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Minister of Education, Rabbi Shai Piron notified and congratulated Technion Faculty of Physics Distinguished Professor Mordechai (Moti) Segev upon being selected as the 2014 Israel Prize winner for research in chemistry and physics.

The award committee’s reasoning stated that, “Professor Segev is a ground-breaking physicist in the field of optics and lasers. His pioneering contributions are sources of inspiration and his scientific work is referenced in thousands of scientific articles.”

Technion President, Professor Perez Lavie, congratulated Distinguished Professor Segev and thanked him for the great honor he has brought to Technion.

In the Speed of Light

When the master of ceremony called out his name, Professor Mordechai (Moti) Segev approached the stage wearing jeans and a white shirt.  He hopped over the stair easily and to the sounds of laughter from the audience that filled the congress hall in Munich, he received the prestigious European Physics Society (EPS) Quantum Electronics Award in 2007.

Back in the nineties and early 2000, Professor Moti Segev from the Faculty of Physics studied the behavior of solitons – wave packets that behave and interact with one another like particles do: attracting, repelling, etc. Since then Moti Segev has gone into other areas, ranging from photonic lattices and waves’ propagation in random media to optofluidics – where light controls the mechanical properties of a fluid, and more recently into sub-wavelength imaging. He has made profound discoveries and started several new areas.

Professor Segev and his research group from the Faculty of Physics use non-linear optics to study the basic phenomenon taking place within the realm of non-linear physics. Over the past decade, Professor Moti Segev and his research partners published five articles in the prestigious scientific journal, “Nature” and many  articles in Science magazine, Nature Physics, Nature Photonics, nature Materials, and the premiere physics journal Physical Review Letters.

Moti Segev (formerly Sakajo) was born in Romania. When he was three years old his family made an Aliyah to Israel.

They settled in Haifa, in the Stanton neighbourhood in the lower tier of the Carmel city, a poverty-stricken part of town. When he was six, evacuations began, and the family was relocated in ‘improved housing units’ in the Neve Sha’anan neighbourhood (on the outskirts of Technion City).

Young Moti excelled in his studies from day one. During the summer vacation between Grades 1 and 2, he experimented in the field near his house, with limestone wrapped around stone. The result was astounding! Four fire trucks were needed to put out the fire while Moti hid under his parents bed, Shlomo and Zelda.

The family didn`t have money for most things, but for books there always was. Nitsa Movshovitz-Hadar, who later became a professor at the Technion, was Moti`s mathematics teacher. She was the first to recognize his many talents and sent him to extracurricular programs for gifted students at the Technion when he was in 7th Grade.

Despite his outstanding achievements, Moti was suspended from the Municipal Ironi Gimmel High School at 10th grade. The school’s guidance counsellor at the time, Bruria Zafrir, took him under her wing and pledged that from now on he will be manageable.  “School bored me,” he admits. “All that interested me was basketball, the youth movement (Hashomer Hatzair) and girls.”

In the army he was in the flight academy course. He lasted in the course about 14 months, until he flew over the border with Jordan in the training jet the “Fouga Magister.” He was suspended from the course and returned to the Nahal  core, a unit which later entered Lebanon in Operation Litani. He never returned to his flight course. He was discharged from the Army as a lieutenant, and in the reserves he became the commander of a patrol (“siur”) company. His deputy officer was Yair Mordechai from Kibbutz Shluchot  in the Beit Shean Valley. In October 2001, Yair chanced upon a Palestinian on his way home to his Kibbutz. He began to question him, and then the terrorist activated his explosives belt and Yair exploded with him. When Professor Segev tells the story he finds it hard to hide his emotions.

Moti was accepted to the Technion’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and completed his undergraduate degree after seven semesters and 250 reserve duty days. For all of the reserve duty he performed during his studies he was eligible for a tuition free ninth semester but he didn’t even need an eighth semester. In addition to the many days he devoted to reserve duty, Moti worked throughout his studies as a youth counselor for children living in fringe neighborhoods such as Tirat HaCarmel, as a teaching assistant in the Faculty of Mathematics, and as an Israeli tour guide. He was very busy and still managed to make the Dean’s list (cum laude). He continued on a direct doctoral study track in electrical engineering, married Tal, and the young couple had three children, Yair, Tamir and Yaron.

