Author: shelleys

Maayan Kinsbursky, a graduate of the advanced degree program in industrial design at the Technion, has won the international Red Dot Design Award for her master’s project. The award ceremony will take place in Singapore on October 10, and the project will subsequently be exhibited at the Red Dot Design Museum, also in Singapore. The project was supervised by Assistant Professor Yoav Sterman, former innovation manager at Nike, and a faculty member in the industrial design program headed by Prof. Ezri Tarazi, in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning.

Kinsbursky’s project, U·Bra, is an innovative bra designed for women who have undergone a mastectomy and cannot have reconstruction surgery. These women often opt for a silicone prosthesis inserted into a special bra, which can cause excessive sweating, rashes, pressure, and shoulder pain. Additionally, the prosthesis can create an asymmetrical appearance and may cause discomfort and embarrassment due to the fear of it shifting or falling out.

In Kinsbursky’s research, the bra and prosthesis were designed as an integrated unit, customized for women who have had a mastectomy. The customization is based on 3D scanning, design processing, and 3D printing using a unique method developed at the Technion. The resulting product is a soft, airy, lightweight textile item that is tailored to the specific user.

Kinsbursky, who grew up in the Golan Heights, completed her bachelor’s degree in industrial design at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and pursued her master’s degree at the Technion. The award-winning project was realized at the Technion using innovative printing technology developed in the CodedMatter Laboratory led by Asst. Prof. Sterman. As she is currently on maternity leave, Kinsbursky’s lab team is continuing the pilot program, fitting bras for twenty women who have undergone mastectomies.

The Red Dot Design Awards, considered to be the “Oscars of the design world,” aim to promote excellence in design. The awards are given in three categories and Kinsbursky won in the Design Concept category. The project was selected to participate in the Technion’s “Science Accelerators” program, generously supported by the Hitman Foundation and the Bernstein Foundation.

Photo credits: Haim Zinger, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning Photography Lab (Maayan and Yoav). Reut Degani (Bra).

Earlier this year, the Technion held a special event dedicated to student volunteer initiatives related to the current situation in Israel. The event was organized by the Technion’s Social Hub, part of the Dean of Students Office. It was led by Dean of Students, Prof. Ayelet Fishman as part of the “Wednesday Afternoon” event series at the Technion.

“The horrific massacre on October 7 and the ongoing war present our society and the Technion community with many challenges and difficulties,” said Prof. Fishman. “It is precisely in these moments of crisis that the resilience and strength of the Technion community have been revealed, as many have mobilized for war efforts in various ways. Many students have been involved in volunteer work in agriculture, education, the Technion operations center, and other initiatives. We at the Technion value not only academic excellence, but also social involvement and community contribution. I am proud of all the students who engaged in volunteer activities and congratulate the award winners.”

Joining the winning students at the event were Senior Vice President of the Technion Prof. Oded Rabinovitch, Social Hub Director Ronit Piso, and Prof. Merav Aharon-Gutman who serves as the academic chair of the hub.

“People out there always need us, and the incubator’s goal is to create a bridge and help students and administrative and academic staff cross it and contribute to society as much as we can,” said Prof. Aharon-Gutman.

Ronit Piso, director of the Social Hub, said, “Usually, when talking about activism, there is a ‘bell curve’: at one end, the few who lead and inspire, at the other end, the few who do nothing, and in the middle, the majority – ‘finger activists’ and salon talkers. Since the beginning of the war, we have seen a different picture: a huge majority acting, cooking, transporting, and assisting in large numbers. Out of hundreds of students who volunteered during this period, we selected five students, each of whom conceived and led a unique initiative where such an initiative did not previously exist.”

At the event, certificates and a cash prize of 2,000 NIS were awarded to each of the winners:

Valerie Kovalenok, a student in the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, joined the “One Heart” association’s assistance project for evacuees following October 7. During the activity, she identified the need for workspaces for the evacuated populations to maintain their livelihoods. Valerie established shared offices for the evacuee communities in collaboration with various high-tech companies. The communities of Kibbutz Erez and Kibbutz Orim received mobile offices.

Yedidya Ben Yair, a student in the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, took care of families of stateless asylum seekers in Israel who arrived at the Hanaton Educational Center without any possessions. Yedidya provided them with various forms of assistance, from basic necessities such as clothing, to bureaucratic help with enrolling in educational frameworks.

Dvir Simani, a student in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, established a system for organizing funerals: from creating a volunteer database and logistical organization to accompanying families and digging graves. He operated the nationwide, around-the-clock system throughout the war period until the start of the semester.

Sivan Schwartz, a doctoral student in the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, organized a response for evacuated children on the autism spectrum, including medical, emotional, and logistical support. The volunteer organization she established continues to support these children.

