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Rongying Huang came to the Technion in the summer of 2016 as an international student from China. Today, she is a Ph.D. student in the biotechnology lab, and lives in Haifa with her husband Yang and their two kids – Yuanyi (Yoni) and Miya.  She sat down with us to talk about her journey and why she decided to stay.

 

Why did you decide to come and study at the Technion?

The reason I came to Israel was to take a one-month summer “ulpan” (Hebrew school) as part of my bachelor’s degree. I came in the summer of 2016 to study Hebrew, visited different universities and traveled around, and then decided to come back and study. I was introduced to the universities, research, and innovation companies through the ulpan. For me, the most interesting part was the cutting-edge research.

For me, the most interesting part was the cutting-edge research

 

How did you find the cultural differences between China and Israel?

As you know, China is a very large country, with huge differences between the north and south, east and the west. I lived in Beijing, which is a junction that connects all the points, and my home was very close to the embassy district and the Lama Temple. It’s common to see some religious people in my neighborhood, which gave me a familiar feeling in the religious neighborhoods in Haifa. I also feel different from other Chinese students and identify more with city people – I don’t see such a big difference between Haifa and Beijing. People here like to socialize in the streets – in cafes, listening to live music – the same as in Beijing. Though I think that Chinese people eat more street food.

I don’t see such a big difference between Haifa and Beijing

Tell me about some your challenges here

The biggest challenge I faced at the beginning of my life in Israel was the gap between my academic knowledge and my life skills. If I did it all over again, I would rely more on others for help. Regarding academic studies, I didn’t think deeply enough about the topics or try to solve problems creatively. I had no idea about life here, and practical skills.

I needed to learn how to solve the problem, not only know how to pass the exam

For my bachelor’s degree in Beijing, I only needed to do my homework and submit it. We weren’t encouraged to ask open questions or carry out research. For my master’s degree at the Technion, my professor always encouraged me to learn how to solve the problem and not only know how to pass the exam. At the time, this was a huge challenge for me and very tough. Luckily, I got a lot of help from my professor, lab colleagues, and other students. It’s no longer a challenge.

I am an only child, as is common in China. I grew up in a loving household with my parents and grandparents. I didn’t need to do housework or learn to cook or take care of other siblings. I never needed to share. When I came to study in Israel, it was my first time living alone. I learned to cook from the internet, and in the beginning, it was hard! But this is something that comes with practice and is easily learned. It’s no longer a challenge for me. Sometimes I make shakshuka for my kids.

 

Can you tell me about your Ph.D. research?

Today, I’m a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Program for Biotechnology. My research, supervised by Professor Daniel Ramez from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, is on genetically modifying bacteria to fight cancer. We engineer the bacteria gene into a smart agent and design it to deliver the immunotherapeutic drug to the solid tumor area in a local and controlled way.

Why did you decide to stay in Israel?

After my husband’s master’s degree, he continued with his Ph.D. so we could afford to stay here. Then I also found a Ph.D. position at the Technion, so it made sense to stay in Israel.

What’s it like, bringing up children in Israel?

Israel gave me a chance to bring up kids while studying at the same time.

In Israel, there are many differences in bringing up children compared to China. In Beijing, kids go to the hospital whenever they have fever, a cough, a runny nose, or even loss of appetite. We don’t need to make an appointment or go to the local clinic.

In Israel, there are many daycare options, where kids can go starting when they are 3 months old. This has given me the support to go back to work. In Beijing, kindergartens mostly start from 3 years old. They are bigger institutions, and more like schools. Before the age of 3, most kids stay at home, and are looked after by their grandparents, or one of their parents. This means that I wouldn’t have been able to work had I been in Beijing. Many parents (mostly, moms) need to sacrifice their career to stay with their kids. Israel gave me a chance to bring up kids while studying at the same time.

 

What is special about the Technion, and would you recommend it to others back in China?

After so many years studying in Israel, I don’t have much contact with master’s and Ph.D. students in China. But I have to say, I’ve met and talked to some famous professors who are more like idols or legends in China. Collaboration between China and Israel can really advance progress in science and technology: the Technion has some of the most intelligent people in the world and so many innovative ideas. In China, there is the potential to make these ideas come true. For the Technion, this means expanding the range of research, accelerating startups, and attracting more Chinese students to Israel.

