EuroTech Innovation Day: One Day, Three Hackathons
The Technion’s “t-day” will return on April 28th. This year, it will be an online event, in conjunction with the EuroTech Innovation Day.
On April 28th the Technion will host its annual “t-day”, this year as an online event. t-day – a celebration of entrepreneurship and innovation – focuses on providing Technion students with a unique exposure to advanced tools and methods that can boost entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity, career development and broader issues related to social justice.
As part of the event, t-hub, the Technion Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, will also host the EuroTech Universities Alliance’s Innovation Day, and, jointly with the Biomedical Engineering Faculty – the EuroTech Biomedical Engineering Hackathon. The EuroTech Universities Alliance is a strategic partnership of leading European universities of science and technology. Its members, alongside the Technion, include some of the leading European technological universities. The EuroTech events will be conducted in English, while the rest of the t-day events will be in Hebrew.
The Technion invites students, alumni, faculty, and staff to participate in this fascinating day. Some of the day’s noteworthy events include:
Opening lecture – “success in a changing world” – by Prof. Yoram Yovell
Closing lecture – “creativity in life and work” – by Dr. Eyal Doron
FinTech hackathon, held with MALAM TEAM and the Bank of Jerusalem
“Technion Dresses Smart” hackathon, together with the Technion Social Hub
BizTEC 2021 opening event
Job interview simulator
The Technion Innovation Day is a joint initiative of t-hub, the Dean of Students Office, the Technion Student Association, the Technion’s DRIVE Accelerator, and the Technion Alumni Association.
“What sets us apart from other universities is that there is no other whose commitment to their country plays such a central role. Our founders perceived the Technion as the Jewish people’s university, a role we are proud to fulfill to this very day.” A special message from Technion President, Professor Uri Sivan, for Yom HaZikaron (Remembrance Day) and Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Independence Day).
This coming Thursday, we celebrate Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Independence Day), marking the 73rd anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. Yom Ha’Atzmaut is preceded by Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance for all those who gave their lives in the defense of Israel. I cannot think of any other country that places side by side a solemn day of memory with a day of total celebration, acting as a sober reminder that Independence comes at a price.
The two loud ear-piercing sirens that ring through Israel’s streets during Yom HaZikaron bring the entire country to a complete standstill. Cars, buses, and trains stop dead in their tracks as people stand while the siren wails. To an outsider, the scene may seem surreal. But, to us Israelis, this serves as a sharp reminder of over 25,000 Israeli soldiers and civilians who have lost their lives in wars, training accidents, and terror attacks.
In honor of Israel’s 73rd Independence Day, a beacon was lit this evening by Dr. Dror Dicker, Director of Internal Medicine and the Multidisciplinary Center for the Treatment of Obesity at Hasharon Hospital and a graduate of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion (Class of 1991), The selection committee for this year’s torch-bearers commended Dr. Dicker’s work as: “a paragon of love in the days of Corona: the love of man as a person and a love of the medical profession.”
Dr. Dicker, who was born in Hasharon Hospital, began working there at the age of 16 as a nurse. His father was director of the hospital at the time and his mother was an ECG technician. After completing his medical studies at the Technion, Dr. Dicker returned to the hospital, this time as a physician, where he progressed to the management of the Internal Medicine Department.
Last year, the department he headed was converted into a Corona ward. On March 21st, 2020, his mother died from COVID and Dr. Dicker carried out the “shiva” (7 days mourning period) on the ward, out of commitment to his patients.
Dr. Dicker, 58, has held numerous public positions, including president of the European Federation of Internal Medicine, Chairman of the Israeli Society for the Study and Treatment of Obesity, and co-chair of the European Obesity Care Task Force.
In an article published in Nature Photonics, researchers from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology present a new approach to imaging evanescent waves that allows, among other things, tackling this challenge with the help of “nonlinear wave-mixing,” a combination of two or more light beams that generate a new electromagnetic wave of a different color. This phenomenon, which requires at least one of the light beams to be very intense, occurs in most semiconductors, dielectrics, and metals. The Technion researchers mixed a wide and intense pulsed beam of light with evanescent waves traversing the surface, generating a new light wave that could be subsequently detected by regular means. By doing so, they were able to fully reconstruct the electromagnetic field of the evanescent waves and demonstrated real-time monitoring of changes in the wave pattern.