Avia Ben-Ari, a doctoral student in the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, assisted in the restoration of the Zikim printing house and in generating donations for the headquarters of the hostages and missing persons. She created prints for shirts and posters produced at the printing house for its economic stabilization, and all project profits from product sales were donated to the headquarters of the hostages and missing persons.

Last month, the Technion held the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Graduate Student Research Day, where leading research by graduate students was presented. This year, the research day was held as part of the Technion’s annual Board of Governors meeting, and the works were presented by students who had previously won in faculty research days.

According to Prof. Uri Peskin, dean of the Graduate School, “The posters presented by the students were of a very high standard and sparked lively discussions. It was a celebration of the diverse research at the Technion. They are a source of pride and inspiration for all of us.”

In the PhD category, first place was awarded to Anas Odeh from the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, supervised by Prof. Peleg Hasson, for his research on inhibiting lysyl oxidase as a novel route to inhibit fibrosis in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Second place was awarded to Nir Strugo from the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology program, supervised by Prof. Ariel Kaplan, for his research on dynamic interactions between transcription factors and DNA at the single-molecule level. Third place was awarded to Yael Hershkovitz Pollak from the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering, supervised by Prof. Hossam Haick, for her research on volatile organic molecules as markers for intercellular communication between apoptotic and cancer cells. The People’s Choice Award was given to Perla Armaly from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, supervised by Arch. Shani Barath and Prof. Assaf Shwartz, for her development of building materials based on cyanobacteria.

In the Master’s category, first place was awarded to Merav Berkovich from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. Her research, supervised by Prof. Tal Alon-Mozes and Dr. Daniel Metcalfe, focuses on “living tiles” – the integration of growing material in tiles. Second place was awarded to Ilaie Nadejde from the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering for his research on mechanical vibration control using phononic crystals, supervised by Dr. Pavel Galich. Third place and the People’s Choice Award were given to Tamir Shapiro from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering for his work, supervised by Prof. Ido Kaminer, on free electron computed tomography.

The Taub Faculty of Computer Science recently held its annual social-technological hackathon: CS Hack – Doing Good. This event aims to harness technological innovation for the benefit of society and the community. This year, following the events of October 7 and the Swords of Iron War, it focused on developing technological solutions to improve mental resilience.

Participants in the hackathon – 140 students from all computer science degree tracks – worked on their inventions for 24 hours straight and were mentored by faculty members, researchers, engineers from industry, and therapeutic professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. During the weeks that preceded the hackathon, the participants met with patients and professionals in order to learn in depth about the relevant fields. The students visited Kfar Sarah, a post-traumatic growth healing center, and attended a lecture by Yotam Dagan, a clinical psychologist who was the specialist for the elite Shayetet 13 unit, entitled “Thoughts about trauma, resilience, and digital mental health.”

First prize went to a group that developed a technology to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through cooking. Their treatment is based on virtual reality (VR) glasses in a virtual kitchen – combining cooking, nature, and music selected by the user. The students in the group were Amal Hihi, Haya Hihi, Leena Shakour, Wijdan Eslim, and Adan Shamma. The idea was conceived by the Hihi sisters, daughters of the late Faiz Hihi, who was killed during his army service. According to Amal, “On the day that Dad was killed, Mom waited for him with a dish of stuffed grape leaves, and since then, for 20 years, she hasn’t been able to prepare this dish. Not long ago, on Memorial Day, Mom took part in a cooking workshop meant to help people cope with loss – and that’s where the change happened, and she went back to making stuffed grape leaves. That is how we understood the enormous potential of cooking as a means of therapy, and that is the background of our initiative.”

Second place went to Yinon Goldshtein, Ido Amit, Avishai Mualem, and Avidan Borisov, who developed an AI tool that improves the treatment of PTSD through personally adapted assignments. Goldshtein explained that “psychological treatments sometimes include assignments that the patient must complete at home, such as journaling, where he or she records experiences and small successes, or detailed planning of the following day, or documenting exposure to fears. The system we designed enables the patient to speak in a regular manner to a designated bot. In this way, we improve the home assignments and also help the patient track their progress. The advantage of our group is that we are three master’s students whose field is AI and one psychology student with a background in psychology and cognition, so we were able to combine the therapeutic aspects with the capabilities of language models that function in a local and secure environment.”

Third place was awarded to Yoav Sahar, Yaniv Vyssokii, Ron Cohen, and Maxim Wainer, who developed a system that cancels out loud sounds such as ambulance sirens, which may trigger PTSD sufferers’ symptoms. The code developed by the team recognizes “triggering” sounds in real time and erases them immediately. In the future, this code could be used to filter unwanted sounds in phone conversations, television shows, and YouTube videos. According to members of the group, “our vision is to expand the code so that it will be able to filter a larger variety of sounds that might frighten all of us these days, including ambulance sirens, motorcycle noise, and firecrackers, so that people with PTSD from their army service and those suffering from anxiety can lead calmer lives.”