Right now, the combination of my research work and looking after two kids takes up a lot of my time. Before I had kids, I used WeChat and Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Facebook) to introduce Israel and the Technion to Chinese students. People always ask if it is safe here. I would love to help to introduce more people to the Technion – a peaceful place with cutting-edge research.

A peaceful place with cutting-edge research

 

What advice would you give to another international student who was thinking of coming?

Enjoy the pressure and the challenge. Even though it’s hard, try and embrace the experience.

 

Two Technion professors will receive the prestigious Israel Prize in May 2022: Prof. Emeritus Joshua Zak of the Faculty of Physics will be awarded the 2022 Israel Prize for Physics and Chemistry Research. Known for the Zak Transform and the Zak Phase, Prof. Zak is awarded for his contribution to the understanding of condensed matter physics. Prof. Emeritus Yoram Palti of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine will receive the 2022 Israel Prize in the Field of Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation. Prof. Palti developed groundbreaking cancer treatments that fight malignant brain tumors using electric pulses in a non-invasive manner.

The prizes were recently announced by Israel’s Minister of Educationת Dr. Yifat Shasha-Biton.

His scientific contributions serve, and will continue to serve, in gaining an understanding of the chemistry and physics of material

According to the Israel Prize Committee, Prof. Zak will be awarded the prize for “the development of mathematical tools such as the ‘Zak Transform’ and the ‘Zak Phase’ for the study of quantum phenomena in crystalline solids. These tools allow for the prediction of materials with unique properties to build electronic devices.” The Committee further emphasized that “…his scientific contributions serve, and will continue to serve, in gaining an understanding of the chemistry and physics of material.”

Technion President Professor Uri Sivan commented: “We are honored and exceptionally proud to congratulate Prof. Joshua Zak on being awarded the Israel Prize, and of this important recognition of his contribution to science. Prof. Zak’s research has led to breakthroughs in an understanding of fundamental phenomena that are presented at the forefront of research into quantum mechanics, while contributing greatly to practical engineering applications. Prof. Zak is a member of the generation of giants that founded the Department of Physics at the Technion, laying the foundations for theoretical physics in Israel. This is the second Israel Prize awarded to Technion researchers within a week, and we are literally bursting with pride.”

Joshua Zak, 93, was born in Vilna in 1929. At the age of 12, he and his family were sent to the ghetto, and later, he was deported to forced labor camps and a concentration camp, during which time he lost both parents. As an adolescent, Zak was forced to join the Death March to the west and was released by and immediately recruited to the Red Army – all before he had reached the age of 16. Following his discharge in 1948 he returned to Vilna and began to attend high school, graduating with honors despite having missed many years of schooling due to the war and his military service. When the Korean War broke out, he was again recruited to the Red Army, but was immediately discharged thanks to his brother, Ben-Zion, who persuaded the authorities to permit Joshua to attend university.

He completed his studies in Physics with distinction at Vilnius University in 1955, while simultaneously earning the title of Lithuanian kayak champion. In the same year, he was accepted to further studies in Leningrad and began studying there, but in 1957 was presented with the opportunity to immigrate to Israel, an opportunity he refused to pass up. Within a short time, he was accepted by the Technion, where he completed his doctoral studies under the supervision of Technion Professor Nathan Rosen, who was Albert Einstein’s student and assistant, and Professor Yoel Racah of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1960, Zak received his D.Sc., spent some time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and then returned to the Technion, where he began studying in the Department of Physics. Ten years later, he founded, and headed, the Solid State Institute at the Technion.

Professor Emeritus Joseph Avron, staff member at the Technion’s Department of Physics, who studied for his doctorate under Prof. Zak, said, “Prof. Zak’s story is one of the meteoric rise of a boy who was almost completely unschooled, and it was only thanks to his phenomenal talent that in just a couple of years he succeeded in catching up, completing the entire curriculum imparted to children by the educational system over a 12-year period”.

