“In my exams students are allowed to turn on their computers and surf the internet”

Prof. Eric Mazur of Harvard University, special guest speaker at the Assessment For Learning seminar held at the Technion, explains why “the current grading method neutralizes curiosity”

“The Technion values excellence and strives for excellence, and when you want to be in the front row you have to excel in everything – not only in research but also in teaching. This is the mission of the Technion Center for the Promotion of Learning and Teaching, and it is the subject of this seminar, which focuses on assessment.”

With these words, Prof. Gadi Schuster, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, opened the one-day seminar on Assessment For Learning, held at the Technion Center for the Promotion of Learning and Teaching on June 24, 2015. Prof. Eric Mazur, Dean of Applied Physics at Harvard University and Minerva Prize winner, delivered the two keynote lectures. “I’ve already been to Israel,” said Prof. Mazur, “but I have not yet visited the Technion and I am very happy to be here, at an institution which – so I read in the New York Times – champions the pursuit of innovation.”

Prof. Mazur spoke about the personal and professional process he underwent over the years as a lecturer in physics. “In 1984, I began teaching a course at Harvard that nobody wanted to teach – Physics for premed students. I did it the traditional way: lectures. The success of my students in tests, and the outstanding evaluations that I received in surveys, concealed the truth from my eyes: this was, and still is, the worst possible way to teach students. Have you ever seen a workplace based on such a situation, in which one person talks and transmits information, and everyone else merely receives it? They do not create, they do not innovate, they do not think and they do not work as a team? A workplace like this does not exist. Nevertheless, that’s what today’s classroom looks like.

“The traditional classroom is based on the amphitheater model – it is basically a show, that’s the message that this situation conveys: the teacher demonstrates and talks, the student listens and doesn’t interrupt. Obviously, not a context that encourages interaction. Imagine if a student raises his hand and says: ‘Mr. Lecturer, could you be quiet for five minutes, so that I can think?’ In other words, we make do with the lowest possible level of educational activity: the transfer of information. What about practice, creativity and thinking? With the traditional approach we are giving up all that and are left with the transmission and reception of information, and for that we teachers aren’t necessary – Google is sufficient.”

In the wake of these insights, Prof. Mazur developed a new approach to peer teaching and assessment in a way that fosters involvement, thinking and interactive learning. “The current grading system harms educational activity, because it punishes the student for his mistakes and neutralizes his curiosity. The road to innovation and creativity is paved with failures, and with the grading system, students are not allowed to fail.”

The teaching method developed by Prof. Mazur mimics real life – teamwork, discussions, intriguing questions and much room for error. “In my exams, students are allowed to turn on their computers and surf the internet – anything but text messages and e-mail. After all, it’s hard to find answers on Google to questions requiring understanding, application, analysis, evaluation and creativity”.

The seminar ended with a panel discussion on grade assessment and management at the Technion, led by Prof. Moshe Baruch, Senior Assistant Vice President for the Advancement of Teaching, with the participation of Dean of Undergraduate Studies Prof. Yachin Cohen, Prof. Daniel Levin of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, and Prof. Miles Rubin of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The seminar was held by the Technion Center for the Promotion of Learning and Teaching, headed by Dr. Abigail Barzilai, with the assistance of Dr. Irit Wertheim, as part of a program to promote professional standards in the area of assessment and examination in certification courses at the Technion.

Peer Instruction: Continuous Formative Assessment to Promote Learning, Prof Eric Mazur Harvard University, Area Dean of Applied Physics.

Prof Eric Mazur Assessment: The silent killer of learning Harvard University, Area Dean of Applied Physics

Fifty years to the day after the visit to Mars: the first visit to the dwarf planet Pluto

This afternoon, the spacecraft New Horizons will pass over Pluto and will send valuable information to the planet Earth. Members of the research team of Prof. Hagai Perets from the Technion, who are studying Pluto and its moons, believe that this information will greatly contribute to our knowledge about that distant region of the solar system. The spacecraft, which contains scientific equipment and the ashes of the man who discovered Pluto, will continue to head toward Pluto’s moon, and from there to the edge of the solar system.

Within a few hours – just before 15:00, to be more precise – the New Horizons spacecraft will fly by the closest point to the dwarf planet Pluto. Shortly thereafter, it will pass over Charon – Pluto’s main moon – and then it will proceed to the edge of the solar system.

Today’s anticipated historic “visit” will occur exactly 50 years after the first pictures from the surface of Mars reached the Earth. On July 14, 1965, humanity discovered for the first time what the surface of a planet that is not Earth looks like. Since then, all the other planets, except Pluto, have been studied.

60,000 km/h.