The jury also gave special mention to Saar Drive, Keren Losev, Shir Yehyie, Eden Elgavi, and Galor Lazar for developing an internet platform aimed at alleviating emotional and psychological hardships of those serving in the army reserves by making bureaucracy and information about their rights more accessible. The system processes Form 3010 and additional minimal personal data and collects the individual rights and benefits of each reservist from all the various government entities and NGOs. Moreover, the system fills out the relevant forms automatically in order to lighten the bureaucratic burden.

Among the other projects developed by the students include a system for early detection of ASD symptoms, making it possible for the patient to receive treatment at an early stage and recover from PTSD as early as possible by monitoring physiological indicators and responses to text questionnaires; a system that connects to the patient’s smart watch while they’re sleeping and monitors indicators in order to detect an approaching attack, in which case it activates relaxing music until the indicators stabilize; a game of Chasing the Sun based on Google Street View and a well-known technique which has been proven clinically to reduce the risk of PTSD by converting negative memories to positive experiences; and the commemoration project “Remembering their Voices,” where one can listen to texts in the voice of someone who died, alongside the screening of pictures, thereby creating a video featuring their voice and image.

At the start of the event, Prof. Danny Raz, dean of the Taub Faculty of Computer Science, said that “I have many roles as dean, but standing here is one of the most exciting. I can see the energy, the motivation, and the desire to do good in the world. This hackathon has a unique aim – to do good – and like in all things, the most important part is the people: you, the students who will work on the projects, the mentors who will guide them, and no less important, many people who will benefit from these inventions. May you do good and succeed.”

Since October 7, tens of thousands of wounded soldiers and civilians have embarked on rehabilitation processes. According to estimates by relevant professionals, a large share of the wounded is not only coping with physical challenges but also with anxiety, depression, PTSD, problems adapting, problems communicating, and psychotic conditions. Consequently, it is crucial to find efficient solutions related to mental resilience.

Colonel (Res.) Prof. Eyal Fruchter, an alumnus of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and a member of its faculty and the former head of the IDF’s Mental Health Department, lectured at the start of the hackathon. He talked about how PTSD symptoms have been well known for a long time, but the phenomenon’s recognition as an actual disorder is relatively new. In the past, it was ignored and often mislabeled as nostalgia, homesickness, weakness, and other names. “Today, we know many things about PTSD: that it is an actual physiological phenomenon that can have severe ramifications – depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies, addiction to drugs and alcohol, and even cancer; that psycho-therapeutic intervention at an early stage can be very helpful; that we know that defining a person as disabled harms their chances to heal; and that around one-third of the people who currently experience PTSD symptoms will not have PTSD forever. What don’t we know? We still don’t know how to diagnose and evaluate PTSD using objective tools, and this is where your field – technology and computers – can make a big difference. We need technological tools that will help the patients and the therapists. We would like to be able to diagnose people in an objective manner, because this is also in their interest. That is how the ‘cloud of suspicion’ that hovers above them will be removed. As a result, we will be able to provide treatment precisely to those who need it,” he said.

Dr. A., head of the Algorithm Division at Rafael’s R&D Center and a Technion alumnus, told the participants: “I’m here for two reasons – firstly, because I began my professional journey at the Technion and spent a decade of my life here; and secondly, in addition to its significant contribution to Israel’s security, Rafael contributes to society through revolutionary and groundbreaking technological innovations. Already as a student at the Technion, I mentored disabled IDF veterans coping with PTSD, and I understood the importance of personal rehabilitation and mental resilience. I came here today with a team of mentors, engineers from Rafael, in order to help them, and for us it’s a great privilege to be here.”

The hackathon partnered with the Restart NGO, which was established by soldiers wounded during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 and seeks to improve the lives of wounded soldiers and help them get their lives back on track. Nir Leon, who headed the NGO’s mentoring program until recently, was wounded during the Second Lebanon War when he was a commander in the reserves. He is 44, married and a father of three, and only discovered that he has PTSD three years after he was wounded. “It was a slow decline,” he says. “My circle of friends shrank, I dropped out of university, I had a hard time keeping a job, I closed up inside myself. When I was diagnosed in 2009, the treatment of emotionally wounded IDF soldiers wasn’t developed like it is today, but at least I understood from what I was suffering.” Regarding the hackathon, he says that “the fact that this event exists is very important in itself, even before we talk about the actual innovations. There’s a large group of students who came to do good – and that shouldn’t be taken for granted. They are being exposed to the world of PTSD and they will tell their friends about it, and in this way awareness about this subject will grow. PTSD must not only be the secret of those who suffer from it.”