Moti did his postdoctoral research period at Caltech and joined Princeton University, where we went through the ranks from assistant professor to full professor in a record time of 4.5 years, and returned to Israel with his family at the end of 1988. “I returned only out of Zionistic ideals and because I wanted to raise my children in Israel,” he explained. “And I don’t have any regrets,” he added.

Are you happy at the Technion?  

“I really enjoy conducting my research at the Technion, but along with this I also have a lot of criticisms which I don’t try to hide.”

Are you the naughty but super talented boy at the Faculty?

Professor Segev laughed and corrects: “No, I’m not the naughty boy. Maybe I am the bad boy who cares deeply for the Technion.”

His students say he is overly demanding, with high expectations from them, almost as high as those he demands from himself, but that on the other hand he is very fatherly and caring, not only in professional related matters but also in personal issues. He has often helped his students find job placements or provided assistance with finding solutions to financial problems. Even the spouses of his students are in contact with him. He currently has ten PhD and masters students and two postdocs. He meets with each of them on a daily basis. Each of his students is working on a different project that is very well defined. Above his office door there is a quote: “Forlorn is the Teacher Whose Students Do Not Surpass Him.”

Professor Moti Segev has no reason to be forlorn. Sixteen of his students are professors at MIT, Princeton, the University of Michigan, the University of Florida, the University of San Francisco, the University of Hamburg and the University of Jena in Germany, the National Taiwan University, the University of Zagreb in Croatia, the University of Rome in Italy, four at the Technion, one at Tel Aviv University and one with Bar Ilan University.

Stealthy “Virtual periscope” sees above-surface/airborne objects from underwater view

Researchers modeled virtual periscope on astronomers’ technology used to counter blurring and distortion caused by layers of atmosphere when viewing stars

–  “Up periscope!” may become a submarine commander’s outdated order, thanks to a team of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers who have developed a new technology for viewing objects above the water’s surface without a periscope poking its head above the waves.  

The technology behind a submerged, “virtual periscope” will be introduced in a presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography, held May 2-4, 2014 in Santa Clara, Calif.. (http://www.iccp14.org/)

Associate Professor Yoav Y. Schechner, of the Technion Department of Electrical Engineering, and colleagues, developed the virtual periscope called “Stella Maris” (Stellar Marine Refractive Imaging Sensor).  The heart of the underwater imaging system is a camera, a pinhole array to admit light (a thin metal sheet with precise, laser-cut holes), a glass diffuser, and mirrors.   Sunrays are projected through the pinholes to the diffuser, which is imaged by the camera, beside the distorted object of interest.  The latter is then corrected for distortion.

“Raw images taken by a submerged camera are degraded by water-surface waves similarly to degradation of astronomical images by our atmosphere. We borrowed the concept from astronomers who use the Shack-Hartmann astronomical sensor on telescopes to counter blurring and distortion caused by layers of atmosphere,” explains Schechner. “Stella Maris is a novel approach to a virtual periscope as it passively measures water and waves by imaging the refracted sun.”

The unique technology gets around the inevitable distortion caused by the water-surface waves when using a submerged camera

According to Schechner, because of the sharp refractive differences between water and air, random waves at the interface present distortions that are worse than the distortion atmospheric turbulence creates for astronomers peering into space.

“When the water surface is wavy, sun-rays refract according to the waves and project onto the solar image plane,” explains Schechner. “With the pinhole array, we obtain an array of tiny solar images on the diffuser.” When all of the components

work together, the Stella Maris system acts as both a wave sensor to estimate the water surface, and a viewing system to see the above surface image of interest through a computerized, “reconstructed” surface.