Therefore – in order to explore Pluto – New Horizons was launched around nine years ago. The spacecraft, weighing about 500 kilograms, soared into space at a record speed of nearly 60,000 km/h. To save energy, it was then “put to sleep” for a few years and only last December did it “wake up” in order to be able to transmit the information from the vicinity of Pluto. These transmissions began a few months ago, and provided Earth with considerable information and wonderful pictures.

From Mars to Pluto.

For decades, Pluto, discovered in 1930, was considered one of the major planets in the solar system. Since then, all the other planets have been “visited” by spacecraft, which photographed them, and therefore today’s closure is a historic moment. Many people around the world will hold their breath today – even those born long after the “visit” to Mars on July 14, 1965. Two of them are Prof. Hagi Perets and doctoral student Erez Michaeli, from the Technion Faculty of Physics, who are studying the “potential moons” that may be discovered around Pluto.

“Pluto was discovered in 1930,” Michaeli explains, “and only in 1978 was its main moon, Charon, discovered. In the past decade, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, four other moons orbiting Pluto on the same plane have been discovered. This gave rise to the question: Does Pluto have more moons?”

Potential moons.

In the joint article, Michaeli and Prof. Perets predict the possible locations of other potential moons. “We do not presume to say whether there are such moons, but only ‘map’ the areas where they might be located,” explains Michaeli. “Our mapping is based on the information provided and a set of equations, and we predict that if such moons are found, they will be within the area that we ‘permit’.”

And if you were wrong?

“As an astrophysicist, I really want new things to be discovered, so I would be very happy if moons are found in those places as well. Of course, it would mean that we failed to take something into consideration, but to some extent that would be even more interesting. After all, that’s the one of the beauties of science – surprises tell us more than the success of our predictions.”

A Star is born.

“The discovery of other moons may help us better understand how Pluto was formed,” says Michaeli. “The currently accepted theory in the astrophysics community is that Pluto is the result of an accidental collision of two celestial objects, and some of the debris became its moons, but simulations show that the impact speed was abnormally slow.”

“The collision of a celestial body with its moon occurs at a relatively slow speed,” says Prof. Perets, “and now we’re working on a new model in which Pluto was hit by one of its remote moons. Such a collision could explain what we see today. According to this model, the current moons were formed by a collision between Pluto and one of its ancient moons.”

The internal structure.

Dr. Uri Malamud, one of Prof. Perets’s post-doctoral students, is focusing in his research on the development of the bodies in solar system and their internal structure.  “Since we have no direct data from inside these planetary bodies, we have to infer the internal structure from various observations and the measurement of density, gravitational field, magnetic field, surface composition and various geological formations that may be an indication of the processes taking place inside. In the case of Pluto and Charon, the density was known previously, which gives a pretty good initial indication regarding the possible internal composition, but now we can improve the existing measurements and obtain detailed information about the surface composition and geological formations. In our study, we rely on assumptions pertaining to the conditions that prevailed when these bodies were formed, and run advanced computer simulations that simulate Pluto’s evolution during 4.5 billion years.”

A glimpse into the past.

“Of course one can ask why anyone should even bother studying a lump rock located at the edge of the solar system,” says Prof. Perets, “but from a scientific perspective, there is tremendous motivation here. Pluto and similar objects give us a unique opportunity to explore the first building blocks of the solar system, some of which have been preserved almost unchanged. Pluto gives us a look at the birth pangs of the solar system and the origin of the planet Earth, and now we are seeing it live.”

In an article published together with Prof. Dina Prialnik from Tel Aviv University in the journal Icarus, Dr. Malamud assumes that Charon and other bodies in the Kuiper Belt were “born” from a homogeneous composition of rock and ice, and later developed as a result of warming that led to the flow of water and gas through a porous medium characteristic of small bodies in the solar system. “These dwarf planets have fairly regular structures – an ice shell covering a rocky core – but their level of porosity varies. In our article, we showed that this difference stems from their different masses.” In a follow-on study conducted by Dr. Malamud and Prof. Perets, they are trying to expand their previous study, so that it will be possible to perform simulations of larger bodies like Pluto, partly in light of the new information obtained from New Horizons.

Pluto and the New Horizons mission

New Horizons was launched from Earth on January 19, 2006 – at that time Pluto was still considered one of the nine planets of the solar system – and since then it has covered nearly 5 billion kilometers. During its journey, the spacecraft moved so far from the sun that it cannot generate electricity from sunlight. Therefore, a small plutonium-based nuclear reactor was installed onboard.

New Horizons was designed, built and launched in order to “understand the worlds at the edge of the solar system by making the first reconnaissance of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, a relic of the formation of the solar system.” In addition to scientific equipment, the spacecraft carries several objects, including a coin of the State of Florida; an urn containing the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930; a Pluto postage stamp from 1991; and, of course, an American flag.