L-R: Kobi Frischwasser and Kobi Cohen
Guided waves have attracted great attention in recent decades, stimulating the development of various generation and detection methods. Almost all modern communications rely on the guided waves of optical fibers to conduct an enormous amount of information at roughly the speed of light. Large data centers, which are the central hubs for this ocean of information, rely on photonic integrated circuitry – another form of guided light waves – but within a silicon chip, quite like the chips of electrical circuitry. These guided waves do not radiate outside their host structure but still leave a signature in the air – a fast-decaying wave called an evanescent wave.
Prof. Guy Bartal
Evanescent waves cannot be detected by standard microscopy methods as their energy remains bound to the surface and cannot be seen by the microscope detector. Because of this, designated technologies were developed to detect these waves, using either a small needle approaching the surface, scattering out the electromagnetic power in its vicinity; or by firing electrons on the surface and characterizing their spectrum afterward. Although these two schemes provide an excellent spatial resolution, they require complex and designated infrastructure, as well as long acquisition times, which currently prevent them from imaging the guided waves in real-time.
“The idea to overcome this challenge came to me when I was working on a different project,” said Kobi Frischwasser, the leading author of the manuscript. “I was exploring ways to nonlinearly couple light into confined optical modes when I realized that it could also work the other way around – the information in such modes can be coupled nonlinearly out. I never imagined that this new microscopy scheme could open up new and, so far, unattainable opportunities for near-field science.”
“Aside from bulk materials, nonlinear wave-mixing naturally takes place at any interface between two materials, making it an ideal platform for nanophotonics – which often deals with light at interfaces,” said Professor Guy Bartal of the Andrew & Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, who headed the project. “Below some spatial limit, Information remains bound to the surface and cannot be seen by any camera. Our technique “releases” this information into radiation that can be detected – even with a commercial camera!”
Shai Tsesses
The new scheme, termed Nonlinear Near-field Optical Microscopy (NNOM), does not require anything other than a powerful commercial laser source and standard optical components and detectors. According to the researchers, this makes it not only affordable – but also approachable. “You don’t need expensive and complicated tools anymore,” Bartal indicated. “For many applications, all you really need is what you already have in your optics lab.”
In their manuscript, Bartal’s research team, comprised of Kobi Frischwasser, Kobi Cohen, Jacob Kher-Alden, Shimon Dolev, and Shai Tsesses, demonstrated the strength of their scheme in imaging various patterns of electromagnetic surface waves, called surface plasmons, while they change in real-time. “We have been working on simple methods to shape such waves for a while, so it was easy to design field patterns we could freely control,” said Jacob Kher-Alden.
“The interesting bit was the information we could extract,” added Bartal. “By changing the polarization of the high-intensity pulses, we could see different shapes. We then found out that we are not just measuring the evanescent waves, but we can choose what information to take out of them.” Particularly, the team could separate and visualize the information stored on the “spin” of the evanescent waves, i.e. the clockwise and anti-clockwise rotation of the electric field on the interface.
“When you process the optical information in free-space, everything is much easier,” said Kobi Cohen. “We could see the spatial frequency content of the surface waves, not just the real-space shape, and through a reconstruction algorithm, we managed to extract their phase as well. From here on out, the road to a full-field reconstruction was clear.”
Jacob Kher-Alden
Finally, the authors demonstrated the application of NNOM by monitoring the changes in digitally encoded surface waves via the use of a spatial light modulator (SLM). “We wanted to show that this new microscopy scheme can have practical applications,” explained Shai Tsesses. “Since there are times when you need to make sure of the exact evanescent pattern, such as in optical trapping and manipulation experiments or when trying to optically address quantum emitters in nanophotonic platforms.”
“We haven’t even begun to explore the limits of this scheme and its applications,” Frischwasser concluded, “It may very well help us to develop better methods of verification for photonic circuitry. We are very excited about the future, and hope that many groups around the world will join us on our quest.”
The research was funded by the Israel Science Foundation and was assisted by the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, the Zisappel Micro-Nano fabrication unit, and the photovoltaic lab at the Technion. Shai Tsesses is funded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities through the Adams fellowship program, while Jacob Kher-Alden is funded by a scholarship from the Israeli Council for Higher Education’s Planning and Budgeting Committee.
Two new asteroids discovered by Technion student Aseel Nama of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering will be named after her. Nama’s discovery came as part of NASA’s asteroid-hunting campaign.