The Stella Maris virtual periscope is just the latest technology developed by the researchers, who have also found ways to exploit  “underwater flicker,” i.e., random change of underwater lighting, caused by the water surface wave motion.   Members in the Schechner Hybrid Imaging Lab (http://webee.technion.ac.il/~yoav/lab-and-group/) turned the tables on underwater flicker and used the natural rapid and random motion of the light beams to obtain three-dimensional mapping of the sea floor.

According to the developers, the virtual periscope may have potential uses in addition to submarines, where they could reduce the use of traditional periscopes that have been in use for more than a century.  Submerged on the sea floor, Stella Maris could be useful for marine biology research where and when viewing and imaging both beneath and above the waves simultaneously is important. Stella Maris could, for example, monitor the habits of seabirds as they fly, then plunge into water and capture prey.

“There are many ways to advance the virtual periscope,” says Schechner, who adds that while the system requires sunlight, they are currently working on a way to gather enough light from moonlight or starlight to be able to use the system at night.

Also contributing to this research were current graduate student Marina Alterman and former graduate student Dr. Yohay Swirski (who is now working in industry).  The research was conducted in Prof. Schechner’s Hybrid Imaging Lab in the Technion Department of Electrical Engineering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSh6YSJz_Pk

 

Technion Students Find a Loophole in Security in the World’s Most Popular Internet DNS Protocol

Following the discovery, algorithms will be replaced in the next software version release

Technion students, Roee Hay and Jonathan Kalechstein from the Faculty of Computer Science discovered a new weakness (loophole), which had not been previously documented in the world’s most widely used DNS software – BIND. “We were very surprised to find a loophole in the protocol,” said Kalechstein. “We reported it to the authorities responsible for its implementation, they responded that they were unaware of this problem, and added that they will replace the algorithms in the next software version release.”

The project was carried out at the Laboratory of Computer Communication & Networking in the Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion, and was led by Dr. Gabi Nakibly from Rafael (Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.). It won the faculty wide competition, the Amdocs Best Project Contest. In August 2013, the project was publicized at an academic conference on information security ‘Usenix WOOT,’ held in the US.

“We devised an attack on DNS, a protocol that is one of the cornerstones of the Internet, and we identified a weakness in one of its implementations,” explained Roee Hay. “The DNS protocol has been around for several years and has been investigated by researchers from all over the world. We knew in advance that the chances of finding a loophole in the software would be very small, but we like challenges.”

DNS (Domain Name System) is one of the most basic Internet protocols. It allows access to a decentralized database enabling computers to translate the names of websites to web addresses (IP addresses).

“During the resolution of name to IP address, DNS servers look for the server storing the corresponding IP address,” explains Dr. Gabi Nakibly. “The weakness that the students found allows hackers to compel a DNS server to connect with a specific server chosen out of a set of potential servers. If that server is controlled by the attacker, that DNS server  will receive a false IP address. This type of cyber attack gives hackers an advantage, by causing computers to ‘talk’ with network stations that they alone control without being able to detect the occurrence of the fraud.”

 

 Seeing by Hearing

Technion Students Develop Seeing Application for the Blind

The invention is based on a Kinect camera, mobile phone application and headphones

Three undergraduate students from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion developed a seeing application for the blind, based on a Kinect camera, mobile phone application and headphones.

The application is based on images from the surrounding area obtained from the depth camera, which helps the blind navigate inside a building, warning them of obstacles through voice indication, while identifying and directing them to studied objects in the room.

The idea for the project was instigated by an undergraduate student, Tzahi Simkin. “The idea came to me while I was driving, where right before me I saw a blind man having trouble crossing the road. I thought to myself that if I could only describe to him, through technological means, a snapshot of the surrounding area, I would make it much easier for him and build his confidence in getting better oriented with his surroundings. I wanted to combine technological development with social assistance, and this is how this product was born; it connects a depth camera and cellular application, and integrates two different technological systems.”