Pluto was considered one of the nine planets in the solar system until 2006 – the year when it was deposed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and defined as “only” a dwarf planet. Several reasons were given for the decision, which was made despite protests by many astronomers: Pluto’s size (it is smaller than many bodies in the solar system that were discovered in recent years and are defined as planets); the unusual fact that Pluto and its principal moon, Charon, are not very different from each other in size; Pluto, unlike “real” planets, doesn’t remove particles and larger objects from its environment; and, finally – Pluto’s orbit is unusual compared to that of our known planets, all of which move around the sun on an ecliptic plane. The plane of Pluto’s movement around the sun is at a deviation of around 17 degrees from the ecliptic plane, and it self-rotates at a 119 degree angle from that plane, which means that it self-rotates in one direction and orbits around the sun in the opposite direction.

Pluto was discovered by Tombaugh in 1930, and received its name in a public competition – the winning name was proposed by an 11-year-old girl. Because of its distance from the sun – around 6 billion kilometers on average – its surface has a very low temperature: around -220⁰C. Because of its very long orbit, a “Pluto year” is equal to 248 of our years. Pluto’s orbit is very elliptical, unlike most of the planets, and this causes strange phenomena: when it’s far from the sun it’s completely frozen and has no atmosphere, and when it draws near it heats up and substances evaporate from its surface, thereby creating the atmosphere, and so on and so forth.

Dental implants are a viable tooth replacement solution for most people, and the question one may ask is not whether you have one of those, but when will you have a dental implant. The use of dental implants is constantly growing, and Israel has become superpower in terms of implant production.

However, like everything else in life, things can go wrong and implants happen to break after sometime, although this is fortunately not too frequent. Extracting and replacing a broken dental implant is a complex surgical procedure for both the dentist and the patient.

Dr. (DDS) Keren Shemtov-Yona started to study the fracture of dental implants in 2010, for her masters of Medical Sciences, in both the School of Dentistry (Rambam Hospital) and in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Technion. Her results showed the influence of time on the degradation of the implants’ strength until a crack forms that causes final fracture by a mechanism known as metal fatigue.

Upon completion of her degree, Dr. Shemtov-Yona was so passionate about her research that she decided to enroll in a PhD program in 2013, under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Rittel (Mechanical Engineering).

A mother of two, living in Tel Aviv, she would not hesitate to travel twice a week to Haifa to carry out her research with utmost dedication.

Back to early 2014, she managed to collect one hundred dental implants from four Israeli dental clinics. Those implants were particularly precious because they had been extracted for biological reasons, but none of them was broken and otherwise appeared to be in pristine condition. Every implant was thoroughly and patiently examined using the scanning electron microscope of the Materials Mechanics Center, and the picture that emerged rather soon was rather awkward: many of the implants contained cracks and flaws at various stages of development. More precisely, 62% of the intact implants were actually flawed, as reported recently in the highly regarded Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials.

Reporting such troubling results did not go smoothly for obvious reasons. Dentistry journals, with a lesser engineering inclination, reacted negatively and perhaps not always objectively to the bad news. By contrast, the Bioengineering community welcomed the results and accepted the publication quite enthusiastically.

Are those such bad news for those of us who have implants for a few years already? According to Dr. Shemtov-Yona “it is too early to reach such a conclusion, since every individual has different mastication habits and oral environment, mastication causing a repeated loading leading to fatigue”. Which means that what will take several years in individual A may take less or not happen in individual. However, as she emphasizes, “time has come for both the dental community and the manufacturers to come to grips with the problem, learn to identify it and look for ways to improve the fatigue life of dental implants”.

And indeed, her research is now focusing on the causes leading to the development of cracks, some of which related to implant manufacturing procedures, in an attempt to devise a viable solution that will prolong the service life of the implants.

Technion has long emphasized interdisciplinary research, including the interface between Engineering and Life Sciences.

Dr. Shemtov-Yona’s research is precisely at this interface, since, as Prof. Rittel puts it, “dental implants without Dentistry make no sense on the one hand, but we have learned that dental implants without Engineering are very incomplete”.

 

Technion ranked 31st in the world in the U.S. Academy of Inventors index

The Technion received approval for 65 patents in the U.S. in 2014, the most of any Israeli university.

The rankings list of the National Academy of Inventors, founded in the U.S. in 2010, ranks the Technion in 31st place in the list of universities around the world, based on the number of patents approved in the U.S. in 2014. The Technion, with 65 approved patents last year, ranks above well-known universities such as Yale, Duke, Rutgers, USC (University of Southern California) and Tokyo University, as well as all the other Israeli institutions that placed in the rankings: Tel Aviv University (43rd place), the Weizmann Institute (52nd place) and Hebrew University (73rd place). The top-ranked university is MIT, which advanced from second place in 2013, with 453 approved patents in 2014.