The unique hackathon lasted two days (June 20-21) and took place in partnership with the Israel Ministry of Defense, the IEC, Mobileye, Cadence, KLA, Rafael, the Technion’s Center for Student Counseling and Support, and the Technion’s Social Hub. These organizations helped mentor the students and evaluate the solutions. The various projects were presented to the jury, which included tech experts and mental health professionals, and was headed by Prof. Yoram Yovell – a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, author, and brain researcher from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Research by the Technion has demonstrated that activation of the brain’s reward system could boost recovery from a heart attack. The research, which was conducted at the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, was led by Ph.D. student Hedva Haykin under the supervision of Prof. Asya Rolls and Prof. Lior Gepstein.

The Technion research group focused on the reward system, a brain network activated in positive emotional states and motivation and evaluated its potential in improving recovery from acute myocardial infarction (AMI) (commonly known as a heart attack). In an article published by the researchers in Nature Cardiovascular Research, they demonstrate how in AMI in mice, the activation of this system significantly reduces the extent of the resulting infarct scarring and improves the clinical outcomes of the AMI. The research findings establish a causal connection between the reward system and recovery from AMI, introducing potential therapeutic avenues for intervention.

It has long been known that emotional states are able to influence cardiac function. For example, in an extreme case known as “Broken Heart Syndrome,” acute stress is liable to trigger a condition that mimics a heart attack. Broken heart syndrome is a condition where some of the heart muscle weakens rapidly, but there is no evidence of blocked coronary arteries. Similarly, psychological processes have a known impact on recovery from a heart attack, and on cardiovascular disease in general. For instance, anxiety and depression can worsen the heart’s condition, whereas positive emotional states can improve it.

The physiological mechanisms at the foundation of the heart-brain connection are still unclear. Now, thanks to the collaboration between Profs. Rolls and Gepstein, there is good reason to hope that the research findings will lead to improvements in the treatment of heart disease.

Heart attacks occur when blood flow to the heart muscle (myocardium) is obstructed following partial or complete blockage of a coronary artery by blood clots. In the acute phase, this is liable to lead to a variety of severe symptoms, and even to life threatening arrhythmia (sudden cardiac arrest). In the chronic phase, prolonged deprivation of oxygen supply to the myocardium can lead to necrosis and post-necrotic myocardial scarring as part of an inflammatory reaction. This leads to a gradual decline in the heart’s ability to pump, to the point of developing a clinical condition known as heart failure. As mentioned, there is evidence that the emotional state can influence the course of disease and recovery following AMI, but until now, the underlying physiological mechanisms were not well understood. The Technion research reveals a novel mechanistic connection between the mental state and recovery outcomes from heart attack.

The reward system is largely activated by the release of dopamine in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in the brain. Positive expectations and motivation stimulate neurons in the VTA. Studies in Prof. Rolls’ laboratory have shown that activation of VTA dopaminergic neurons modulates immune activity, partly through the regulation of the sympathetic nervous system. In the present study, active intervention in the VTA by the researchers following AMI resulted in favorable modulation of the immune response within the damaged myocardium, a reduction in myocardial fibrosis, an increase in blood vessel formation, and, as a result, an improvement in cardiac performance. The researchers found that these beneficial effects on the heart are mediated, at least in part, by the secretion of the protein, complement component C3, by the liver, which is also a member of the immune system.

There are presently numerous methods to actively (as opposed to naturally) stimulate the reward system, in humans as well. This effect is potentially achievable by available, non-invasive means, including pharmacological interventions, biofeedback, and focused ultrasound. Consequently, the Technion researchers’ scientific discovery could have meaningful future implications on the treatment of heart attacks.

Prof. Lior Gepstein, Director of the Cardiology Department at the Rambam Health Care Campus and an academic staff member at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, is a world-renowned cardiac researcher. Among other subjects, his diverse research studies discuss the generation of heart tissue from human embryonic stem cells, cardiac arrythmias and their treatment, and the development of molecularly targeted therapies and cell transplantation in heart disease. His many achievements include the development of a biological pacemaker (Nature Biotechnology), cardiac tissue engineering (Nature Communications), development of optogenetic-based therapies for the treatment of cardiac disorders (Nature Biotechnology), and innovative models based on induced pluripotent stem cells for research and treatment of inherited heart conditions (Nature) and drug development.