Koby Kohai with students Tzahi Simkin and Gal Dalal

Tzahi partnered up with two undergrads, Gal Dalal and Danny Zilber, and together the trio began working on the project. “The technological advantage of the Kinect camera lies in its ability to take very good depth images and that it is relatively cheap,” added Tzahi. “This field is continually evolving, with cameras becoming smaller and less expensive all the time. Our project connected the depth images received from a smart phone application, to guide the blind within a given space.”

“The camera sits on a belt and takes depth images of the surrounding area,” explains Gal. “The wireless device processes the information received from the camera and gives a voice indication to the user through the application. The application we developed helps blind people navigate inside a building, warning them of obstacles through voice indication that identifies studies objects and directs the user to them. Studied objects refer to items such as keys or handbag that the application is previously programmed to recognize. In other words, there is an element of recognition and learning.”

“When there is an obstacle before someone who is blind, the application warns him/her to stop and directs them right or left to bypass the barrier,” says Tzahi.” We haven’t yet tested the product with blind people, but we tested it ourselves when blindfolded, and it worked. Recently, we contacted the Association for the Blind in Haifa, so that we could test the application on site from people who are blind, our end users, and obtain feedback for needed improvements.”

Koby Kohai, who heads the Control Robotics & Machine Learning Laboratory at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, guided and mentored the students throughout the project. “The project received a grade of 100 and has been submitted for a competition for outstanding faculty projects,” said Kohai. “The project was initiated by students, and I instructed and steered them towards technologies currently available on the market. The concept of the project was to test a technological concept that could in the future integrate from a technological standpoint, developing hardware into something more advanced. Every year we suggest ideas for project development to our undergraduate students, coming from industry or research of graduate students at the Faculty. We do our best to provide students with a broad space with which to encourage their creativity and their ideas in their chosen projects.”

“From my point of view, we succeeded with this project,” summarizes Tzahi. “I am interested in continuing to develop the product, so that it can be used by the blind one day. Our motivation for the project was to help those who needed help. There are over 150 million blind and visually impaired people in the world, yet the number of technological solutions offered to them today is very limited. Despite advances in technology, the best means of guidance remains through a Seeing Eye cane or Guide Dog. Our product is not yet perfected, and we intend to continue to develop it.”

Pictures: Koby Kohai with students Tzahi Simkin and Gal Dalal.

Photographed by: Shiatzo Photography Services, Technion’s Spokesperson’s Office

Technion Professor Dan Shechtman Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Professor Dan Shechtman from the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the Technion, was elected as a new member to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2011, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Among the Academy’s Fellows are Nobel laureates and winners of other prestigious awards including the Pulitzer Prize, Wolf Prize, MacArthur Award, Guggenheim Award, Grammy, Emmy and Oscar Awards, and Fulbright Scholars.

Two other newly elected members to the 2014 class are Israeli natives – Neta Bahcall, astrophysicist and cosmologist, and Daphne Koller who co-founded with her colleague Andrew Ng the online learning platform ‘Coursera.’ A newly elected member from the public affairs domain is Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and now US envoy in diplomatic negotiations in the region.

“It is a great privilege to honor these men and women for their extraordinary individual accomplishments,” said Don M. Randel, Chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors. “The knowledge and expertise of our members give the Academy a unique capacity – and responsibility – to provide practical policy solutions to the pressing challenges of the day. We look forward to engaging our new members in this work.”

The newly elected members of the 2014 class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 11, 2014, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Since its founding in 1780, the Academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Margaret Meade and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

 

 

Technion’s Prestigious Harvey Prize was awarded to Professors Paul B. Corkum and Jon M. Kleinberg

Technion’s prestigious Harvey Prize was awarded last week, on Tuesday April 8, to Professors Paul B. Corkum and Jon M. Kleinberg.

Professor Paul Corkum, of the Joint Laboratory for Attosecond Science, University of Ottawa, has been a leader and pioneer in the field of ultrafast laser spectroscopy. For two decades he has been the main source of the powerful insights which lie behind many of the recent advances in this field. He is known primarily for his remarkable contributions to the field of high harmonic generation and for his ability to create intuitive models for very complex phenomena which enabled him to make the advances that created the exciting field of attosecond spectroscopy.

