of the population, and the fact that people 60 years of age or older comprise about 13% of all humanity.

However, for various reasons, diagnostic technologies are evolving in different ways, with no deliberate direction and no integration of the various data obtained from them. Such integration is a prerequisite for optimizing diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up. In the absence of such integration, and despite developments in medical diagnosis, in many cases, the diagnosis is made very late. This reduces the ability of the medical system to address the problem successfully. Additionally, preventive medicine – one of the most important approaches in the world of medicine – is not advancing fast enough.

Extending life, which is welcome in and of itself, shifts the center of gravity from serious, short-term illnesses caused by external factors such as infections and injuries that can be healed to long-term, chronic, and incurable illnesses that impair the quality of life over time. Today, nearly 45% of Americans suffer from chronic illnesses, and the need for continuous and integrative monitoring is especially important in this regard.

This is the backdrop to the tireless efforts invested in recent years by Prof. Hossam Haik’s research group. In the current report, the team’s researchers – in collaboration with Prof. Weiwei Wu, who did his postdoctoral fellowship under the guidance of Prof. Haick – present an in-depth and extensive review of innovative sensors that provide quick and cheap diagnostics with minimal invasiveness.

In this review, researchers present a complex system that analyzes, using technological means that include cellular and cloud and Big Data analytics, a series of biomarkers derived from body fluids – blood, tears, breath, saliva, urine, brain and spinal fluid, and more. The overall goal of this research activity is to develop hybrid sensing systems that integrate different sensing technologies. For this, a combination of different fields of knowledge is required, including chemistry, electronics, and physics – a combination that takes place in Prof. Haick’s research group.

“Until now, the most reliable diagnostic tools have been radiological diagnostics (such as X-rays, MRIs and CTs), laboratory tests (of urine, blood, etc.), and various microbiological tests, said Prof. Haick.

The problem is that these are expensive methods that require experts to decipher the findings. Technological advances make it possible for us to introduce inexpensive, fast and exact automated methods that collect and analyze a wide range of data. By integrating various technological capabilities, we present a cheap, easy-to-use and effective follow-up tool that will provide practitioners with comprehensive and continuous feedback on the patient’s health.

One of the vital conditions for achieving this goal is the development of highly sensitive and accurate sensors. These, according to Prof. Haick, are inspired by nature.

“Over billions of years, evolution developed excellent and efficient sensors, based, for example, on the interaction among enzymes, receptors, and suction systems like the tongue of the hummingbird,” said Prof. Haick. “Not only have we been inspired by these mechanisms, but we have created even better systems by using engineering, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing. The bottom line is a complex system that will supply the relevant medical professional with a continuous, comprehensive, and accurate diagnosis in real-time, and recommendations for early and effective treatment.”

Prof. Hossam Haick is the head of the Laboratory for Nanomaterial-Based Devices in the Technion’s Wolfson Department of Chemical Engineering, and a member of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnlogy Institute (RBNI). The present study was carried out with support from the Horizon 2002 of the EU Framework for the VOGAS and A-Patch Consortiums. 

For the full article in the journal Chemical Reviews click here

 

When the ‘winners’ become the ‘losers’: local widespread common birds are declining rapidly while non-native, invasive species are thriving.

Technion-based conservation scientists Dr. Agathe Colléony and Assistant Professor Assaf Shwartz are investigating trends in common bird populations across Israel over the last 15 years. They have shown how invasive alien bird species are thriving and native ones are largely declining. “It’s important to set appropriate management strategies to halt or mitigate the spread of non-native birds, particularly the common myna,” says Dr. Agathe Colléony, who is a post-doctoral student at the Technion Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning.

The study found that 75 percent of the most common bird species in Israel have been in decline for the past 15 years, while populations of three non-native invasive alien bird species have been exploding at rates between 250 percent to 843 percent.

Among the bird species rapidly declining are the house sparrow (Passer domesticus), which has declined by 28 percent and the white-spectacled bulbul (Pycnonotus xanthopygos), which has declined by 45 percent).

“It’s worrying that the species we grew up with, are now declining,” says Prof. Schwartz, of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. “I’m afraid that soon my children won’t be able to see and hear and interact with the sparrow, the bulbul, and the Palestine sunbird, which used to be very widespread across Israel.”

“Almost two decades ago, we started studying the effect of invasive alien birds on local ones. We found that the common mynas outcompete some local cavity nester species such as the house sparrow and also that they demonstrate aggressive behaviors towards other native bird species,” says Prof. Shwartz. This study, published today in Biological Conservation, demonstrates that three invasive bird species are spreading across the country: the common myna (Acridotheres tristis); and two species of parakeets (Psittacula krameria et Myiopsitta monachus).

“Unfortunately, this study shows that our predictions are now becoming the reality in Israel,” says Prof. Shwartz. 