Prof. Asya Rolls is a psychoneuroimmunologist and a leading researcher in psychosomatic effects, i.e., physiological mechanisms whereby emotions and thoughts affect physical health. In research published by Prof. Rolls in Nature Medicine in 2016, she demonstrated that intervention in the brain’s reward system strengthens immunological host defense, thus enhancing defenses against bacterial infections. In an article published in Nature Communications two years later (2018), Prof. Rolls showed that activation of the reward system attenuates tumor growth. In another article, published in 2021 in Cell, Prof. Rolls demonstrated the ability to “reactivate” colon inflammation (colitis) by influencing the brain alone.

Hedva Haykin recently completed her doctoral studies under the joint supervision of Prof. Rolls and Prof. Gepstein in the framework of the Faculty of Medicine’s multidisciplinary program for outstanding students, while concurrently completing her MBA studies at the Technion. As mentioned, her present research was published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, and she was also recently awarded the Israel Heart Society’s J.J. Kellerman Young Investigator Award for 2024.

The present research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC), the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes (HHMI), the Wellcome Trust, Israel Science Foundation (ISF), and the Mirian and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation.

For the full article, click here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-024-00491-3 

The world’s population is aging at a rapid pace. Estimates indicate that the percentage of people aged 65 and over in the population will double over the next two decades. Enhancing the quality of life of the elderly is thus one of the most complex health challenges facing humanity. As part of the Technion’s vision to engage and influence global challenges and health issues in particular, the Technion Center for Healthy Aging (iTechAge) was launched as a multi-disciplinary, campus wide research center.

At the launch event, Deputy Senior Vice President for Biomedical Science and Engineering and Head of the Technion Human Health Initiative (THHI) Prof. Noam Ziv, described the evolution of the Center from its inception to its current form. This initiative was made possible, among other things, by a large-scale effort led by Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan to promote cross-faculty collaborative research in the realm of human health.

During the event, Prof. Shai Shen-Orr, head of the Center for Healthy Aging and faculty member at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, detailed how the integration of the Technion’s unique strategic advantages—a technological university with a medical faculty, experience in collaborative multi-disciplinary research, the accumulation of high-quality professional knowledge for analysis and inference, investigators from the fields of medicine, science, and engineering in a collaborative research environment with a collective goal, commitment, and sense of mission—will lead to formative research with a real impact on people, communities, decision-makers, and policies.

Later in the event, the four synergistic Center components were presented:

Establishing the Center and Creating Content

Emphasis on creating a community of researchers, strategic collaborations, pooling resources, and sharing knowledge.

Creating a Representative Human Cohort

Spanning a wide spectrum of ages and having increased diversity characteristics, initially encompassing about 1,000 individuals and expected to grow to about 10,000. The database based on this cohort will include clinical data and biological samples collected longitudinally over many years and will serve to address multiple health, medical, and lifestyle questions.

Systems Medicine Center

Creating a unified center for the collection, analysis, and centralization of samples and data, based on existing infrastructure centers, including the Azrieli Genomics Center, the Smoler Proteomics Center, and the Perlmutter Metabolomics Center.

Research Themes

• Decoding Aging Mechanisms at the Cellular and Molecular Levels: Led by Assistant Professor Ayala Shiber and Associate Professor Arnon Henn from the Faculty of Biology.
• Studying Aging Influences on Body Systems (Immune System, Hormonal System): Led by Assistant Professor Noga Ron-Harel, Faculty of Biology, and Prof. Shai Shen-Orr, Faculty of Medicine.
• Studying the Effects of Aging on Brain Function: Led by Assistant Professor Firas Mawassi, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, and Assistant Professor Ben Engelhard, Faculty of Medicine.
• Biomarkers and Integrative Models to Understand and Predict Aging Metrics at the Individual Level: Led by Associate Professor Yoni Savir, Faculty of Medicine.
• Designing, Developing, and Testing Food and Drug Compounds for the Elderly: Led by Prof. Uri Lesmes, Biotechnology and Food Engineering.
• Means and Devices to Aid Movement and Mobility Among the Elderly: Led by Dr. Arielle Fisher.
• Social Aspects of Aging: Communities as means to maintain mental and physical health, and establishing appropriate directives to optimize such aspects, led by Associate Professor Merav Aharon Gutman, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning.

The Center was established thanks to the involvement and support of the Senior Vice President of the Technion, Prof. Oded Rabinovitch, the Vice President for Research Prof. Noam Adir, the Vice President and CEO Dr. Rafi Aviram, and the Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development Prof. Wayne Kaplan.

This is the first year that higher education has been included in the Globes Brand Index. The index reveals that in response to the question of where to study, one in five Israelis recommends the Technion over any other academic institution. Additionally, the index shows that relevance to the labor market is the main criterion when choosing a university today.