Professor Jon M. Kleinberg from Cornell University was awarded the prize for his seminal contributions and leadership in the newly emerging science of information networks, including his groundbreaking work on characterizing the structure of the World Wide Web in terms of hubs and authorities, his analysis of the “small-world” phenomena, and his work on influence propagation in networks.

The Harvey Prize was first awarded in 1972 by the Foundation established by the late Leo M. Harvey from Los Angeles, to recognize significant contributions in the advancement of humankind in the areas of science and technology, human health and peace in the Middle East. Each year it awards prizes in the amount of $75,000 to each award winner.

An article he published in the February 2014 Issue of CSCW raised much debate. It discussed the question: Is it possible to identify through our social network profile on Facebook who would be our partner?

The prestigious Harvey Prize has been awarded to scientists from the United States, Britain, Russia, Sweden, France and Israel, among them Nobel Laureate Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the USSR, awarded the Harvey Prize in appreciation of his seminal initiatives and policies to lessen regional tensions; Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Professor Bert Sakmann; Nobel Laureate in Physics, Professor Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Professor Edward Teller for his discoveries in solid state physics, atomic and nuclear energy; and Professor William J. Kolff  for his invention of the artificial kidney.

Harvey Prize winners are selected by a council of world-renowned scientists and personalities from Israel and around the world. Award winners are chosen by the Harvey Prize Committee following a rigorous selection process at the Technion.

In the photos:

[cover slide] Professor Paul Corkum (right) and Professor Jon M. Kleinberg (left) at the awards ceremony.

Professor Paul Corkum.

Professor Jon Kleinberg.

Photo credit: Yossi Sharem, Technion Spokesperson’s Office

Technion Scientists: Computers and the communication systems are identified as largest Energy Guzzlers

By 2030 half of the US electricity production may be used up to support computers and communication infrastructures. Already now, 8% of the total energy consumption in the United States is directed to support the internet whose rate of growth is growing in an uncontrollable manner.

“Computers and communications are the greatest ‘energy guzzlers’ and it won’t be long before the total energy output will no longer be able to withstand it.” This is according to Technion scientists who organized the first international conference on this topic.

Increasing the electricity production to solve this problem is impractical since constructing new power stations is a slow and environmentally unfriendly process while alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power are inefficient and expensive and their total capacity in insufficient anyways.

Professor Gadi Eisenstein, the Head of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, said that the energy supply will not be able to meet the tremendous growth rate of computer and communications, and in the very near future they will consume more energy than all lighting systems. The solution will not come from new energy production but rather from reducing consumption. This ambitious goal leads scientists to even think about re-inventing the transistor while vastly improving the communication infrastructure.

At the conference, which will be held at the Technion on April 23-24, leading Israeli and international researchers from academia and industry will lecture on the subject. Among the topics to be covered: large-scale computer systems such as data centers, connectivity of supercomputers and the proposed introduction of optics into electronic chips.

“The internet will continue to grow at an uncontrollable rate,” warns Professor Eisenstein. “Any attempts to limit it will not succeed. This is about a subject that is no longer a technological issue but rather, it has developed into a social, economic an dpolitical issue. The Internet is an amazing and positive historical phenomenon that has radically changed our lives and now we must find solutions to the energy problems it has brought on.”

Read the Hebrew article published by Ha’aretz here: http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/science/.premium-1.2288241

In the Photo: Professor Gadi Eisenstein

Photographed by: The Technion’s Spokesperson’s Office

After of a Decade of Research

Scientists from the Technion and the Pasteur Institute in France Solved for the First Time the Structure of a Protein Responsible for Cell-Cell Fusion

The discoveries were made in a model system of a tiny roundworm, and will be useful for future research designed to understand human fusion processes (during fertilization or in the formation of muscle fibers, for example)

Scientists from the Technion and the Pasteur Institute in France have discovered the atomic structure of a protein that is present on the cell surface and is responsible for cell-cell fusion. This discovery was published in the prestigious scientific journal Cell. The scientists also discovered the mechanism that allows this fusion to occur.