Land-use changes such as urbanization push away many species while favoring few others that thrive in the new environmental conditions. The native common species that were considered “winners” in this process are now “losers”. The ultimate “winners” have been non-native species. Although negative trends appear to be so far limited to human-dominated landscapes (mostly residential areas), there are signs that these effects may soon reach more natural landscapes.  

The study flags the importance of setting appropriate management strategies to halt or mitigate the spread of non-native birds. Otherwise, the researchers predict that the bird communities will become increasingly homogenized and dominated by non-native species.

The paper can be accessed here.

Global Ranking of AI Research: Technion, the only Israeli representative on the list, is ranked in 25th place

According to AI Research Rankings, published at the beginning of December, Technion is ranked in 25th place on the list of the world’s academic institutions leading the field of artificial intelligence research.

Technion was ranked #29 on a more comprehensive list that included large corporations in addition to universities. On that list, which includes Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and IBM, Technion is ranked before Amazon, University of Pennsylvania, University of Seoul and Johns Hopkins University. Furthermore, Technion is the only Israeli institution (including both academic and non-academic institutions) ranked in the top 40 leading institutions in AI research worldwide. 

Israel also earned a place of honor in the new rankings: it is ranked in 2nd place in the per capita publication index, with the U.S. being the only country surpassing Israel in the number of AI research publications per capita.

In recent years, Technion has increased its investment in the field of artificial intelligence – in terms of both funding and human capital. In October 2018, an AI Center was established on campus in partnership with Intel, headed by Prof. Shie Mannor of the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. 

The AI Research Rankings are based on 2,200 publications at the two most prestigious AI research conferences held in 2019: Neural Information Processing Systems and International Conference on Machine Learning.

EMET Prize awarded to Dist. Prof. Moti Segev from the Technion

The 2019 EMET Prize was awarded this week at the Jerusalem Theater by Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel to 11 researchers, among them Distinguished Professor Moti Segev of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, winner of the EMET Prize in Physics and Space.

The EMET Prize is awarded by the A.M.N. Foundation with the sponsorship of the Prime Minister for academic or professional excellence and achievements with far-reaching impact and for a special contribution to society. Its aim is “to acknowledge those who view excellence as a way of life and the fulfillment of human potential as essential to creating a better world for future generations.”

Dist. Prof. Segev, 60, is the Robert Shillman Chair of the Faculty of Physics, and one of the founders of the Helen Diller Center for Quantum Science, Matter and Engineering. After a B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering he went onto a post-doctorate at Caltech, followed by an appointment as a professor at Princeton University. In 1998 he returned to Israel and to the Technion as a faculty member of the physics department. In 2008, he became a distinguished professor, awarded for outstanding research excellence and reserved for a select few researchers at the Technion.

Dist. Prof. Segev is a groundbreaking physicist in the field of optics and lasers and his scientific work is cited in tens of thousands of scientific articles. Among his awards are the prestigious Quantum Electronics Prize (the most important European award in the field of optics and lasers), which he won in 2007, the Max Born Award from the American Optical Society (2009) and the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science in 2014. He is a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the United States of America, a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a recipient of the Israel Prize in Physics in 2014.

Dist. Prof. Segev spoke at the ceremony on behalf of the EMET laureates and said that: “The small number of faculty members in Israeli academia means that on every faculty member there are about 25 students (undergrads and graduate students).  This is the worst numerical ratio in Western society. By comparison, at MIT, Stanford, and Princeton the ratio is 1:12. Therefore, it is important that we increase the faculty members by at least 30%, perhaps by 50%. The question asked is therefore whether we have the human brain pool to select excellent faculty members. The answer is positive: today there are some 1,500 Israelis in academia in the United States. Most of them stayed there after their post-doctorates because they did not have the opportunity to return to Israel. Therefore, we must add positions to allow more researchers to find work at universities in Israel after the postdoctoral studies abroad, and give a chance to more young people, at least 30% more than what we are doing today.”

The research group, headed by Dist. Prof. Segev focuses on experimental and theoretical projects in many fields including photonics, lasers, and quantum electronics. The group is engaged in research of basic scientific aspects that influence other areas of science (beyond photonics) and in the development of applications affecting the world of technology.

This past year (March 2018-Feb 2019), Dist. Prof. Segev reported on seven different works, each of which is groundbreaking, published in two of the world’s leading scientific journals, Nature and Science.

Beyond his personal achievements, Segev is most proud of the success of his doctoral and postdoctoral students, 21 of whom are university professors in Israel and abroad, and many others who hold senior R&D positions in industry. His candidacy for this year’s EMET Prize was submitted by his former students, who are now university professors in Israel.

