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Gali Vardi, a student at the Technion – Institute of Technology, won first place in the Student and Young Professionals Competition initiated by the European Region of International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA). Vardi, a student in the Technion’s Landscape Architecture Program, won in the “conceptual planning” category. She was invited to present her project as part of IFLA’s annual General Assembly held in Helsinki in October.

The project: “Resilient Path-Strategic Planning for Wildfires in the Jerusalem Mountains” was conducted within the framework of the “LandBasics Studio – Climate Crisis / Local Landscapes,” under the guidance of landscape architects Alisa Braudo, Matanya Sack, and Izabela Levy, and with the consultation of Dr. Shira Wilkof.

The project dealt with extreme wildfire incidents that are increasing worldwide due to the climate crisis. In August 2021, a destructive wildfire erupted in the Jerusalem mountains in Israel, causing thousands of people to evacuate their homes, including the patients of “Eitanim” hospital. The disaster destroyed 11,000 dunams (11 sq.  km) of forest area.

The analysis of the development of the fire showed that the firefighters might have been able to stop the fire from progressing towards the settlements if they had been aware of the existing buffer zones in the area – empty paths designed to stop fires. Vardi deduced from this the necessity of a systematic evaluation of the buffer zones and planned this as part of her project.

The resilient path will connect the settlements around the forest and weave the buffer zones into a structured system. Using fire-resistant vegetation and connection points for the supply of water, the proposed path itself will serve as an effective buffer and provide access for the fire services and an escape route for residents and travelers in danger. Such a system has added values, and on a daily basis, will be used as a hiking trail for leisure and sports, while exposing its travelers to the forest restoration process.

It is an ecological restoration that Vardi suggests, one that also brings to the front historical, cultural and political aspects; the proposal promotes a transition into a sustainable forest, through planting and reuse of the terrace systems that were revealed with the last fire. The path is planned to pass next to old observation towers, which were used in the past to detect fires by the KKL.

While walking on the path and through the observation points, the visitors will reconnect with their surrounding landscapes. They will learn about the transformation of the forest – a mosaic of forest formations that creates a resilient system to preserve our nature from fires.

For Gali Vardi’s project, click here

To see the announcement of the winners, click here

The Technion hosted its 8th annual TechWomen event earlier this month. The institution’s flagship women’s empowerment event is designed to showcase opportunities at the Technion and to encourage young women from high schools across Israel to pursue academic degrees in science and engineering.

Loyal supporter and passionate advocate of women’s empowerment initiatives, Rosalyn August, sponsors the program each year through the Girls Empowerment Mission (GEM). This year, more than 700 young women attended the day-long event which features guest speakers, campus tours and other activities.

TechWomen 2022 kicked off with an inspiring message from Rosalyn August who explained her own struggles as a young woman attempting to make a career for herself in a male-dominated industry.

“You can do whatever you choose. That’s the beauty of being a woman in today’s society,” said August. “You have my support. I back you.”

The Technion’s newly appointed Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Professor Adi Salzberg also had an important message for all the young women in attendance.

“You are the future of Israel. It is important for me to tell you that women have no limits except for those imposed by society’s traditions, habits, and prejudices,” said Salzberg.

Building on the excitement of the inspirational event, Salzberg went on to explain how the Technion is actively working to increase the number of women among undergraduate and graduate students, as well as among faculty. Salzberg said that she also hopes to lead initiatives that will ultimately lead to improved gender representation in high-tech and other industries.

“Studying here can pave the way to a career that’s interesting, satisfying, and rewarding, whether you choose the academic world or the industry,” Salzberg explained to the young women.

Dr. Efrat Sabach, an astrophysicist in the Technion’s Faculty of Physics, had a message of her own to deliver.

“There were people along the way who told me physics is for boys and that it will be hard for me,” said Sabach. “These words can make one lose hope, but luckily, I didn’t. I stuck by my love for physics. If you have a dream, go for it. Believe in yourselves, ignore background noises, and don’t be afraid of challenges.”