Professor Benjamin Podbilewicz, from the Technion’s Faculty of Biology, in collaboration with Professor Felix Rey  from the Pasteur Institute, and their research teams have been studying this topic for nearly a decade. The research focuses on the EFF-1 protein from a tiny roundworm, known as Caenorhabditis elegans, which serves as a convenient research model for a variety of biological processes.

“The atomic structure of this protein (but not the sequence) in the roundworm is similar to that of proteins that do the same thing – membrane fusion – in enveloped viruses,” explains Professor Podbilewicz. He describes the way in which an enveloped virus penetrates the body: “The cell ‘swallows’ it and then the membrane of the virus fuses with the membrane of the organelle that swallowed it (an organelle is a specialized lipid-enveloped structure within a living cell). As a result, the genetic material of the virus enters the cell and assumes control over it.”

“We also discovered the differences by which the viral protein fuses with the cell membrane, and the way the EFF-1 protein carries out this process,” added Professor Podbilewicz. “The viral protein, which has no partner in the targeted cells, must do all the work on its own and is endowed with a unique mechanism for this purpose. Conversely, when the roundworm cells fuse with each other, each cell expresses its fusion proteins on the surface. Here, the fusion proteins (EFF-1) of both cells ‘hug’ each other and create a kind of a zipper connecting the cells together.”

The discoveries by the scientists from the Technion and the Pasteur Institute will have implications on research aimed at understanding cell-cell fusion processes in the human body. These processes play a critical role in fertilization (the fusion between sperm and ovum), and in developmental processes taking place in organs such as in muscle and bone.

In the photos:

1. Professor Beni Podbilewicz (photograph courtesy of Ksenia Smurova)

2. Comparison between the EFF-1 protein structure and the structure of fusion proteins from viruses (you can clearly see that they are identical in structure) Pérez-Vargas et al., Structural Basis of Eukaryotic Cell-Cell Fusion, Cell (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.02.020

The Solution to Solving Security Vulnerabilities in all Devices and Protocols – Educating Developers Not to Release a Product until Thoroughly Tested

The solution to solving security vulnerabilities in all devices and protocols lies in the proper education of developers, who should be taught not to release a product until it has been thoroughly tested. This is what was said by Professor Eli Biham at the Seminar Day on Cyber & Information Security, held this week at the Technion. The seminar was organized by Professor Biham, Dr. Sara Bitan and the Technion Computer Engineering Center (TCE), which was founded jointly by the Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

Ohad Bobrov from Lacoon Security said at the seminar that it is very easy to plan a security breach for the purposes of spying on a particular person through any mobile device. “One in a thousand mobile devices contains a dedicated spyware. The problem is that manufacturers are aware of the loopholes, but it takes them a long time to respond,” he emphasized.

According to Professor Biham, the problem is not connected just to the ability of hackers to break into computers and mobile devices, but to the vulnerabilities that make it possible. “There is a significant problem in the education of programmers around the world; institutions are less concerned about enlightening individuals studying to be programmers about all of the attacks that the software they are learning to develop may suffer from. All those trying to meet product release deadlines almost always sidestep security. The problem is that customers don’t care either, and are willing to buy these products even if it isn’t secure, whether in the mobile market, the PC market and any other product.”

“Only after consumers start refusing to buy products that haven’t undergone testing for security aspects will any type of modification be made to programming education,” added Professor Biham. “I have yet to see a person who is ready to go to the post office and buy a transparent envelope at half the price, with which to send his/her secret mail. But when it comes to telephones or computers, no one asks if it’s see-through.”