A few of the patents registered by the Technion and approved in 2014 are: medical scaffolding; a system for monitoring air passage in the lungs; a system for the rapid imaging of the macula; non-friction molecular engines; an innovative device for separating oxygen from air; silicon-air batteries; and assessment for the early diagnosis of growths in the large intestine.

Prof. Wayne D. Kaplan, Technion’s Executive Vice President for Research, congratulated the researchers, senior staff and students on this impressive achievement.

“The commercialization of inventions and the registering of patents are strategic goals for us, connected with strengthening the ties between academia and industry. The Technion invests significant resources in these matters, and the Technion’s patent registration department, headed by Ofir Alon, is doing wonderful work. We will continue to strive to translate research into finished technology and to bring inventions from the lab to the market.”

Benjamin Soffer, director of T3―Technion Technology Transfer Office, which houses the patent registration department, said that this impressive accomplishment is “an expression of the Technion’s tremendous openness to innovation and to the balance between the entrepreneurial spirit and excellence in academia and research. In the past few decades the Technion has been constantly increasing the entrepreneurial component in training students, with the intention that at the end of their studies the students will be equipped not only with scientific and engineering tools, but also with the managerial and entrepreneurial skills that will enable them to ‘invent their own workplace’ and not only to find jobs as salaried employees in existing companies.”

In many instances, the approval of a patent is the preliminary stage to the commercialization of technology or an invention. In the commercialization field, too, the Technion has made impressive strides: Within less than a decade, revenues from commercialization have jumped from $10.7 million annually (in 2008-2009) to over $30 million (2014-2015).

“It’s important to take into account that the Technion’s research budget, $135 million a year, is very low compared to the other universities and is only 8% of the MIT’s research budget. If the universities were ranked based on their revenues from commercialization relative to their research expenditures, the Technion would be in third place, behind Princeton and New York University,” said Soffer.

The Technion Technology Transfer (T³) office operated in the framework of the Technion Research & Development Foundation, and is responsible for the commercialization and protection of intellectual property developed by the Technion. One of the outstanding successes in this field is the commercialization of Azilect, a drug developed in cooperation with Teva Pharmaceuticals, based on research by professors Moussa Youdim and John Finberg. Sales of this drug top $400 million annually.

T3 manages holdings in some 50 active companies and over the past three years, the Technion’s portfolio companies have raised over $250 million in investment capital. These companies include Argo Medical Technologies (which develops exoskeletons to help the disabled to walk); Applied Immune Technologies (a drug development company specializing in T-Cell Receptor-Like, TCRL, antibodies); Accellta (media and cell cultures for the stem cell industry), Sealantis (tissue adhesive); Avraham Pharmaceuticals (drugs to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive disorders), Corindus (robotics technology that enables cardiologists to perform remote catheterization), VibeSec (information security on web-based telephony), NanoSpun Technologies (smart fibers), ElMindA (imaging system for neuron network activity in the brain and treatment based on network stimulation) DigiFlex (products for the printing industry and industrial processes) and Regentis (gel for regenerating tissue).

The department is responsible, among other things, for the management of the Technion’s patent portfolio, which has over 780 applications for patent registration.

For the full list of the rankings: http://www.academyofinventors.com/pdf/NAI-IPO-Top-100-Universities-2014.pdf

Technion alumni: The driving force of the Israeli economy

Neaman Institute study reveals: Over the past two decades Technion alumni became founders or managers of 1,600 companies that generated over $30 billion and created some 100,000 jobs throughout Israel

Last Thursday, 1,732 graduates of the Technion Class of 2015 received their bachelor’s degrees and joined the 100,000 alumni who have studied here over the past eight decades. At the graduation ceremony Technion President Peretz Lavie revealed the results of a study led by Dr. Daphne Getz, to examine the impact of the Technion on Israel’s economy and society over the past 20 years. The study found that since 1995, 1,319 Technion graduates have been involved in the founding or management of 1,602 companies in Israel, over half of which (811) are still active today. These companies have generated revenues of over $30 million and have created 95,500 jobs.

“The nearly 100,000 alumni who have graduated from Technion over the generations are a unique and outstanding group that is at the fulcrum of Israeli industry,” Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie told the audience at the ceremony. “Without them the advanced aeronautics and space industry would not have developed, nor the world-class high-tech industry. Without them we would not have robots for assisting in heart surgery, miniature cameras for diagnosing digestive tract ailments, life-saving drugs, desalination plants and water recycling plants and the Iron Dome and Magic Wand defense systems. All these wonderful accomplishments would not be possible without Technion and its alumni.”