Assistant Professor Arielle Fischer from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering and graduate student Vivian Darsa-Maidantchik from the Wolfson Department of Chemical Engineering also spoke to the young women.

“The lectures were interesting and enlightening,” said Shiraz Daviv, a high school student from Ashdod. “They gave me many things to think about with regard to my future. They also gave me a new perspective on my academic studies.”

The Technion Council has approved the appointment of Dr. Rafi Aviram to be the Technion’s next Executive Vice President and Director General, following his nomination by the Technion President Professor Uri Sivan and the recommendation of the Technion Senate.

Dr. Aviram’s extensive management experience includes five years as Vice President and Director General of Azrieli College of Engineering in Jerusalem, and, in the past year and a half, Chairperson of the Directors-Generals’ Forum of the Public Colleges in Israel [VARAM].

Dr. Aviram retired from the IDF with the rank of Colonel after a long commanding service.  He served as the Managing Director of the Friends of the IDF (FIDF) organization in the United States. Upon returning to Israel, he was appointed an Executive Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“After a thorough process and the consideration of dozens of candidates, I am happy to announce the appointment of Dr. Rafi Aviram as Executive Vice President and Director General,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “He arrives to the Technion with extensive management experience and specifically in all aspects of the management of academic institutions. I have no doubt that he will quickly become an integral part of the Technion and contribute his experience and abilities to its continued development.”

“I am excited to join the Technion family, a first-class academic institution in Israel and in the world,” said Dr. Aviram. “I am a strong believer in teamwork and will work towards its advancement.”

Dr. Aviram earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Atmospheric Sciences from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Tel Aviv University, and a Doctorate degree in Professional Studies in Business from Lubin School of Business, at Pace University, New York.

An important step has been made in the collaboration between Intel and the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. The huge Intel Corporation – the American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer – has donated to the faculty an advanced characterization device that will help train undergraduate students as leading engineers and scientists.

The new device, called Atomic Force Probe (AFP), makes it possible to perform complex electrical measurements in nanotechnology devices. It came directly from the company’s research and development labs where it was used to develop innovative chips. The device will be available to the students in the faculty’s advanced laboratory courses, to characterize the electrical properties of nanometer structures that they create themselves.

On behalf of the Technion, the initiative was led by Prof. Yachin Ivry. “The close and ongoing collaboration with Intel expresses our mutual commitment to training the future generation and helps us maintain the Technion’s status as a leading place for training materials engineers,” he asserted. “The device for electrical measurements that Intel is donating will allow students to characterize materials they produce in the laboratory courses in a way that reflects the material taught in the theoretical courses, while using current and relevant tools in an industry that is expected to absorb them after graduation.”

According to faculty dean Prof. Gitti Frey, “We attach great importance to the advanced lab courses, where the theoretical knowledge of the students is combined with the practical work on the research and engineering equipment that they will use outside the academics as well. The new equipment will allow us to expand and deepen this important experience during their undergraduate studies.”

Mariana Waksman, director of academic relations for Intel Israel. said: “Intel and the Technion have cooperated since the establishment of Intel Israel in 1974. It is important to us and will continue to be true in the future. The donated device will mean that not only the students from the faculty will benefit from it but also Israel’s semiconductor industry. We are committed to promoting academic teaching in the field and will continue to strengthen the Israeli academy through support and strategic collaborations with the various universities.”

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, in collaboration with researchers at Nagoya and Tokyo Universities in Japan, have uncovered a significant new function of the mammalian sperm protein IZUMO1 that may ultimately lead to more targeted diagnoses and treatment of human fertility problems, as well as enable the development of more sophisticated forms of contraception.

The study, published in The Journal of Cell Biology, was led by Technion researchers Professor Benjamin Podbilewicz and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Nicolas Brukman from the Technion’s Faculty of Biology, and Professor Tetsuya Higashiyama and Dr. Kohdai Nakajima from the Nagoya and Tokyo universities, Japan.