As for the timing of the conference, at a date when massive attacks are plotted and carried out on servers all around Israel, Professor Biham stated that these types of security attacks are ongoing occurrences, usually not planned for any particular date. “Today we are getting ready for DOS attacks (Denial of Service),” he explained. “This kind of attack only succeeds if numerous requests are sent to a server simultaneously, and therefore, they are usually more coordinated than other kinds of attacks. Many have suggested that we shutdown servers on this day, and my answer to this is that this is precisely the hackers’ intensions – that we shutdown our servers, why should we help them accomplish their goals?”

During the first session of the seminar, Professor Orna Grumberg from the Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science presented a system she developed along with Dr. Gabi Nakibly – an algorithm capable of automatically routing out security breaches in OSPF network traffic protocols, which determines the data routes sent from computer to computer. An OSPF protocol studies the network structure in order to know how to transmit packets, and it is impossible to run a network without such a protocol. Until now, the only way of tracking breaches was by employing experts who examined the protocols manually. The algorithm successfully simulated a security breach event that amazed scientists.

Ohad Bobrov, co-founder of Lacoon Security, demonstrated how easy it is to download data from a network by simple and common means: how to hack into any phone, view a list of contacts, listen to a microphone, turn on the camera, and anything else that comes to the mind of the hacker.

“The examples were astounding. I always knew that it was awfully easy to break into any mobile device, but today I was amazed to see just how easy it is,” concluded Professor Biham.

In the photo: Professor Eli Biham at the Seminar Day on Cyber & Information Security.

Photographed by: Shiatzo Photography Services, the Technion’s Spokesperson’s Office

Technion Scientists have succeeded for the First Time in Transplanting Engineered Tissue Bearing Major Blood Vessel to Repair Severe Abdominal Muscle Injury

Till now scientists have only successfully transplanted engineered muscle tissue bearing small blood vessels

Technion scientists succeeded for the first time to transplant engineered tissue bearing major blood vessels to repair severe abdominal muscle injury, as published by the prestigious US science journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ (PNAS). In the past, researchers were only successful in transplanting engineered muscle tissue with small blood vessels. This medical breakthrough may do away with the need for complex surgeries in the future, and the Technion holds a patent on it.

Professor Shulamit Levenberg from the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute explains that in the current study, researchers fabricated an engineered muscle flap bearing its own functional vascular pedicle for repair of a large soft tissue defect. Technion scientists successfully reconstructed a full-thickness abdominal wall defect using this engineered vascular muscle flap in a mouse.

In tissue reconstruction, two approaches exist to address the clinical challenges involved in the successful restoration of tissue defects: 1) GRAFT where tissue is being transplanted  to the damaged area. The blood vessels in the body penetrate the tissue and nourish it with a blood supply.

2) FLAP – where tissue is being transplanted to the damaged region with its own blood supply. Flaps are used for treating injured areas where there is an absence of blood supply and when postimplantational vascularization is not established, such as in cases of soft tissue defect closure, or exposed bone, cartilage or tendons.

Tissue engineering constructs laboratory-grown tissue for transplantation. In this study, the engineered tissue was a three dimensional engineered tissue constructed of a porous, biodegradable polymer scaffold embedded with endothelial cells, supporting stromal cells (fibroblasts), and muscle cells (myoblasts). The tissue was grown in the lab by Technion researchers and then implanted to the region around the (femoral) artery and veins in the thigh, before being transferred as a flap. The flap is the stage where tissues can be transferred with their own blood supply and are joined to the blood vessels in the region of transplant, to repair large defects, such as in the abdominal wall region.

Grafts are effective for repairing small defects, but ineffective at repairing severe injury. Consequently, this medical breakthrough is very noteworthy.

The study was performed in collaboration with Dr. Yulia Shandalov (who was a doctoral student of Professor Levenberg during the time of the study), and Dr. Dana Egozi, from the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Rambam Health Care Campus, who was recently appointed Director of the Department of Plastic Surgery  at the of Kaplan Medical Center.

The study is part of a research project led by Professor Shulamit Levenberg, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) in the amount of 1.5 million euros.