53% of all the companies founded in the past 20 years are involved in the information and communication technology fields; 24% in life sciences; 8% in the semiconductor industry; and 6% in the cleantech sector.

35% of the 1,319 alumni who founded our managed companies graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering; 21% from the Faculty of Computer Science; 12% from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management; and 8% from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. 39% of the alumni have M.A. or Ph.D. degrees.

In addition, 169 Technion alumni founded or held senior positions in companies outside Israel, and 134 companies were founded based on knowledge generated by senior Technion staff. All told, over the past 20 years 1,905 companies have been founded in Israel and abroad with the involvement of Technion alumni, senior staff and knowledge originating from the Technion.

Of the 1,319 alumni, 902 founded and/or managed one company; 275 founded and/or managed two companies; 93 founded and/or managed three companies; 31 founded and/or managed four companies; one alumnus founded 12 companies and another founded 29 (!) companies.

The figures on the size of startups founded by Technion alumni also attest to their innovation and creativity: 79% of the companies founded are small, with fewer than 50 employees; 16% are medium-sized, with 50-249 employees, and 5% are large.

A closer look at this year’s graduating class reveals another interesting figure: the 1,732 graduates were awarded 1,841 degrees – because 108 of the graduates earned two degrees, and one of the graduates completed three degrees.

For the first time in the Formula competition for students

A helmet with a head-up display, enabling the driver to read the status of the car’s systems without taking his eyes off the road

This innovative invention was installed in the third Technion Formula car, unveiled last week in preparation for the FSAE, being held in Italy in September

The Formula car that will represent the Technion in the FSAE student world championship was unveiled last week. This is the third car built by Technion students, after the previous two recorded impressive accomplishments: two years ago (2013) the Technion Formula team won first place in the rookies category, and last year won first place for car design and improvement over the previous year. The upcoming race will be held in September, in Varano, Italy.

This year’s Formula project team has 11 advisors and 57 students from the faculties of Mechanical Engineering, Aeronautics, Architecture, Industrial Engineering and Management and Electrical Engineering and from the Department of Science and Technology Education. The team has six women students – a record number for the Israeli delegations to the competition. The project is headed by Evgeny Guy, a B.Sc. student, who last year headed the engine division. “Participating in this project is a tremendous investment,” said Evgeny, “but there are things that are worth more than a few grade points, and the practical experience we are getting here is one of them.”

Guy explained that the teams have made some substantial improvements and additions to the car, including reducing its weight by 15%; enhancing its aerodynamics; the pneumatic gear system; a wheel speed sensor; a suspension sensor; an accelerator sensor integrated with a gyroscope and a steering wheel angle sensor.

“In short, we have optimized all the car’s systems and I hope these improvements will be demonstrated in our achievements in the race.”

The 57 students work in specific project teams. The special projects team, headed by Michael Kuchenko, developed a series of sensors and a system with an upper display on the driver’s helmet, like a fighter pilot’s helmet – technology that enables the driver to read the status of the car’s systems without taking his eyes off the road. “This project is an opportunity for the practical application of our theoretical studies,” says Guy Ben Haim, who heads the engine division, “along with other crazies who share the same love for motor sports.”

The mechatronics team, headed by Ohad Basha, augmented the car with an acceleration sensor, a wheel speed sensor, suspension sensor and a steering wheel angle sensor, as well as a Bluetooth system for sending data to a computer.

“This is my first practical application experience at the Technion,” says Yochai Ackerman, who heads the suspension team, “and the experience I am gaining in the planning and execution and the work with the external suppliers is no less important than the theoretical studies.”

The unveiling ceremony was attended by Senior Executive Vice President Prof. Moshe Sidi, Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Prof. Yoram Halevy and the advisor for the New Product Design course, Prof. Reuven Katz.

“The multidisciplinary cooperation is also excellent preparation for the real world, where you will need this kind of cooperation in almost every industry,” said Prof. Sidi at the event. “One day, when you are supervising a large project of national importance, or working on the development of a product that will change the lives of millions, you will remember where it all began.”

Technion students have developed ROBODRINK – a bartender that serves a variety of cocktails at the press of a button

Three students from the Technion Faculty of Computer Sciences have developed ROBODRINK, a robot for mixing alcoholic beverages. The robot was designed by Michal Friedman, Yoav Mizrahi and Zorik Gechman as part of an Arduino systems programming course, under the guidance of Prof. Yossi Gil, tutorial teachers Boris van Sosin and Marina Minkin, and Dr. Nir Levy, academic relations director at Microsoft.