The researchers found that the protein IZUMO1, which had been discovered in 2005 by Inoue and collaborators to be critical for the binding of sex cells, also plays an essential role in fusing the cells to allow the exchange of genetic material and, ultimately, the creation of the zygote. In 2017, Podbilewicz’s lab discovered the fusogenic function of a different protein responsible for the fusion of sperm and egg cells in plants.

During mammalian fertilization,  the plasma membranes of the sex cells attach via an interaction between the sperm protein IZUMO1 and the egg protein JUNO. Once this binding has taken place, IZUMO1 works unilaterally as a fusogen to allow the  exchange and combination of the sperm’s and egg’s respective DNAs into a single nucleus. IZUMO1 is the first such protein to be designated as a fusogen in mammalian reproduction.  The present study was conducted in the lab, utilizing sperm and eggs from mice and kidney cells in culture.

Interestingly, the two functions of IZUMO1 – in binding and fusing – operate in a compartmentalized fashion in different regions of the protein, so that each function may potentially be isolated to address specific fertilization problems related to either realm, opening the door to more tailored or personalized fertility treatments and diagnosis.

IZUMO1’s newfound property as a fusogen may also open the door to new approaches to next-generation male oral contraceptives that temporarily disrupt the sperm protein’s binding and/or fusing abilities. This new function of IZUMO1 makes it even more suited to its name, which is taken from one of the most sacred shrines in Japan, dedicated to marriage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here for the paper in The Journal of Cell Biolog

In the dorm room of student Ahlam Abugosh hangs a painting of a bird drawn by her sister, Rina Abugosh. “She sold it to me for 100 shekels when she was 12 – after we negotiated the price,” Ahlam says with a smile.

This is just one example of the 97 works on display in the new exhibition in the Technion’s Ullmann building. Although the gallery has only been opened last year, this is already the third exhibition to be held there, in a cooperation between the Dean of Students Office and the Unit for Undergraduate Studies.

The current exhibition, called “Dorms Art Survey,” features photos of diverse works of art from 39 apartments in the Technion dorms. The works were selected by the exhibition team headed by curator Valeria Geselev. More than 40% of the presented artwork was created by the students themselves.

“We issued an open call to students to participate in the exhibition, and the response was tremendous,” said curator Geselev. “All summer, we walked around the student dorms on campus, looking for artworks of all kinds – posters, drawings, oil paintings, and more. We photographed them professionally, with the cooperation of the students, of course. They were warm and enthusiastic. Behind every door, we found love. The students opened up their worlds to us, their personal space, that is sacred to my eyes.”

The exhibition’s opening last week was attended by the Technion Senior Executive Vice President Professor Oded Rabinovitch; Dean of Students Professor Ayelet Fishman; and the director of the dean’s office, Dr. Janna Shainsky-Roitman; the director of the student dormitories, Avraham Adgaha; Efrat Nativ Ronen, secretary of the Unit for Undergraduate Studies.; Israeli Hope Officer Effi Barkai Goral; and Liby Manash, chairman of the Technion Student Association.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Ullmann building, where all Technion students spend their first year, is considered the melting pot of the Technion, and the most important building in the education we offer our students,” said Prof. Oded Rabinovitch. “This is where the Technion spirit is created, so this location is right and proper for the exhibitions held here. This exhibition will also enhance the feeling of home and transmit a beautiful and important message to the entire Technion community.”

“The exhibition represents the diversity of the dormitory residents,” said Dean of Students Prof. Ayelet Fishman at the opening. “It is a means for women and men pursuing all degrees, individuals and families from all sectors, from Israel and abroad, to express themselves. I warmly thank the students who shared their personal spaces with us.”