To young researchers, Dist. Prof. Segev said at the ceremony: “Think beyond the horizon about things that weren’t thought about before you. Have a mind to distinguish between the principal and the subordinate. Have the courage to fight for yours.”

Inspired by the Brain: Researchers at the Technion and TowerJazz have developed technology for adapting commercial transistors to the artificial intelligence era

Researchers at the Technion and TowerJazz have developed a revolutionary technology that can turn TowerJazz’s commercial flash memory components into memristors—devices that contain both memory and computing power. The technology, which was inspired by the operation of the human brain, significantly accelerates the operation of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. 

Published in the Nature Electronics journal, the research was led by doctoral student Loai Danial and Professor Shahar Kvatinsky of the Andrew & Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion, in collaboration with Prof. Yakov Roizin and Dr. Evgeny Pikhay from TowerJazz and Prof. Ramez Daniel of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion.

From the outset, the ability of computers to solve computational problems has been superior to that of humans. Yet for decades, when it came to identifying images, classifying image attributes and making decisions, computers lagged behind humans. In recent years, artificial intelligence has begun to narrow this gap and has managed to carry out complex operations by means of training based on examples. For the past few decades, vast resources have been devoted to developing artificial intelligence on the software level. This investment has generated a quantum leap in AI effectiveness in many and varied fields, among them medicine, intelligent transportation, robotics and agriculture.

Artificial intelligence is fueled by data, and specifically by extremely large data sets known as big data. For this reason, the major breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence had to “wait” for dramatic improvements in computing power. Yet hardware lagged behind these rapid developments in software performance, such that the development of hardware that would meet the demands of AI software was delayed for years. Such hardware must work well in terms of speed, low power demand, accuracy, area, and cost. These requirements are very difficult to satisfy with the traditional hardware model based on digital computation.

The digital model limits hardware performance in two main contexts: 1) Digital hardware has difficulty performing many operations in parallel, for it was originally intended to perform a relatively small number of operations. 2) This type of hardware can provide great accuracy only at the cost of extremely high energy and time consumption. As a result, the researchers say innovative hardware is needed that will meet the needs of the artificial intelligence era.

According to Prof. Kvatinsky: “One of the major challenges that AI poses to hardware engineers is how to implement complex algorithms that require a) storage of massive amounts of data in the computer memory, b) rapid retrieval from memory, c) performing many computations in parallel, and d) high accuracy. Standard digital platforms hardware (processors) is not suited for this for the reasons mentioned above.”

This is the background for the new technology described in the article published in Nature Electronics. “Our technology transforms hardware that is digital in nature into a neuromorphic platform—an analog infrastructure of sorts that resembles the human brain,” said Prof. Kvatinsky. “Just as the brain can perform millions of operations in parallel, our hardware is also capable of performing many operations in parallel, thus accelerating all associated operations.”

Doctoral student Loai Danial goes on to explain: “I am personally interested in neuromorphic computations, both as a computer engineering student and as someone who lost his father to a rare neurological disease. The brain has always served as an inspiration for computational systems, and my challenge is to use engineering tools to understand the computational mechanism of brain operations. In the current research, we showed that an electrical chip based on standard commercial technology has two critical abilities: associative memory that, like the brain, operates based on features rather than index searching, and the ability to learn.”

Associative memory, which is familiar to us from human thought, means, for example, that when we see eyes we do not search some clause in an index of items to find a match for an eye but rather identify the eye associatively. This mechanism is rapid, efficient and energy-saving. Moreover, as with the brain, the system’s ability to learn improves as the links between the synapses and the nerve cells change and are updated.

According to Prof. Roizin of TowerJazz: “The new technology is easy to implement and transforms TowerJazz’s transistors, originally designed to store data only, into memristors—units that contain not only memory but also computing ability. Because the memristors are situated on existing TowerJazz transistors, they immediately interface with all the devices the transistors work with. The new technology has been tested under real conditions, demonstrating that it can be implemented in building neural hardware networks, thus significantly improving the performance of commercial artificial intelligence systems. Like the brain, the improved system excels in its ability to store data over the long term and in its very low energy consumption.”

According to Prof. Ramez Daniel, formerly an electrical engineer at TowerJazz and now a member of the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering: “The computing power of the improved device stems from its ability to function in the sub-conduction area, or to put it more simply, in a way that resembles natural biological mechanisms. As a result, we have achieved high efficiency with low output, similar to mechanisms that developed in nature over billions of years of evolution.”

Technion researchers Eric Herbelin, Nicolas Wainstein, Vasu Gupta and Nimrod Wald from Prof. Kvatinsky’s research group participated in the research. 

This research was supported by the Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC), the KAMIN grant from the Israel Innovation Authority, the Andrew Viterbi and Erna Finci Viterbi Scholarship for Graduate Students and the European Research Council (ERC) starting grant. Recently, Loai Danial presented this research at the Nature Conference in China and was awarded the prize for the best paper award at the conference.