Every year, Globes publishes the 100 leading brands in Israel, and this year it included institutions of higher education for the first time. The index is based on a particularly broad survey of 3,500 respondents, aged 18 and over, who constitute a representative sample of the Israeli population, including Haredi and Arab communities. The survey was conducted between April and May by the New Wave Institute, an external and independent research institute specializing in consumerism.

The Technion, which opened its doors 100 years ago, is among the top 100 universities in the world according to the prestigious Shanghai Index and among the top 10 technological universities globally. The Technion has gained a worldwide reputation for its pioneering work in many fields, including science, technology, medicine, education, and architecture. According to Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan, “The Technion reaching first place in the higher education category in the Brands Index is an important and exciting vote of confidence in our centennial year. For one hundred years, more than one hundred thousand graduates, and thousands of administrative and academic staff have fortified the security, economy, and society of the State of Israel and continue to shape its future out of a deep commitment and mission.”

For the full list, click here.

The three Technion faculty members who were selected are:

Prof. Oded Beja of the Faculty of Biology, whose field is metagenomics – an approach that analyzes organisms in their natural environment. This approach was developed in response to the fact that around 98% of all microorganisms can’t grow in laboratory cultures, certainly not in a manner that resembles the natural process. Ribosomal RNA analyses provide many insights, but not a complete understanding of the organism’s ecological function and its physiologic and biochemical properties. The approach used by Prof. Beja’s research group exposes this knowledge using metagenomics, making it possible to overcome this problem by analyzing the microbial genomes and detecting protein-coding genes and biochemical routes in cells. Using metagenomics, Prof. Beja discovered microbial rhodopsin proteins used for harvesting light energy.

Prof. Benjamin Podbilewicz of the Faculty of Biology, who studies cell fusion mechanisms in fertilization and organ development. His pioneering work led to the discovery of two fusogens that cause cells to fuse: EFF-1 and AFF-1 in C. elegans. These proteins are necessary and sufficient to fuse cells during the development of organs. His group demonstrated that switching viral fusogens with EFF-1 or AFF-1 causes a viral infection. This was the first time it was shown that cellular fusogens can replace viral fusogens. The group solved EFF-1’s atomic structure and discovered a structural similarity to viral fusogens; this was the first structure that has been solved for cellular fusogens. Together with Pablo Aguilar, Podbilewicz predicted that a plant protein (GCS1/HAP2) structurally resembles EFF-1 and proved its activity. They defined a super-family of fusogens from animals, plants, protists and viruses known as fusexins. His lab found that EFF-1 and AFF-1 maintain and repair the tree-like structure of neurons and showed how dendritic branches age and ways to rejuvenate them. He also studied the first mammalian sperm fusogen with Tetsuya Higashiyama, and new fusexins in Archaea with an international consortium.

Prof. Asya Rolls of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine studies psychosomatic interactions – specifically, how the brain influences the immune system and its ability to cope with diseases. Her work demonstrated that the reward mechanism in the brain, which is connected to motivation and hope, increases the immune system’s activity, thereby boosting the defense against viral infections (the research was published in 2016 in the journal Nature Medicine). In a different study (published in Nature Communications in 2018), she showed that similar brain interventions lead to a dramatic reduction in the size of cancerous tumors, mediated by the immune system. In an additional article from 2021, published in Cell, Prof. Rolls demonstrated a difference aspect of the connection between the brain and the immune system by showing that the brain preserves “memories” of past diseases, and is capable of reproducing these diseases by activating those memories. These findings have dramatic ramifications on understanding the placebo and nocebo effects, as well as the outbreak of diseases following certain emotional experiences.

EMBO is an international organization whose members are scientists from 30 countries. 92 Nobel Prize laureates are now, or were in the past, members of the organization. Its main goals are to support talented researchers at all phases of their careers, promote the sharing of scientific knowledge and help create a rich research environment that enables researchers to make the most of their abilities. The new young scientists who join the four-year program, during which they receive financial support from the organization, enjoy important professional connections, mentorship of senior researchers from the EMBO community, leadership training, and access to the research facilities at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. The organization, which was founded in July 1964, is currently celebrating its 60th anniversary. The new cohort includes nine Israeli researchers.

Click here for the New EMBO Members 2024 list Outstanding scientists elected to EMBO Membership – Press releases – EMBO

One undergraduate student and two doctoral students from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering have been selected to attend the 73rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, where young scientists meet with Nobel laureates. Some 650 young scientists from around the world will participate in this year’s meetings, which will take place this week.

Nevo Werner-Reiss is a fourth-year undergraduate student in the double-major track of Electrical Engineering and Physics at the faculty, and is a member of the Technion Excellence Program.