“When I began my studies here four years ago, the walls in Ullmann building were empty,” said Technion Student Association Chairman Liby Manash. “This change is so important because art is vital to life. It’s very exciting to see how many students devote time to art while studying at the Technion.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other examples of art presented in the exhibition include:

• Levi Horvitz’s dorm room is decorated with paintings his partner, Sapir Solomon, drew as a child;
• Zoe Morgenstern hung tapestry in her room, that she got from her brother before he flew abroad;
• Jose María Velasco decorated his room with paper cutouts that are part of the Day of the Dead tradition in his native Mexico. “It’s my favorite holiday. I really miss the colors”;
• Gleb Merkulov hung a painting in his room created by Lali Kalinina, his mother’s friend from Moscow;
• Bhargav Jah has a painting that his former roommate, Noam, found and brought home. “Since then, Noam has returned to the U.S., but the painting remains in my Technion dorm”;
• Ofek Zur from the Faculties of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering, who filled her room with her own paintings, explained that “The paintings remind me to believe in my talent to create life on paper. They also give me peace and calm and remind me of significant and pleasant moments in my life.”

Curator Valeria Geselev noted that she got her inspiration from the exhibition “Home Is Where The Art Is,” held in 2020 at the Zeitz MOCAA Museum in Cape Town, South Africa. That exhibition displayed about 2,000 works that residents brought from their homes.

According to Geselev, “In the Technion exhibition, we didn’t bring the works themselves, but photographed them and printed them in their original sizes on the walls of the corridor in the Ullmann building. The Technion is seen as a place of achievement and sometimes as a rigid place, but the exhibition reflects the beautiful and varied face of the campus’s human diversity. For me, this is a celebration of individualism – students, their lives, their stories, the human connections they form. I thank all the partners who joined me on the exciting path that led to this exhibition, which is a rich group portrait depicting a temporary human community whose center is the Technion.”

Explore the arts of the student residences

The Dorms Art Survey

Curator: Valeria Geselev

Producer: Haneen Abed

Photographer: Tair Zargari

Design: Hagar Messer and Ofri Fortis

All the texts in the exhibition appear in Hebrew, Arabic and English

The exhibition will be open until the end of February, 2023.

On October 23, 2022, the “Taste of the Future” conference, which focused on the development of alternatives for animal proteins, was held at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Speakers presented challenges, developments, and breakthroughs in the development and production of substitutes for animal-based foods. The need for such substitutes is increasing as a result of climate changes, the growing shortage of food and water due to the increase in the world’s population, and the devastating damage to biological diversity in nature caused by the clearing of forests for growing feed for cattle and for other animals raised for food.

Professor Sima Yaron, dean of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering and among the initiators of the conference, welcomed the attendees and emphasized the importance of promoting this multidisciplinary research at the Technion, partly through the help of the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center currently being established within the faculty.

The conference was organized by Professor Yoav Livney and Professor Avi Shpigelman from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Mr. David Shem Tov from the Research Authority, and Mr. Nir Goldstein (CEO) and Dr. Michal Halpert (Director of Academic Relations) from the Good Food Institute (GFI), Israel. GFI is a global nonprofit organization that promotes the development of alternatives to animal-based food by supporting research within the field and its application.

Speakers at the conference included:

Dr. Liz Specht, vice president, science and technology, of the global GFI organization, who presented the multidisciplinary nature of the field and the needs that require basic and applied research, and emphasized the urgency of conducting research in the  field

Nir Goldstein, CEO, GFI Israel, who reviewed the developments in Israel and the world in the business arena and explained that in terms of investments in alternative proteins, Israel is ranked second globally

Professor Shulamit Levenberg from the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, who explained her research in the field of cultured meat

Dr. Martin Jager, managing partner of the venture capital fund InnoVestNutrition, who described the complex challenges faced by companies in this field

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technion President Professor Uri Sivan, said at the conference that, “connections between academia and industry are a central component of the Technion’s activities today. The traditional boundaries, which associate basic science with academia and applied research with industry, have disappeared. Even at this conference, we see the connection between the two sectors – experts from the Technion discuss the various issues with people from the food industry. This is the path towards changing the food industry into a high-tech industry.”