Architect Gaby Schwartz and Rolka Studio Won the Design Competition to Revamp the Campus Entrances

Architect Gaby Schwartz and designers from Rolka Studio won a design competition for revamp the entrances of Technion’s Haifa campus, administered by the Israel Association of United Architects.

The competition required participants to consider the traffic and transportation, as well as the security and safety constraints at the campus’ main entrances, and come up with a new design expressing the atmosphere of a technological institute while respecting its natural environment. The winning proposal was expected to present insightful solutions that integrate well the existing fabric, including the separation of pedestrian paths and vehicle mobility, in the gate areas. The judging team decided that the broad-minded topographic attitude by the winning design, with its careful consideration to both the near and distant landscape and to the diversity of needs by different visitors to the area around the entrance gate, translated into a well planned configuration of the gates’ positioning and construction that will enhance the entranceway experience into the campus.

The judging members of the competition included Technion President, Professor Peretz Lavie (Chairman), architects Bracha Chyutin and Yaniv Pardo, Technion’s Chief Operating Officer, Zahava Laniado, and members from the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Professors Yehuda Kalay (Dean) and Shamai Asif. Architect Arie Gonen, appointed by the Architects’ Association, served as the competition secretary.

Technion President, Professor Peretz Lavie, said that the prestige of the Technion and the beauty of the campus are not properly reflected from the entranceways of the current campus gates. “Not long ago we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of the historic Technion building in Hadar Carmel. Now is the time to build new gates for the Technion, which will respect the institute’s high standing, and create an atmosphere conveying its prestige and dynamic character to all those who pass through its gates.”

“The Faculty attaches great importance to open, public and anonymous architectural competitions,” said Professor Yehuda Kalay, the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. “Competitions of these kinds generate original ideas and innovative approaches, which advance the status and achievements of the profession. Indeed many of the design proposals for revamping the Technion’s entranceways were, uncommonly, modest, blending into the landscape and even intensifying it.  Their plans gave priority to pedestrians and cyclists. In addition, they needed to also consider the stringent requirements of traffic, security and safety. The proposal by Gaby Schwartz and his partners, who won first place in the competition, reexamined the concept of an entrance gate, and created a new model to all those that will follow.”

The competition, which had two tracks (for architects and for students), had a total of 20 design proposals submitted by architects and seven by students. The winning proposal, submitted by Gaby Schwartz from the offices of Schwartz Besnosoff Architects & Town Planners and Rolka Studio, which included Omri Schwartz, Tomer Kopel, Michael Hinitz and Noam Naveh, won a monetary prize of 45,000 NIS. The second prize winner, awarded to Jerusalem architect Yishai Well, received a monetary prize of 25,000 NIS. The third prize, consisting of 15,000 NIS, was awarded to Tel-Aviv architects Zvi Gabay, Moshe Shemesh and Uri Kfir. A prize of honorable mention, in the amount of 5,000 NIS, was awarded to architects Yinnon Lehrer, Irad Shomroni and Gil Lehrer from Ramat Gan.

A monetary prize of 10,000 NIS was awarded to the student project by Marian Myrovitz (an architecture student) and Yaniv Meirovitch, a Haifa architect.

“Our plan for the new entrance is inspired by Technion’s emphasis on its human capital and its commitment to a green sustainable environment,” said Gaby Shwartz, who submitted the winning proposal. “The solution we proposed presents a new perspective on the concept of a gate, while identifying both its natural and physical potential. The project interprets the concept of the gate as an initiator of an entranceway experience that is unlike a roadside one – characterized by an urban sidewalk that at its center has physical spatial infrastructure for pedestrians. The proposed point of departure is towards the heart of the green campus. From this perspective we proposed a very leisurely and pleasant entranceway leading students and visitors to the heart of the campus through a green environment.”

The winning proposals will be awarded at a festive ceremony which will open an exhibit showcasing all of the design proposals submitted for the competition. The ceremony will be held on Tuesday, April 29, 2014, at 16:00, at the PeKA Gallery in the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning.

In the photo: Models of the winning proposal.

Photographed by: Gaby Schwartz/ Rolka Studio