This is essentially an automatic bartender, explains Michal Friedman. “It can mix drinks from a built-in list and prepare cocktails based on personal preferences. We built a machine that has brackets for holding eight bottles. We programmed it to mix drinks using combinations from three bottles of juice and five alcoholic beverages. Users choose a cocktail from the menu in the application we developed. When a glass is put on the platform at the edge of the track, the robot prepares the drink within seconds, based on a precise recipe.”

“We built everything from scratch,” says Zorik Gechman. “This is a project that combines both hardware and software. We assembled the electronic components and built the electrical circuits. We wrote the software for an Arduino processor and developed and app that communicates with the robot via Bluetooth, based on recipes located on the cloud.”

“We very intensively worked on this project for three months,” adds Yoav Mizrahi. “We are software people, but in order to complete our project we taught ourselves how to build the robot. We read a lot on the Internet and overcame a great many challenges.”

During the process of building the robot the students consulted with experienced bartenders who advised them regarding the most common cocktails. “The bartenders we consulted were very enthusiastic and loved the robot idea,” says Michal. “They said they’d be very happy to install one in their bars.”

The Arduino systems programming course his held in conjunction with Microsoft R&D, and provides students with the opportunity to use innovative technologies and software during their studies, including smartphones and tablets for running their applications during the development stage. The course, which was designed to challenge the students in the independent construction of products, included the planning of smart systems that combine hardware and software on the Arduino platform.

Technion Students placed second in the prestigious Student Unmanned Air Systems (SUAS) international Competition

The Technion team, made up of students from the faculties of aerospace and electrical engineering, was awarded second place in a prestigious international competition held in Maryland, USA.

A student team from the Technion, under the supervision of Dror Artzi, Amit Aides and Itai Orr, won second place (out of 55 teams) in a prestigious competition held by the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI), which took place last weekend in Maryland, USA. The international Student Unmanned Air Systems (SUAS) Competition attracts students from universities all over the world, yet most of the competitors are from the US.

The Technion team, which included students from the faculties of aerospace and electrical engineering, were among the 32 teams that made it to the flight course round of the competition and ultimately won second place. They developed two airborne systems that performed autonomous flight, target identification, aerial cargo delivery and obstacle avoidance, all while maintaining communication links to the ground station. Each aircraft was installed with advanced systems including a stabilized camera, an airborne computer image processing and communication system for controlling, monitoring and transferring images.

The competing teams were allotted 20 minutes to deploy their systems, including setting up their ground station. The team’s UAV flew for 26 minutes, during which time it performed the following tasks – autonomous navigation, search area coverage, identification of ground targets, image classification and identification of an off-axis target. All this, while performing autonomous flight and data transmission in real time to the ground station. In addition, the Technion was the only team to autonomously avoid obstacles placed in the flight zone.

The competition also demanded performing a Flight Readiness Review, and in this category the team received many compliments from the judges. For writing the engineering document (Journal Paper) the team earned the highest points and ranked in first place.

In the nine months leading up to the competition, the students on the team carried out trials in systems development including aircraft development, complex experiments and analysis, operating a whole system based on Crew Resource Management (CRM) and operational deployment performance. “We received help and support from several companies and organizations,” said Dror Artzi, “Including RAFAEL, Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit Systems, KAL-KAR Ein Carmel, DHL, IntelliTECH, Intel, YeshGo Electronics, Technion’s Department of Electrical Engineering: particularly its Ollendorff Center and Vision and Image Science Lab (VISL), the Aerospace Faculty, and the Technion at large. The team members demonstrated at the competition the high academic standards of Technion’s future graduates, and presented anew Israel’s exceptional capabilities in developing integrated systems and unmanned aerial vehicles.”

“This has been an incredible experience for us, we feel well rewarded for all the hard work that was invested in this project. The students worked very well together all year and their achievements here is the product of their efforts. Their impressive achievements in the flight and system operation portion of the competition can be linked to the learning process and engineering knowledge they acquired throughout the year.”

Student team members:

Sagiv Yaari, Niv Bahar, Gal Dalali, Haya Rosengard, Eliran Eyal, Shaya Nagar, Yevgeni Gutnik, Dudu Markovich, Ilia Lesovoy, Avishay Hasidof, Lilach Mazor, Havay Gerti, Ori Ashur, Ori Avraham, Shlomi Bouscher, Dima Malkis and Michael Kolokov.

Professor Daniel Rittel, from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Technion, Head of the Materials Mechanics Center, and Deputy Senior Vice President, was awarded the prestigious 2015 Angiola Gili è Cataldo Agostinelli international prize, by the Academy of Sciences of Torino (Italy) in the Applied and Theoretical Mechanics category.