Professor Maya Davidovich-Pinhas, a member of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, added that, “the Technion excels in connecting basic science with applied research in a variety of fields like food and human health and maintains many contacts with the relevant industries.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Panels of both industrialists and academics discussed the challenges of the field and ways to deal with them via multidisciplinary collaborations. At the end of the conference, there was a “Taste of the Future” lunch, where the participants tried “steaks” made from vegetable protein created using 3D printing by the Redefine Meat company and egg substitutes made from plant materials, courtesy of the Yo-Egg company.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), fungal diseases are responsible for destroying a third of all food crops annually, causing immense economical loss and adding to global poverty. For example, powdery mildew is a serious fungal disease, which is easily noticeable by patches of white powder found on leaves and attacks a wide range of plants. To treat these diseases, farmers are forced to use synthetic fungicides which are effective, but their extensive overuse and misuse have devastating impacts. Now, Professor Boaz Pokroy and Professor Ester Segal, of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, have proposed an environmentally friendly alternative for the exploration of which they received an EIC Pathfinder grant of $1.5 million.

Some plants, like lotus and broccoli, naturally exhibit anti-adhesive wax crystals on their leaf surfaces. These crystals prevent pathogens from attaching to the plant, as the wax renders the plant inaccessible. Inspired by the crystals of the lotus and the broccoli, Prof. Pokroy from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering and Prof. Segal from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering created SafeWax, a non-toxic biodegradable formulation made from renewable materials, that can be sprayed on any plant and has the same effect as natural plants’ wax. Not only that, but it can also be tuned to provide UV radiation filtering, prevent sun damage, as well as facilitate water collection from dew condensation, mitigating the inevitable effects of climate change. Between the effects of climate change, global population growth, and the already existing global food insecurity, the importance of protecting food crops from disease cannot be understated.

Profs. Pokroy and Segal, working in collaboration with colleagues from the Università di Bologna, the Institut Français de la Vigne et du Vin and BASF SE, intend to demonstrate SafeWax’s capabilities on the grapevine – a crop of high importance to Europe’s economy, environment and culture, and which is highly susceptible to fungal diseases and is, for that reason, the most-frequently treated crop. The European Union is planning to prohibit the use of many fungicides due to their toxicity, leaving the grapevine and other crops defenseless unless an effective alternative is found. Europe is therefore eager for the Technion team’s experiments to succeed.

With its Pathfinder scheme, the European Innovation Council (EIC) supports the exploration of bold ideas for radically new technologies. It welcomes the high-risk/high-reward and interdisciplinary cutting-edge science collaborations that underpin technological breakthroughs. From among 858 submissions evaluated this year, the EIC selected only 57 projects to be funded.

We are thrilled to announce that Andrea and Lawrence Wolfe have received the Albert Einstein Award, the highest recognition given by the American Technion Society (ATS). Expressing his gratitude for all of their support, Technion President Uri Sivan shared: “Your contributions represent the essence of what the Technion was built on: applying the knowledge provided by science for the benefit of humanity and producing the next generation of the brightest minds in science and engineering.”

Andi and Larry Wolfe are involved in supporting the Michigan-Israel Partnership for Research and Education, in which the Technion plays a central role. Over the last decade, the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation (named for Andi’s parents and of which Larry is the President) has supported many vital initiatives at Rambam and the Technion, including the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation Pediatric Pulmonary Institute, the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation Center for Interventional Cardiology, the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Mechanical Engineering Building and most recently, and the Wolfe Center for Translational Medicine and Engineering.