Exceptionally for an undergraduate student, Nevo was an active member of Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky’s lab which he initially joined toward the end of his first year in the Excellence Program for a summer project. There Nevo worked on adapting and evaluating algorithms and hardware designs for In Memory Binary Neural Network inference accelerators. During his third academic year, Nevo presented his research and won the “Best Student Poster” Award at ATTO9 – The 9th International Conference on Attosecond Science and Technology that was held in Jeju, South Korea.

In his poster, Nevo showcased his research project: “Towards Quantum Tomography of Attosecond Pulse by FROG-CRAB” where he explored the effect of photon statistics on FROG-CRAB. His research was supervised by Matan Even Tzur and Prof. Oren Cohen. Nevo is continuing his studies as a graduate student at Prof. Yuval Shagam‘s Molecular Quantum Technology Lab.

Sapir Biton completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees at the faculty and is currently an Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship, which is given to outstanding doctoral students by the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations. Under the supervision of Prof. Nir Tessler, Biton’s doctoral research focuses on devices in the fields of optoelectronics and microelectronics based on electrochemical processes.

According to Prof. Tessler, “Electrochemical transistors and memories are likely to be part of the next stage of the microelectronics industry, and I am very pleased that Sapir has taken us in this direction. The fact that researchers worldwide are changing the structure of their devices following Sapir’s insights is direct evidence of her excellence.”

In an article published in 2023, the two presented a model describing the instability mechanism in perovskites – cells that are expected to be integrated into silicon solar cells and later also into lightweight and semi-transparent cells for various other applications. The findings are expected to accelerate the use of perovskites and improve the production of green energy.

Michael Birk completed a double major in physics and electrical engineering as part of the “Pinnacle” Future Scientists program, and he is currently a doctoral student under the joint supervision of Prof. Ido Kaminer (AdQuanta) from the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Prof. Oren Cohen from the Faculty of Physics. In his doctoral research, Birk focuses on the theory and application of quantum optics.

According to Prof. Kaminer, “Michael’s contribution was crucial to our publications in Nature Physics and Nature Photonics last year, where he was one of the lead authors. Together, the two articles laid the foundation for a new research field – strong-field quantum optics – which has already begun to engage researchers worldwide. In a third article published in the Journal of Optics, Michael led the Technion’s contribution to an international collaboration of researchers, demonstrating impressive leadership and collaboration skills.”

Prof. Brik was born in the village of Abu Snan in the Western Galilee and completed his undergraduate degree at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and his master’s degree and PhD at the Technion. After completing his PhD, he continued to a postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California. Upon his return to Israel, Prof. Brik was appointed as a senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University, and within five years, he was promoted to full professor. In 2015, he was recruited to the Technion and has since been a faculty member in the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry.

Irith Rappaport, daughter of the founders of the Bruce and Ruth Rappaport Foundation said: “The vision behind the prizes established by my late parents is to encourage excellence, whether in the category for biomedical research or in the categories for art and for women generating change. The research prize is a professional award that has gained a reputation as one of the prestigious and important awards in Israel. Moreover, as someone who was born in Haifa, the most diverse city in Israel, the model of a shared society was and remains self-evident to me. Therefore, I am proud to award the prize each year to the winners who represent Israeli society as a whole. I am confident that my parents would have been proud that the prizes they established sanctify the values ​​they instilled in us: excellence, equality, and mutual respect regardless of religion, race, and gender.”

Prof. Brik focuses on biological chemistry and develops innovative methods for the synthesis of proteins with unique properties, such as those that undergo changes after translation. These proteins are used in structural, biochemical, biophysical, and functional analyses, as well as in understanding their roles in various diseases and in developing innovative treatments for these diseases. He has won numerous awards and grants, including the Humboldt Prize (Germany), the Hirata Award (Japan), the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award, the Teva Award for Excellence in memory of Eli Hurvitz (Israel), the Israel Chemical Society Prize for Outstanding Young Chemist, and the ERC Advanced Grant, awarded to leading researchers with outstanding achievements in research. In 2019, he was elected as a member of the Israel Young Academy.