According to the citation of the prize,  “Prof. Rittel has performed pioneering research in the mechanics of materials, with particular focus on thermomechanical coupling in solids. His work has demonstrated that the energy stored in the material is not only due to thermodynamic effects, but also due to changes in the microstructure identified as dynamic recrystallization. His research has also led to a paradigm shift in the modeling of the (dynamic shear) localization phenomena, combining Materials Science, and Solid Mechanics through numerical simulations.”

Practical aspects of Prof. Rittel’s work concern dynamic loading situations such as ballistic impact, high speed machining, and concepts of relevance to fault motion during earthquakes.

A recent Technion study describes a novel optogenetic approach for pacing and resynchronizing the heart in case of heart rhythm disorder.

Technion researchers have developed a new approach for the treatment of abnormal heart rhythms by using a light based therapy. This technology has been reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The study was conducted at the laboratory of Professor Lior Gepstein from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute at the Technion. Professor Gepstein is the director of the Department of Cardiology at Rambam Health Care Campus.

Abnormalities in the function of the heart’s pacemaker cells or electrical conduction system can lead to an abnormally slow heart rate, or lead to a decrease in the hearts’ pumping efficiency by delaying the transmission of electrical signals. In either case, the underlying electrical disease can result in negative and serious consequences for patients including weakness, dizziness, fainting, worsening heart failure symptoms and even the risk of death.

The conventional medical treatment used today relies on the implantation of an electronic pacemaker, which corrects the dysfunction of the natural pacemaker mechanism using electrodes inserted into various areas of the heart. Electronic pacemakers however have many limitations including the risk of infection and the need for repeated invasive surgical procedures for implantation, manipulation, and battery replacements. Furthermore, clinicians are limited by the number and locations of the pacing wires used, and patients are at risk for a decline in heart function since pacemakers cannot re-create the normal electrical activation pattern of the heart. Perhaps most importantly, children who require pacemakers quickly outgrow their pacemaker wires and thus require repeated and invasive interventions over time.

In light of these disadvantages, many researchers are working on developing biological alternatives to the electronic pacemaker. This article describes a study that examines the use of the optogenetic approach for the treatment of abnormal heart rhythms. The study was conducted by Dr. Udi Nussinovitch as part of his PhD work in Professor Gepstein’s laboratory at the Technion. Dr. Nussinovitch is currently an intern at the Department of Internal Medicine at Rambam.

The optogenetic technology employed allowed researchers to selectively activate light-sensitive proteins (such as the ion-channel ChR2, first identified in algae), which were overexpressed in excitable cells (such as nerve or muscle cells), in an attempt to modulate (either augment or suppress) their electrical activity. Optogenetics has become an important tool in brain research and the current study is the first to translate this important innovation to pace and resynchronize the heartbeat.

In the study, conducted in rats, the researchers first directed a beam of blue light at an area in the heart where the light-sensitive genes were delivered. This resulted in effective pacing of the heart at different rates as dictated by the frequency of the blue light flashes applied. Subsequently, a more advanced experiment was conducted, in which various locations in the rat hearts expressing ChR2 were activated simultaneously by light, resulting in improved synchronization of the contractions of the ventricles.

Professor Gepstein stresses that this is a preliminary study, and that “in order to translate the aforementioned approach to the clinical arena, we must overcome some significant hurdles. We must improve the penetration of light through the tissues, ensure continuous expression of the protein in the heart for many years, and develop a unique pacing device that will provide the necessary illumination. But despite all of this, the results of the study demonstrate the unique potential of optogenetics for both cardiac pacing (as an alternative to electronic pacemakers) and resynchronization (for the treatment of heart failure with ventricular dys-synchrony) therapies.”

Two teams tied in first place at the 2015 Techno Brain ‘boating’ competition, which was held at a special 72-square-meter pool erected in the heart of the Technion campus.

Much creative genius was demonstrated by Technion students, and great fun was had by all, at yesterday’s annual “Dr. Bob’s TechnoBrain Competition”, sponsored by Robert J. Shillman, in memory of Neev-ya Durban.

Twelve teams competed in the 2015 Techno Brain competition, held on Wednesday, June 17. The challenge: race elastic-band powered boats. This year’s competition, entitled “Gumpool 2015 Race” was held in the spirit of “green energy.” Competitors were given a complex engineering challenge to tackle: design elastic-band powered boats (built in advance) to travel a distance of eight meters, anchor by means of a magnet, and fire a jet of water into a funnel from a distance of three meters – all this is in the shortest possible time and with smallest number of rubber bands.