Larry Wolfe has been a member of the American Friends of Rambam Board of Directors for many years. Andi is a member of the Technion Board of Governors and on the National Board of Directors of the American Technion Society (ATS). Both Andi and Larry have also been involved in many other projects in Israel and in the State of Michigan. Among their generous contributions, Andrea and Lawrence Wolfe have supported Professor Marcelle Machluf and her technology for drug delivery and cancer therapy, which helped her launch the biotech company NanoGhost. Over the years, their contributions have enabled Technion researchers to widen and further their impact in a variety of important fields.

 

On behalf of the Technion community, we sincerely thank you for your support!

Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed a revolutionary invisible facemask to protect wearers against the transmission of COVID, MERS, influenza, and other respiratory viruses.

Although conventional facemasks help protect against disease transmission, recent scientific literature shows that they also present adverse psychological and physiological effects. They reduce facial identification and emotion recognition, adversely affect oral communication, and can cause headaches and skin problems. Wearing masks throughout the workday also results in a lack of focus, as well as reduced attention and patience in a wide range of professions. As a result of these difficulties, many people wear masks incorrectly – on or below their mouths – which greatly reduces protection. Even in Japan, where facemasks are common, a large study found that just 20% of people wear masks correctly.

Conventional facemasks have also led to a dramatic rise in plastic waste, exacerbated by governmental mask-wearing mandates, producing millions of tons annually.

Now, a Technion team led by Professors Moshe Shoham and David Greenblatt has come up with a radically new solution to the conventional mask dilemma by creating an invisible “air-screen” in front of the wearer’s face. The air-screen originates from within a lightweight filter-covered unit mounted on the visor of a cap. Several major advantages became clear: the air-screen protects the eyes, nose, and mouth without negative effects on facial identity, emotion recognition, or oral communication. The air screen is also reusable, so it does not pollute the environment.

Recently published research, based on experiments conducted in Prof. Greenblatt’s laboratory, demonstrated the air-screen’s efficacy by effectively blocking aerosols produced during oral communication, as well as large droplets produced by coughing and sneezing. It also removes quiescent aerosol-laden air from in front of the face by a process known as “entrainment.” This joint effect of blocking and entrainment can be seen in the video, where laser illumination is used to render the airflow visible. David Keisar and Anan Garzozi, students in the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program, were instrumental in conducting and analyzing the experimental data, and in developing a theoretical physics-based mathematical model of the air-screen.

Several one-on-one interviews and pilot studies with more than 50 subjects from various sectors (e.g., older adults and their caretakers in nursing homes, university professors and their students, close-proximity workers including tutors, physiotherapists and psychologists, retail workers in stores and offices, and high-tech management teams and board members who participate in long meetings indoors), clearly showed the advantage of the invisible air screen over the commonly used face masks.  These groups represent potential early adopters, who will benefit most from this new technology in Israel and globally.

The Technion recently licensed the technology to Wisdome Wearables Ltd. This new startup is currently in the process of commercializing the product, and seeking partners to realize this disruptive technology for the benefit of those at high-risk of suffering from respiratory viruses.

For the full article, click here

One in nine women in the developed world will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in her life. The prevalence of breast cancer is increasing, an effect caused in part by the modern lifestyle and increased lifespans. Thankfully, treatments are becoming more efficient and more personalized. However, what isn’t increasing – and is in fact decreasing –  is the number of pathologists, or the doctors whose specialization is examining body tissues to provide the specific diagnosis necessary for personalized medicine. A team of researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have therefore made it their quest to turn computers into effective pathologists’ assistants, simplifying and improving the human doctor’s work. Their new study was recently published in Nature Communications.

The specific task that Dr. Gil Shamai and Amir Livne from the lab of Professor Ron Kimmel from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion set out to achieve lies within the realm of immunotherapy. Immunotherapy has been gaining prominence in recent years as an effective, sometimes even game-changing, treatment for several types of cancer. The basis of this form of therapy is encouraging the body’s own immune system to attack the tumor. However, such therapy needs to be personalized as the correct medication must be administered to the patients who stand to benefit from it based on the specific characteristics of the tumor.