Undergraduate student Aseel Nama
“I really wanted to take part in this campaign, which is a kind of competition, but NASA insisted that I recruit a team of three people. I explained that I wasn’t able to recruit anyone else, but that this is my dream. Finally, I convinced them to let me compete. It turns out I was the only one-person team and the only Israeli among 116 teams worldwide.”
Haifa-based Nama grew up in Deir al-Asad in the Galilee region. Her studies involve the mastery of segmentation – the division of images into sections – in the laboratory of Prof. Dan Adam. She credits that skill for the asteroid discoveries. “I got a set of photos and videos from NASA to search for new asteroids,” she explains. “I called my ‘team’ ANI (Aseel Nama Israel) and the asteroids I discovered will be called ANI1801 and ANI2001.”
Why are there no drugs that can cure COVID-19, SARS, or the flu? Why is it that if you have strep throat, you get prescribed an antibiotic, but with a virus, you are told to sit it out? In short, why are there no antivirals in similar quantity, variety, and effectiveness as antibiotics?
Prof. Roee Amit
Unlike antibiotics, antiviral drugs are typically designed to target one virus. This narrowness of scope makes it uneconomical for drug companies to invest in developing new antivirals. As a result, non-HIV therapeutics comprise less than 1% of the total therapeutics market, which stands in direct contrast to the dominance of infectious diseases in everyday human experience. While the obvious solution to this problem is to develop antivirals that can be used to treat multiple infectious diseases, finding such broad-spectrum drugs has proven to be a highly elusive goal for the scientific community.
A groundbreaking study conducted in collaboration between the laboratory of Prof. Roee Amit of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering and the group of Prof. Yaron Orenstein from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev provides a feasible pathway forward to achieving this goal. The study, led by Dr. Noa Katz, demonstrates that a combined synthetic biology and machine learning approach can result in the discovery of molecules which can bind proteins from two distinct viruses.
The traditional method for identifying therapeutics is to apply a low-throughput and labor-intensive screen for molecules that might perform the required function. In contrast, the synthetic biology and machine learning approach seeks to map the “space” of potential interactions so that molecules with the desired properties can be reliably predicted. This is done by first generating a large and high quality experimental dataset from a library (i.e. collection) of various known and suspected potential virus-protein-binding molecules. The dataset is then used to train a neural network to allow it to form a multidimensional mathematical function representing the collective’s protein-binding capability.
Once computed, such a function can then be used in reverse. Namely, it can be used to identify regions of high binding capability, and extract “predicted” molecules not previously tested. These unseen or predicted molecules can then be synthesized and tested for the desired biological functionality. The researchers applied this approach to first map out the binding space of two distinct coat proteins from two different bacteria-attacking viruses, and then synthesized and validated RNA molecules that were predicted to be at the interface between the two spaces, and which therefore possess both functionalities. This achievement provides the scientific community with a blueprint for an approach that can be used to identify novel RNA sequences that could potentially become key ingredients of broad-spectrum antiviral drugs.
Technion graduate Professor Avi Wigderson has received the 2021 Abel Prize. Awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, it is the most important prize in mathematics, and equivalent in its importance to the Nobel Prize for mathematicians. A faculty member at Princeton University, Prof. Wigderson shares the prize with his friend and colleague László Lovász of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, “for their foundational contributions to theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, and their leading role in shaping them into central fields of modern mathematics.”
Prof. Wigderson was born in Haifa in 1956 and completed his B.A. in Computer Science from the Technion’s Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science in 1980. He went on to complete a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Princeton, where he is currently a researcher at the Institute of Advanced Studies. Over the years he has published hundreds of articles and won a series of awards and scholarships, including the Alon Scholarship, the Gôdel Prize, the Knuth Prize, and the Nevanlinna Prize.
The Abel Prize website states: “Wigderson is known for his ability to see links between apparently unrelated areas. He has deepened the connections between mathematics and computer science… His contribution to enlarging and deepening the field of ‘complexity theory’ – which concerns itself with the speed and efficiency of algorithms – is arguably greater than that of any other individual. Wigderson has conducted research into every major open problem in complexity theory. The most important present-day application of complexity theory is internet cryptography. Early in his career, Wigderson made fundamental contributions in this area, including the zero-knowledge proof, which today is being used in cryptocurrency technology.”
Professor Dan Geiger, Dean of the Taub Faculty of Computer Science said, “Winning reflects the vital relationship between mathematics and computer science, and basic science in uses such as cryptography. Receiving the Abel Prize is an important milestone in Prof. Wigderson’s impressive and rich career, and we congratulate him on this great honor.”
