October 5, 2011 – Distinguished Professor Dan Shechtman of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  Of the five Israeli scientists to have ever won the Nobel Prize, three are Technion professors.

Prof. Shechtman, of the Technion’s Department of Materials Engineering and holder of the Philip Tobias Chair in Materials Science, won the award for his 1982 discovery of Quasicrystals, an entirely new form of matter with a structure that scientists previously thought was impossible.

Israel’s President Shimon Peres called Prof. Shechtman to congratulate him: “I salute you, you gave the people of Israel a wonderful gift. This is a great day for Haifa, a great day for the Technion.”

“That an Israeli has once again been awarded a Nobel Prize is a mark of distinction for Israeli science in general and for the Technion,” said Technion President Peretz Lavie.  “And the fact that this is the third Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Technion researchers in eight years is a clear indicator of the world-class research being done here.”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Shechtman’s discovery fundamentally changed the way chemists look at solid matter. It initially faced strong objections from the scientific community.

Since then, Quasicrystals have been produced in laboratories and a Swedish company found them in one of the most durable kinds of steel, which is now used in products such as razor blades and thin needles made specifically for eye surgery, the Nobel citation said.

Scientists are also experimenting with using Quasicrystals in coatings for frying pans, heat insulation in engines, and in light emitting diodes (LEDs).

On April 8, 1982, when Shechtman first observed crystals with a 10-point pentagonal symmetry in the NBS laboratory in Maryland, crystallography had long been considered a “closed field” promising no revolutionary breakthroughs. Shechtman’s groundbreaking quasiperiodic structure was first described in Physical Review Letters in 1984, marking the birth of a new scientific field of Quasiperiodic crystals.

The scientific community, led by two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, rejected Shechtman’s findings, but in 1987, the pattern which had previously been considered contrary to the laws of nature was observed with the help of the electron microscope.

More than 40 scientific books have been dedicated to Quasiperiodic crystals, and hundreds of materials are known to exist with the structure discovered by Shechtman.  In the wake of his discovery and its proof, the International Society of Crystallographers changed its basic definition of a crystal.

Prof. Shechtman’s Nobel Prize follows many other prestigious awards including the Aminoff Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2000), Wolf Foundation Prize in Physics (1999), Israel Prize in Physics (1998), Weizmann Prize in Science (1993),  Rothschild Prize in Engineering (1990) and the International Award for New Materials of the American Physical Society (1987).  He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Above: Distinguished Professor Dan Shechtman

Receive $20,000 & go on to the finals to be held in November in the U.S.

Yaron Ratcher, Polina Federman, Avner Bar and Aviv Gadot are the members of the Technion team. Yaron is a computer science major, Aviv is an electrical engineering major, Avner graduated with a degree in computer science and Polina graduated from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management. The idea for their venture emerged from the entrepreneurship course given by Prof. Uzi De-Haan of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion.

 “In the BizTECH competition, we weren’t quite so ready,” they say. “We were disappointed when we didn’t win but we kept going. We learned a lot from the competition, we corrected the mistakes we saw we’d made and kept going.”

180 teams from Western and Eastern Europe participated in the competition, which was held in Poland. Nine of these teams made it into the final round. The Technion team was included among the four finalists from Eastern Europe. The first place among the Western European teams was won by two young women from Denmark who applied for a patent for their development of an ozone-based sunscreen.

The Technion team immediately invested the $20,000 they won in their venture and hope that this is only the beginning.

In the picture (from right to left): Polina Federman, Avner Bar, Yaron Ratcher, Aviv Gado. Photo by: Technion Spokesman

The experiment proved that Covert enforcement is the most effective method & preferred also by the police

The motorcycle unit also proved its worth & it will, therefore, more than double in size: from 45 heavy motorcycles to 100

The undercover enforcement method is the most effective and policemen and women also prefer it, so it appears from an experiment run by the Research, Information and Development Bureau of the Traffic Division of the Israel Police.

The results of the experiment, “Spring Spirit” as it was called, were presented today at a conference held in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion, on the subject of: Current research in the area of traffic safety and implementation in Israel. Chief Superintendent Iran Feinmessar, head of the bureau, said that the experiment ran for five months and ended at the end of July this year. The experiment tested different operational methods used by the national traffic police and was run in different police districts around the country. It included, among others, switching overt police units with covert ones and increasing the motorcycle units as well as helicopters. The Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Arava districts were used as control groups and no changes were made there.

The main conclusion of the experiment – covert enforcement is the most efficient. Additionally, the heavy motorcycle unit proved its worth and will, therefore, be more than doubled – from 45 motorcycles to 100. Chief Superintendent Feinmessar reported that the police have also begun operating undercover heavy motorcycle teams. “It will be interesting to see drivers’ reactions when they realize that the motorcycle riding alongside them is not what they thought it was,” he said.