Multiple natural mechanisms prevent our immune systems from attacking our own bodies. These mechanisms are often exploited by cancer tumors to evade the immune system. One such mechanism is related to the PD-L1 protein – some tumors display it, and it acts as a sort of password by erroneously convincing the immune system that the cancer should not be attacked. Specific immunotherapy for PD-L1 can persuade the immune system to ignore this particular password, but of course would only be effective when the tumor expresses the PD-L1.

It is a pathologist’s task to determine whether a patient’s tumor expresses PD-L1. Expensive chemical markers are used to stain a biopsy taken from the tumor in order to obtain the answer. The process is non-trivial, time-consuming, and at times inconsistent. Dr. Shamai and his team took a different approach. In recent years, it has become an FDA-approved practice for biopsies to be scanned so they can be used for digital pathological analysis. Amir Livne, Dr. Shamai and Prof. Kimmel decided to see if a neural network could use these scans to make the diagnosis without requiring additional processes. “They told us it couldn’t be done,” the team said, “so of course, we had to prove them wrong.”

Neural networks are trained in a manner similar to how children learn: they are presented with multiple tagged examples. A child is shown many dogs and many “not-dogs”, and from these examples forms an idea of what “dog” is. The neural network Prof. Kimmel’s team developed was presented with digital biopsy images from 3,376 patients that were tagged as either expressing or not expressing PD-L1. After preliminary validation, it was asked to determine whether additional clinical trial biopsy images from 275 patients were positive or negative for PD-L1. It performed better than expected: for 70% of the patients, it was able to confidently and correctly determine the answer. For the remaining 30% of the patients, the program could not find the visual patterns that would enable it to decide one way or the other. Interestingly, in the cases where the artificial intelligence (AI) disagreed with the human pathologist’s determination, a second test proved the AI to be right.

“This is a momentous achievement,” Prof. Kimmel explained. “The variations that the computer found – they are not distinguishable to the human eye. Cells arrange themselves differently if they present PD-L1 or not, but the differences are so small that even a trained pathologist can’t confidently identify them. Now our neural network can.”

This achievement is the work of a team comprised of Dr. Gil Shamai and graduate student Amir Livne, who developed the technology and designed the experiments, Dr. António Polónia from the Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto, Portugal, Professor Edmond Sabo and Dr. Alexandra Cretu from Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, who are expert pathologists that conducted the research, and with the support of Professor Gil Bar-Sela, head of oncology and hematology division at Haemek Medical Center in Afula, Israel.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to bring together artificial intelligence and medicine,” Dr. Shamai said. “I love mathematics, I love developing algorithms. Being able to use my skills to help people, to advance medicine – it’s more than I expected when I started out as a computer science student.” He is now leading a team of 15 researchers, who are taking this project to the next level.

“We expect AI to become a powerful tool in doctors’ hands,” shared Prof. Kimmel. “AI can assist in making or verifying a diagnosis, it can help match the treatment to the individual patient, it can offer a prognosis. I do not think it can, or should, replace the human doctor. But it can make some elements of doctors’ work simpler, faster, and more precise.”

For the article in Nature Communications click here

 

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded four early-career Technion scientists with Starting Grants, recognizing the great promise in their research fields. These scientists are: Assistant Professor Inbal Talgam-Cohen from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science; Assistant Professor Ofra Amir from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management; Assistant Professor Noga Ron-Harel from the Faculty of Biology; and Assistant Professor Naama Geva-Zatorsky from the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine.

ERC is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research and is part of the Horizon Europe program. The ERC Starting Grant is aiming to assist excellent early-career scientists, who are starting their career as heads of their own lab, in forming their teams and pursuing their most promising ideas.