To make the field of complexity and its connections to computer science theory accessible, Prof. Wigderson wrote a book entitled, “Mathematics and Computing – A Theory Revolutionizing Technology and Science.” The book, published in English by Princeton Publishing, is available for download on the website of the School of Math in the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton.
Stephen was a second-generation Technion supporter. His father was president of the local chapter of the American Technion Society, and would, as Stephen recalled, “drag me around to Technion events.” Both of his parents loved Israel, and Technion held a special place in their hearts.
“As I grew up,” Stephen once said, “I came to understand the crucial role that Technion has played in the survival and success of Israel.” He and his wife Nancy were honored as Technion Guardians, those friends who’ve made the highest commitment to the Technion. Stephen was also honored with an Honorary Doctorate in 2010.
Stephen realized that the world’s future sustainability, economic development, and security depended on answers to the technical and economic challenges faced by the water industry and the development of reliable energy sources. Innovative research and technology were needed. In 2001, Stephen provided major support for the establishment of the Technion’s Grand Water Research Institute (GWRI), and in 2010 for the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP). These two major gifts were alongside other gifts, which encapsulated the foresight of Stephen and his family in their support for the Technion.
All of us at the Technion greatly enjoyed Stephen’s visits and appreciated his wise counsel. Over the years, it was heartwarming to us that Stephen appreciated the accomplishments of the GWRI and GTEP, and all of the other programs he supported.
In addition to their support for the Technion, Stephen and Nancy were active in numerous philanthropic activities throughout the United States and Israel. Stephen was the co-founder of Grand/Sakwa Properties, a Michigan-based real estate developer.
The ceremony will include the personal testimony of Mr. Itzhak Herzog, who survived the Holocaust as a child in Hungary, and will share with us his personal story. There will be no studies during the time of the ceremony.
The Technion held the final round of the 11th Nadav Shoham Robotraffic competition. Hundreds of high school students from 10 different countries took part this year in a virtual format, and the final stage concluded five consecutive days of competition.
This year, the participating schools received instructions in advance, and each of them showcased their model car in a live, online performance. The main advantage of the virtual format was the number of schools it enabled to participate and their diverse geographical distribution; some schools were participating for the first time in such a competition. In total, this year’s competition included about 50 teams, including 12 from Russia, 6 from China, and teams from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan, the USA, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Israel.
The competition had five categories, two of which were shown live during the week. The team that won first place in the Careful Driving Category received a scholarship for a full year’s tuition at the Technion. Additional prizes for the winners of the competition were donated by Nvidia.
Technion Senior Executive Vice President, Professor Oded Rabinovitch, told the students that “robots have become an integral part of our lives in recent years and we all encounter them in school, at work and in our leisure time. Their presence will only increase in the years to come, and the current competition gives you a taste of the diverse and unique world of robotics and an understanding of the importance of the mathematical and scientific fundamentals in solving engineering challenges. If you understand this, you have won, no matter the results of the competition.”
The competition was led by the Head of the Leumi Robotics Center Professor Moshe Shoham, together with the Director of the Center Dr. Evgeny Korchnoy. Over the past year, Technion International also become involved through the International School of Engineering.
“The past year has emphasized the necessity of autonomous robots in protecting medical teams, the brave fighters at the forefront of the fight against coronavirus, but also in many other contexts,” said Prof. Shoham. “We are happy to hold this competition every year, bringing high school students closer to the world of robotics and allowing them to experience some of the enormous potential inherent in this field.”
“Organizing this year’s competition obliged everyone to put in a lot of effort due to time differences and of course because of the pandemic and lockdowns, which made it difficult to prepare in groups,” added Dr. Korchnoy. “We are pleased to note that the proportion of female students in the competition is growing, and we have a few groups of female-only students. “
Robotraffic 2021
The Robotraffic Competition, which was held for the first time in January 2010, is intended to foster interest in science and technology by developing autonomous vehicles able to drive in an urban environment according to traffic laws. In preparation for the competition, the students learned about robotics, driving laws and road safety rules, and acquired “real world” skills, including leadership, initiative, and teamwork. The competition is a joint project of the Leumi Robotics Center at the Technion, World ORT – Kadima Mada, and the World Zionist Organization in collaboration with YTEK, Nvidia and IBS, and supported by Bank Leumi.