“In honor of the 13th annual competition, a special 72-square-meter pool was erected in the heart of the Technion campus. The 13 teams that competed on Wednesday were those that had advanced to the final round, from among the 46 teams that entered the competition,” explained Ben Grotzke who organized the race on behalf of the Technion’s Student Association (ASAT). “The provisions set out in the rules of the competition called for high-level engineering design standards, and I am very proud of the creativity demonstrated by the teams in the planning and execution of their boat models.”

At the end of this unique and truly captivating race, the judges awarded after much deliberation the first place title to two teams, who will each receive a cash prize for NIS 7,500.

The winning teams:

The “Smiley” team, whose members included Marina Minkin from the Faculty of Computer Science, Vasily Vitchevsky from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Michael Pozavski from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, tied for first place. “We used a vane to push the water back, putting to use Newton’s third law of motion that states that when you push against something (in this case the water) it (the water) pushes back on you (the boat) with an equal and opposite force,” explained Fozbski. “In order to reduce aerodynamic drag (created by the friction of flowing water) during the race, we built a mechanism that lowers the squirting pump into the water towards the end.”

Members of the other team tied in first place are Hila Shmuel, Itay Mangel and Aviv Nachmias from the Faculty of Physics, who succeeded in ‘cracking the speed code.’ “The propeller is positioned directly on the rubber band and thereby is spared from friction,” Said Mangel, “and its location on the front of the boat causes the boat to rise slightly, which also lowers the level of friction with the water.” Shmuel, who is pursuing a combined mathematics and physics degree   through the Technion’s Excellence Program, said that it was a great experience indeed. “It was an opportunity to use out hands and minds together and to understand the importance of more and more experiments.”

In third place came the team of Yair Garfunkel and his girlfriend Or Oron, both from Misgav (a community of settlements from the Galilee region); he’s studying in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and she’s a graduate of Wizo (The Neri Bloomfield School of Design), with a degree in visual communications. The pair spent nearly two months working on this project. Oron admitted that, “My degree didn’t make me the lead on design; we planned the entire project together, both in the planning and execution.” They used sewer pipes strapped to the sides of the boat to keep it afloat, a big red (laser cut) plastic propeller, and a white cone. “As a matter of fact, this was also supposed to be able to shoot confetti, but this feature didn’t work…,” she added.

The teams represented an array of demographic profiles and displayed an impressive range of technological skill. A team of graduate students from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering sailed their boat using a smartphone, and 82-year-old Ishai Zimerman of Kibbutz Ein Harod and his son-in-law Roni Atzili, who won last year’s competition, entered the race with their boat nicknamed ‘Endurance’ after the legendary sailing vessel that joined the Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914.

The TechnoBrain competition is being held in memory of its conceiver and founder, the late Neev-Ya Durban. Neev-Ya, a student and outstanding Aerospace Engineering graduate of the Technion, was an IDF Air Force officer when he was murdered by a car thief on a quiet street in Tel Aviv on March 8th, 2003.

The competition and the prizes are sponsored by Dr. Robert Shillman (whom everyone knows as Dr. Bob), who participated in graduate courses at the Technion. This year’s judging panel included Prof. Benny Natan, Assoc. Prof. Gil Iosilevskii and Prof. David Durban (Neev-Ya’s father), all from the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Technion.

At the end of the event, Prof. Durban commented that competition is the essence of engineering, as it teaches students to plan for the unknown.

 

Photo Credits: Shiatzo Photography Services, The Spokesperson’s Office

 

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This Wednesday (June 17) at 12:30, in the heart of the Technion campus, the Technion will host the “Gumpool 2015 race”

This year the race is being held in the spirit of “green energy”: elastic-band powered boats, built in advance by the competitors, will be required to travel a distance of eight meters, anchor by means of a magnet and fire a jet of water into a funnel from a distance of three meters – all this is in the shortest possible time.

In honor of the 13th annual competition, a special 72-square-meter pool is being built at the Technion. The 14 teams competing on Wednesday have advanced to the final round, from among the 46 teams that entered the competition. This year’s teams include: Technion students and alumni; high school students from Baka al-Garabiya and the team that won the race last year – 82-year-old Ishai Zimerman of Kibbutz Ein Harod and his son and son-in-law.

The winners of the race will be awarded prizes of NIS 10,000, NIS 5,000 and NIS 3,000.

The TechnoBrain competition is being held in memory of its conceiver and founder, the late Neev-ya Durban.
Neev-ya, a student and outstanding graduate of the Technion, was an IDF officer when he was murdered by a car thief on a quiet street in Tel Aviv on March 8th , 2003.

The competition and the prizes are sponsored by Dr. Robert Shillman (whom everyone knows as Dr. Bob), who participated in graduate courses at the Technion.

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