 

Prof. Ofra Amir’s main research interests lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. People often find it hard to trust computer systems, because they don’t understand their behavior. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has a great potential to benefit society in areas such as transportation, healthcare and education. But to fulfill this potential and collaborate effectively with AI, we need to be able to know when we can trust its decisions. For example, a driver of an autonomous vehicle will need to anticipate situations in which the car fails and hands over control, while a clinician will need to understand the treatment regime recommended by an AI to determine whether it aligns with the patient’s preferences. The objective of Prof. Amir’s study is to develop adaptive and interactive methods for conveying the behavior of AI-based systems to users, develop algorithms that determine what information about AIs’ behavior to share with users and, design interfaces that allow users to proactively explore AIs’ capabilities in order to understand them better.

 

Prof. Naama Geva-Zatorsky studies the interactions of the gut microbiota with our immune system and their potential effects on our health. In particular, she seeks to understand better their functionality and spatial organization – where exactly in the intestine the microbes thrive, how they adapt to their environment, and how they affect us – their mammalian host. These questions have a particular importance for colitis and Crohn’s Disease, types of inflammatory bowel diseases. Specifically, Crohn’s patients’ intestines display patches of gut inflammation surrounded by uninflamed regions, with a clear demarcation but unknown cause. Prof. Geva-Zatorsky seeks to find out why some areas of patients’ guts become inflamed while others do not, understand how the microbes and the patients’ immune system interact, and hopefully obtain knowledge that could lead to new and better diagnostics and treatments.

 

Aging of the immune system is the focus of Prof. Noga Ron-Harel’s study. Specifically, her work focuses on T lymphocytes. These cells are central players in our defence against pathogens, and mediate response to vaccination and immunological memory to past events. T lymphocytes are among immune cell populations that are most detrimentally affected by aging. Strikingly, old and dysfunctional T cells promote organ ageing and age-related morbidities. Prof. Ron-Harel aims to delve into the pathways by which T cells interact with their aging microenvironment and vice versa, understand the cause-and-effect relations between organs’ ageing and T cells’ ageing, and perhaps find new ways to rejuvenate both.

 

Prof. Inbal Talgam-Cohen works in the field of Algorithmic Game Theory, her particular interest being algorithms with economic and societal applications. Such algorithms can’t be designed in a void; they constantly interact with humans, who have their own interests. Prof. Talgam-Cohen proposes to apply the algorithmic lens to a field in economics called ‘contract design’, recognized by the 2016 Nobel Prize. That is, contracts could be designed by means of algorithms, in ways that would incentivize all parties involved to invest effort towards a fruitful cooperation. Applications of this approach range from traditional contracts moving to online platforms, like freelancing, to novel data-driven incentive schemes for domains like digital healthcare.

 

Prof. Jacob (Koby) Rubinstein, the Technion Executive Vice President for Research, said “the achievements of the four faculty members place us at the forefront of the most outstanding universities in Europe. No less important, there’s noteworthy gender representation here – something to be proud of for us, and of course for the four women themselves.”

Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: “We are proud that we are empowering younger researchers to follow their curiosity. These new ERC laureates bring a remarkable wealth of scientific ideas, they will certainly further our knowledge and some already have practical applications in sight. I wish them all the best of luck with their explorations.”

President of the European Research Council Prof. Maria Leptin said: “It is a pleasure to see this new group of bright minds at the start of their careers, set to take their research to new heights. I cannot emphasize enough that Europe as a whole – both at national and at EU level – has to continue to back and empower its promising talent. We must encourage young researchers who are led by sheer curiosity to go after their most ambitious scientific ideas. Investing in them and their frontier research is investing in our future. It is a pleasure to see this new group of bright minds at the start of their careers, set to take their research to new heights. I cannot emphasize enough that Europe as a whole – both at national and at EU level – has to continue to back and empower its promising talent. We must encourage young researchers who are led by sheer curiosity to go after their most ambitious scientific ideas. Investing in them and their frontier research is investing in our future.”