The Rappaport Prize for Outstanding Doctoral Students was awarded to Dr. Alia Ghrayeb, who completed her medical studies at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and continued her doctoral studies at the same faculty under the supervision of Prof. Eyal Gottlieb. She is currently under the supervision of Prof. Zaid Abbasi. Dr. Ghrayeb researches key metabolic changes in fatty liver disease, the most common cause of chronic liver disease and the leading cause of liver transplants worldwide. Using metabolic tools, she revealed not only changes in lipid profiles but also significant changes in amino acid metabolism, particularly in the glycine pathway. She extended these findings to demonstrate that such metabolic changes are also present in cardiovascular diseases, the main cause of mortality among people with fatty liver disease. Although the therapeutic potential of glycine has been previously studied, the mechanism leading to a decrease in glycine levels and the metabolic implications of this deficiency have not yet been thoroughly investigated. Using metabolic tools combined with unique pharmacological and genetic approaches in an experimental model of fatty liver in mice, Dr. Ghrayeb demonstrated that increased synthesis of serine from glycine through the reverse activity of the mitochondrial enzyme 2SHMT is the main cause of decreased glycine levels in fatty liver. Additionally, genetically engineered mice that do not express 2SHMT in the liver exhibit a preferred antioxidant capacity, which protects them from oxidative stress damage. Alia’s deep understanding of glycine metabolism in fatty liver holds potential for therapeutic applications in the not-too-distant future.

 For the video that was screened in honor of Prof. Brik at the award ceremony.

Image generator models – systems that produce new images based on textual descriptions – have become a common and well-known phenomenon in the past year. Their continuous improvement, largely relying on developments in the field of artificial intelligence, makes them an important resource in various fields.

To achieve good results, these models are trained on vast amounts of image-text pairs – for example, matching the text “picture of a dog” to a picture of a dog, repeated millions of times. Through this training, the model learns to generate original images of dogs.

 

However, as noted by Hadas Orgad, a doctoral student from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, and Bahjat Kawar a graduate of the same Faculty, “since these models are trained on a lot of data from the real world, they acquire and internalize assumptions about the world during the training process. Some of these assumptions are useful, for example, ‘the sky is blue,’ and they allow us to obtain beautiful images even with short and simple descriptions. On the other hand, the model also encodes incorrect or irrelevant assumptions about the world, as well as societal biases. For example, if we ask Stable Diffusion (a very popular image generator) for a picture of a CEO, we will only get pictures of women in 4% of cases.”

Another problem these models face is the significant number of changes occurring in the world around us. The models cannot adapt to the changes after the training process. As Dana Arad, also a doctoral student at the Taub Faculty of Computer Science, explains, “during their training process, models also learn a lot of factual knowledge about the world. For example, models learn the identities of heads of state, presidents, and even actors who portrayed popular characters in TV series. Such models are no longer updated after their training process, so if we ask a model today to generate a picture of the President of the United States, we might still reasonably receive a picture of Donald Trump, who of course has not been the president in recent years. We wanted to develop an efficient way to update the information without relying on expensive actions.”

The “traditional” solution to these problems is constant data correction by the user, retraining, or fine-tuning. However, these fixes incur high costs financially, in terms of workload, in terms of result quality, and in environmental aspects (due to the longer operation of computer servers). Additionally, implementing these methods does not guarantee control over unwanted assumptions or new assumptions that may arise. “Therefore,” they explain, “we would like a precise method to control the assumptions that the model encodes.”

The methods developed by the doctoral students under the guidance of Dr. Yonatan Belinkov address this need. The first method, developed by Orgad and Kawar and called TIME (Text-to-Image Model Editing), allows for the quick and efficient correction of biases and assumptions. The reason for this is that the correction does not require fine-tuning, retraining, or changing the language model and altering the text interpretation tools, but only a partial re-editing of around 1.95% of the model’s parameters. Moreover, the same editing process is performed in less than a second. In ongoing research based on TIME, called UCE, which has been developed in collaboration with Northeastern and MIT universities, they proposed a way to control a variety of undesirable ethical behaviors of the model – such as copyright infringement or social biases – by removing unwanted associations from the model such as offensive content or artistic styles of different artists.

The methods receive inputs from the user regarding a fact or assumption they want to edit. For example, in cases of implicit assumptions, the method receives a “source” on which the model bases implicit assumptions (e.g., “red roses” by default the model assumes red roses) and a “target” that describes the same circumstances but with the desired features (e.g., “blue roses”). When wanting to use the method for role editing, the method receives an editing request (e.g., “President of the United States”) and then a “source” and “target” (“Donald Trump” and “Joe Biden,” respectively). The researchers collected about 200 works and assumptions on which they tested the editing methods and showed that these are efficient methods for updating information and correcting biases.

TIME was presented in October 2023 at the ICCV conference, one of the important conferences in the field of computer vision and machine learning. UCE was recently presented at the WACV conference. ReFACT was presented in Mexico at the NAACL conference, one of the leading conferences in natural language processing research.

The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), the Azrieli Foundation, Open Philanthropy, FTX Future Fund, the Crown Family Foundation, and the Council for Higher Education. Hadas Orgad is an Apple AI doctoral fellow.

Click here for the project website and papers:

https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-long.140/

https://technion-cs-nlp.github.io/ReFACT/

https://time-diffusion.github.io/