Another experiment that the Research Bureau ran was in stationing volunteers in reflective vests at dangerous intersections. The volunteers just stood at the intersections, did not hand out fines or make comments to pedestrians or drivers that crossed the intersection. The result of their standing in the intersection wearing the reflective vest – a decrease in the number of cars that crossed the intersection on a red light down to zero and a drop to half in the number of pedestrians who crossed the street when the light was red.

The conference was organized by the National Road Safety Authority, the Transportation Research Institute and the Ran Naor Center for Road Safety Research at the Technion, headed by Prof. Shlomo Bechor.

Generating energy by working out at the gym, checking real-time energy consumption & exploiting Technion’s position on the slopes of the Carmel

Green dynamo – exploiting the potential difference in water flow;

Energy screen – displaying data about energy conservation;

Fitness club – exploiting energy generated by working out.

These are the three submissions that won the first-of-its-kind competition held at the Technion on the subject of energy conservation. Tens of proposals were submitted to the panel of judges headed by Technion President, Prof. Peretz Lavie, and comprising Technion researchers and representatives of the Israel Electric Company. Of the 13 submissions that made it to the final round, three won.

Green dynamo – The submission by student Philip Auchman, of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, won first prize. He proposed exploiting the Technion’s surplus water pressure, which is high thanks to the Technion’s position on the slopes of the Carmel Mountain. “By using a simple device, a type of turbine that penetrates the pipe and rotates a dynamo, we can create energy,” he explains. “Because of the steep slope on which the Technion is situated, wide use is made of pressure reducers, and in my opinion, we can exploit this pressure to generate energy.”

Noam Berkovitz, from the Technion’s Computerization and Information Systems Division, won second place with his proposal to place “energy screens” around the campus. These screens would display information about the real-time energy use in each building and even warn about energy over-consumption.

Doron Laor, a student in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, won third place. He proposed using the energy produced by users of the Technion’s fitness club to generate energy. “People in the fitness club burn calories and we can exploit their activities to generate energy,” he says. “For example, all the runners or walkers on the different apparatuses can generate energy by their activity, which can operate the air conditioners.”

Itzik Romano, the Technion’s electrical engineer, said that ten divisions in the institute had managed, over the past four years, to save over five million shekels worth of energy and additional faculties are set to join the Technion project to save energy. “The competition that we held is one more step in our efforts to save energy and increase awareness about saving,” he emphasizes.

The competition was held in cooperation with Tal Goldrath and the Technion’s “Green Campus” team, the Samuel Neaman Institute, and the Israel Electric Company.

Executive Vice President and Director General of the Technion, Dr. Avital Stein, who awarded the prizes to the three winners, said that not for nothing is the Technion known worldwide for the creativity of its students and graduates, and the winning submissions are further proof of this.

Above: The three winners (sitting, right to left): Noam Berkovitz, Philip Auchman, and Doron Laor. Standing (right to left): Tal Goldrath (coordinator of the “Green Campus”), Dr. Avital Stein, Itzik Romano, and Beni Cohen, head of the Department for Energy Efficiency in the Israel Electric Company. Photo by: Yoav Bechar, Technion Spokesman.

Views: What Global Rankings Ignore – Inside Higher Ed

Dr. Guy Ankonia at the Joint GTEP & RBNI Photovoltaic Laboratory

Our collective will to power
Formed through an alliance of Technion’s most dynamic multidisciplinary programs, the PV lab is helping scientists unleash the power of the sun to generate tomorrow’s much-needed energy.


This is not a solar luxury to save cash on fuel bills. Global scientific experts agree that with depleting oil reserves and astronomical increases in world population, the quest for new energy sources is vital to keep our world safe, and that solar power is in first place as the energy supplier of the future.

Photovoltaic cells are used in solar panels across Israel to heat water. However, scientific investigation is still needed to optimize the use of different types of silicon within the cells, for mass production of electricity. Bringing energy know-how and expertise in the nano dimension together, the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) and the Russell Berrie Institute of Nanotechnology (RBNI) are combining strengths in the new photovoltaic initiative. The lab gives Israeli researchers from industry and academia the basic and advanced tools for the fabrication and characterization of photovoltaic devices. 

“Here, there is the freedom to explore what you think is right – in order to gain knowledge,” says lab manager Dr. Guy Ankonia. “Scientists can explore all frontiers of PV… what was not known becomes known. Technion is a great place to do the research. You have the tools, the capabilities to explore, and the freedom.”


Attention PV Researchers from Industry and Academia!
The Following facilities are available:

• Solar simulator
• CIMPS/CIMVS
• Quantum Efficiency
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