About the research participants:

Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his doctorate at the Technion and worked at Intel in circuit design. After completing a post-doctorate at Stanford University, he returned to the Technion as a member of the Andrew & Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Over the years he has won many prizes, among them the Wolf Foundation’s Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research, the Viterbi Fellowship, the Jacobs Fellowship, and the ERC starting grant, as well as seven awards for excellence in teaching.

Loai Danial completed his bachelor’s degree at the Technion and worked at the IBM research laboratories in Haifa from 2013-2016. Today he is working on his doctorate (direct Ph.D. track) under the supervision of Prof. Kvatinsky. He was awarded the Herschel Rich Prize for technological innovation, the Andrew Viterbi and Erna Finci Viterbi scholarship for graduate students and the Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC) scholarship for doctoral students from the Arab sector.

Prof. Yakov Roizin is the TowerJazz Fellow and Director of Emerging Technologies, and a visiting professor at both the Technion and Tel Aviv University. He has 40 years of semiconductor device and technology development experience, and has, for the past 23 years, been with TowerJazz developing specialty CMOS technologies and novel semiconductor devices. Prof. Roizin is the author of more than 200 research papers and holds more than 50 USA patents in the field of semiconductor devices and technologies.

Dr. Evgeny Pikhay received his B.Sc. from the Technion, M.Sc. from Tel Aviv University and Ph.D. from the Technion.  He is the Principal Device Engineer at TowerJazz, and has 15 years of experience in developing CMOS devices, including embedded NVM, solar cells, sensors of ionizing radiation. Dr. Pikhay is the author of more than 40 papers and patents.

Prof. Ramez Daniel completed a bachelor’s degree in the Andrew & Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion and a master’s degree in electronics and electrical engineering at Tel-Aviv. He then began working in industry. After eight years of working at TowerJazz, he left to pursue his doctorate and subsequently a post-doctorate at MIT, where he built the first biological computer inside a bacterium. Today he heads the Laboratory for Synthetic Biology in the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion.

For the full article in Nature Electronics click here

Photo Credits: Rami Shlush, Technion Spokesperson Department

 

 

Distinguished Professor Moti Segev from the Faculty of Physics at the Technion will receive the 2019 EMET Prize in the field of Physics and Space, tomorrow, December 9th. The prize is sponsored by the Prime Minister for academic or professional excellence and achievements with far-reaching impact and for a special contribution to society.

 

Dist. Prof. Segev, 60, is the Robert Shillman Chair of the Faculty of Physics, and a founder of the Helen Diller Center for Quantum Science, Matter and Engineering at Technion. He was born in Romania and immigrated to Israel aged three.  He grew up in Haifa before serving in the IDF as an infantry officer and later as a reserve commander of a reconnaissance unit for many years. After his army service, Segev completed his bachelor’s and direct-track doctoral degree at Technion in the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Following a post-doctorate at the California Institute of Technology, he was appointed assistant professor at Princeton University in 1994, went up the ranks to associate professor and full professor within 4.5 years. In 1998 he returned to Israel and to Technion as a faculty member. In 2009, he was made a Technion distinguished professor.

Prof. Segev is a trailblazing physicist in the field of optics and lasers and his work is cited in tens of thousands of scientific publications. Among his honors are the prestigious Quantum Electronics Prize of the European Physics Society (2007), the Max Born Award of the American Optical Society (2009), the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science of the American Physical Society (2014), and the Israel Prize in Physics (2014). He is a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the USA and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

His group focuses on experimental and theoretical research projects in numerous fields including photonics, lasers and quantum electronics. The group is engaged in basic research that influences other areas of science beyond photonics, and in the development of applications that impact the world of technology.

This past year (March 2018-Feb 2019), Segev published articles on seven groundbreaking research breakthroughs in the world’s leading scientific journals, Nature and Science.

Beyond his personal achievements, Segev is most proud of the success of his doctoral and postdoctoral students, 21 of whom are university professors in Israel and abroad, and many others who hold senior R&D positions in industry. His candidacy for this year’s EMET Prize was submitted by his former students, who are now university professors in Israel.

The EMET Prize is awarded annually by the A.M.N. Foundation for the Advancement of Science, Art and Culture in Israel, “for excellence in academic and professional achievements that have far-reaching influence on and significant contribution to society.” The Foundation was created in 1999 by Alberto Moscona Nisim in order “to acknowledge those who view excellence as a way of life and the fulfillment of human potential as essential to creating a better world for future generations.” This year’s prize committee included Prof. Hagit Messer-Yaron, Prof. Jacob Klein and Prof. Nir Shaviv.

https://webcasting.co.il/player/zoog/emet2019/emet_2019.html