Winners of the competitions are as below:
Category A: Careful Driving
“Career Planning Center” Tomsk (Team-2) Russia
“Career Planning Center” Tomsk (Team-1) Russia
ORT Argentina (Team-2)
Category B: Racing
Hlukhiv Centre of Extra Education, Ukraine
ORT Argentina (Team-2)
Kansk College of Technology, Russia
Category C: Reverse Parking
Kansk College of Technology, Russia
ORT Specialized School #41, Chernivtsi, Ukraine
Hlukhiv Centre of Extra Education, Ukraine
Category D: Traffic Safety Initiatives
ORT Kiev NVK-141, Ukraine
Frankel Jewish Academy, Detroit, USA and Hlukhiv Center of Extra Education, Ukraine
ORT Argentina
Category E: Learning car structure with 3D CAD
ORT Specialized School #41, Chernivtsi, Ukraine
Hlukhiv Centre of Extra Education, Ukraine
ORT “Alef” Jewish Gymnasium, Zaporozhye, Ukraine
Award: Striving for Excellence in Robotics Studies
Suzhou No.10 High School of Jiangsu Province, China
Taicang Walton Foreign Language School, China
Mingde Senior High School, China
ORT Tekhiya School 1311, Moscow, Russia
Centro Paula Souza, São Paulo, Brazil
ORT Mexico
Peterson School, Mexico
Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Taipei Private Tsai Hsing High School, Taiwan
Misgav High School, Israel
NVIDIA Prize
“Career Planning Center”, Tomsk (Team1 and Team 2), Russia
On March 22, the Adelis- SAMSON project – an autonomous satellite that will detect high precision earth-based satellites – was launched into space. This is the first simultaneous launch of three Israeli satellites. The project was developed with the support of the Adelis Foundation, the Goldstein Foundation, the Israeli Space Agency in the Ministry of Science, and IAI.
On Monday morning, at 8:07 Israel time, the autonomous satellite group developed at the Technion as part of the “Adelis- SAMSON ” project was launched into space aboard a Glavkosmos Soyuz rocket. The satellites were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan – the world’s first spaceport, and the first site to send a human into space (April 1961, Yuri Gagarin). The Adelis-Samson project is supported by the Adelis Foundation, the Goldstein Foundation, and the Israeli Space Agency in the Ministry of Science, Technology and Aerospace.
Four hours and twenty minutes after the launch, the Adelis-SAMSON satellites entered orbit. Thirty minutes later, they “woke up” and began operating their systems.
Watching the live broadcast from the control center at the Asher Space Research Institute were Technion President, Professor Uri Sivan, Vice President and CEO Professor Boaz Golani, Vice President for Foreign Relations and Resource Development Professor Alon Wolf, Head of the Asher Space Research Institute Professor Yoram Rosen, and the people who have been accompanying the project since its inception, headed by Professor Pini Gurfil of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering and the Asher Space Research Institute (ASRI).
“This morning’s launch was accompanied by tremendous excitement”, said Prof. Pini Gurfil. “A basic study over the course of many years, combined with advanced Israeli technology, allows Israel to take an important step forward in the field of micro-satellites. You could compare the innovation of nanosatellites to switching from the computer to the cellphone. The Adelis- SAMSON project demonstrates a new concept in nanosatellites and will enable many operations to be carried out that have been reserved until now for large and expensive satellites. This is a leap in the field of miniature satellites in the capabilities of the Technion and for the entire State of Israel, and one which will make the Technion a global pioneer in the fields of location and communication, with diverse applications including missing persons detection, search and rescue, remote sensing, and environmental monitoring”.
The excitement at the Asher Space Research Institute at the Technion after the successful launch.
The trio of satellites will move in space in an autonomous structure flight, that is, they will move in coordination with each other without the need for guidance from the ground. The band will be used to calculate the location of radiating sources on Earth, a technology that will be applied in locating people, planes, and ships. Each of the three miniature satellites (CubeSats) weighs about 8 kg and is replete with sensors, antennae, computer systems, control systems, navigation devices, and a unique and innovative propulsion system. The satellites will travel at an altitude of 600 km above ground and will detect high-precision signals from Earth. The signals will be transmitted to a special mission control center inside the Asher Space Research Institute. The mission receiver developed by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI).
“The Adelis- SAMSON project is a wonderful and exciting example of the successful integration of science and technology and the translation of innovative ideas into effective systems that contribute to humanity”, said Prof. Uri Sivan, President of the Technion. “Scientific and technological breakthroughs require multidisciplinary research and close collaboration between academia and industry, and this is what has led the project to this important day. Each time that you look up at the sky, remember that the Technion has succeeded again in reaching space”.
“The current project continues a Technion tradition that began in 1998 with the successful launch of the Gurwin-TechSat II“, added the Technion President. “That satellite operated in space for more than 11 years, a record time for academic activity in space. The launch of Adelis- SAMSON is a dramatic moment that we have been waiting nine years for and will follow closely.
I sincerely thank our partners at the Adelis Foundation, the Goldstein Foundation, the Israel Space Agency and the Israel Aerospace Industries for helping us make this project a reality”.
The unique development of these satellites was made possible by an exceptional collaboration between academia and industry. A special propulsion system, based on krypton gas, will be the first of its kind in the world to operate on a tiny satellite. The digital receiver and the directional control system were developed at IAI’s plant, in collaboration with Technion researchers. In addition to the propulsion system, the satellites will accumulate energy through solar panels that will be deployed from each satellite and will serve as wings that will control, if necessary, the flight of the formation without the use of fuel, using air resistance in the atmosphere. Each of the nanosatellites is fitted with one of the most complex digital receivers ever designed. The system for processing the information on the satellite and the algorithms that will keep the structures flying is among the first of their kind in the world, and support the simultaneous autonomous operation of all three satellites. The navigation system includes two GPS receivers for autonomous navigation. The system through which the three nanosatellites will communicate with each other, as well as with the ground station, will be operated at three different frequencies – a significant challenge that was resolved in the current project. A dedicated frequency will be used to transmit information to Earth through broadband.
Satellite control and propulsion systems are also a technological innovation. To save fuel, the satellites are aided by two natural forces – gravity and atmospheric resistance – and thus propel themselves. In this way, they need a small amount of fuel – less than a gram of fuel per day per satellite. This achievement is the result of ten years of research that preceded the launch.
The monitoring of the satellites and the collection of data that will be transmitted will take place at the Adelis- SAMSON control station, inaugurated at the Technion in 2018. Built with the support of the Adelis Foundation, it contains an array of antennas made by Israeli Orbit company and will communicate continuously with the satellites.
In the words of Mrs. Rebecca Boukhris, Adelis Foundation Trustee: “For many years, space and space technology have been considered the domain of superpowers, and too grand, expensive, and complex for small countries. Israel has demonstrated that this is not the case, and it is vital that it is a member of the elite international space community. The rapid development of the space industry in Israel is essential. This project is unique for the Adelis Foundation in that it symbolizes the spirit, genius, and strength of Israel. In effect, it highlights the technological and scientific brilliance of Israel and positions our country on the world map in the field of aerospace, and all this on a modest budget within the university setting of Technion. The Adelis Foundation considers itself as sowing the seeds of the future and hopes that this project will be the first of many more. We hope that many other small and brilliant projects will take the Adelis-SAMSON mission as an example and develop a new ingenious space mission for the benefit of the State of Israel”.
The field of nano-satellites has recently been booming and the number of launches is increasing every year”, says Avi Blasberger, director of the Israeli Space Agency at the Ministry of Science and Technology. “The cost of developing and launching such satellites, capable of performing a variety of uses, is significantly lower than those of regular satellites. In the near future networks are expected to appear to include thousands of nanosatellites that will cover the Earth and enable high-speed internet communication at a significantly lower cost than is currently available, as well as having many other applications such as the one demonstrated in the SAMSON satellites”.
“We see great importance in our collaboration with the Technion to promote academic research and future technologies in the field of space”, says IAI President & CEO Boaz Levy. “IAI, Israel’s ‘National Space House’, sees high value in its connection to academia on the business and technological levels to advance Israel’s continued innovation and leadership in the field of space. This partnership promotes the development of the entire ecosystem and IAI is proud to join forces in this innovative and groundbreaking project”.
Among the many partners of Technion’s Adelis-SAMSON project are the Adelis Foundation, the Goldstein Foundation, the Israeli Space Agency in the Ministry of Science, and IAI. From the Technion, many researchers from the Asher Space Research Institute participated in the project – Avner Kaidar, Hovik Agalarian , Dr. Vladimir Balabanov, Eviatar Edlerman, Yaron Oz, Maxim Rubanovich, Margarita Shamis, Yulia Kouniavsky, Tzahi Ezra, and Dr. Alex Frid, as well as many students over the years.