Prof. Zak has many achievements in physics to his credit, two of which are named after him: the Zak Transform, which is presently used in signal processing, and the Zak Phase – a unique 1D crystal phase, which he described in an article in Physical Review Letters in 1989. This prediction has been verified in numerous recent experiments and is widely cited.

As mentioned, this is the second Israel Prize awarded to Technion researchers within a week. Last week, the Committee announced that the 2022 Israel Prize for Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation had been awarded to Novocure founder Professor Emeritus Yoram Palti of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion. Novocure has developed an innovative technology for the treatment of cancer, which is currently applied in some 250 medical centers worldwide.

Prof. Yoram Palti developed a groundbreaking method for electrical treatment of several types of cancer

Professor Emeritus Yoram Palti of the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine is the winner of this year’s Israel Prize in the Field of Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation.

The Israel Prize committee, explained its decision: “Prof. Yoram Palti developed a groundbreaking method for electrical treatment of several types of cancer. The treatment is non-invasive and highly selective. His personal story is an inspiration, since this type of breakthrough requires thinking outside of the box and a deep conviction, requiring Prof. Palti to challenge and change existing approaches in this field.” The committee added that, “Prof. Palti is working to expand the use of this technology in order to treat additional types of cancer.”

Technion President Professor Uri Sivan said: “We are proud and absolutely delighted by this important recognition and the prestigious prize awarded to Prof. Palti, who not only developed a new technology, but a groundbreaking new approach to the treatment of cancer – an approach that does not involve chemotherapy or other drugs. Prof. Palti’s work is an excellent example of the integration of engineering and medicine – integration that is among the Technion’s most distinctive hallmarks. Prof. Palti is an outstanding model of the rare ability to translate science into applications that are beneficial to people by combining profound research with an entrepreneurial spirit. Congratulations and well done!”

Prof. Palti was born in Haifa in 1937. As a child, he moved to Tiberias, and later to the U.S. When his family returned to Israel, they settled in Jerusalem, where he completed his schooling at the Beit HaKerem High School (now called Hebrew University High School). In 1955, Yoram Palti began studying at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. At the army’s request, he took a break from his studies to conduct a research project, and then completed a combined M.D. and Ph.D. degree in Medicine. His thesis focused on a subject that would become his life’s work: the effect of electric fields on live tissue.

He was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship from the National Institutes of Health in the United States, and conducted his post-doctoral research at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. Within one year, he was appointed to the university’s faculty. In 1969, he returned to the Hebrew University, but two years later, was asked to help establish the Technion’s Medical School. Since then, he has linked his fate to that of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion.

Alongside his original research work and management positions at the Faculty of Medicine and at the Rappaport Research Institute, Prof. Palti dedicated himself to translating his innovative research to the clinical field. As a result, he became a serial entrepreneurial – founding a succession of companies, including Carmel Biosensors (monitoring glucose among diabetes patients), EchoSense (diagnosing heart disease), O2Cure (respiratory assistance and artificial lungs), and BetaVive (treatment for diabetes).

The highlight of Prof. Palti’s research and entrepreneurial activities is NovoCure, the company that he founded in 2000, which developed an innovative treatment for cancer patients. The treatment is based on special electric fields (Tumor Treating Fields) that attack the cancerous cells without harming surrounding healthy cells, and therefore do not produce side effects or other risks. Clinical trials began in 2004, and their success led to FDA approval for NovoCure’s technology for the treatment of three types of cancer. Later, the technology received CE approval (the European equivalent of the FDA) for treating all types of solid cancer. Treatments for six additional types of cancer, including pancreatic, liver, ovarian, and lung cancer, are currently at various stages of clinical trials. To date, approximately 20,000 patients have been treated with NovoCure’s technology in around 250 medical centers around the world. The company’s CEO is Asaf Danziger and its Executive Chairperson is Bill Doyle.

Professor Emeritus Peretz Lavie, President of the Technion from 2009 to 2019, has been bestowed with the Commander’s Medal – the highest award in the French “Ordre des Palmes Academiques” (Palm Order). The Order, founded by Napoleon in 1808, is conferred upon prominent figures from academia and the worlds of culture and education for academic excellence and significant contributions to science, education, and the academic world.

Prof. Lavie, a world-renowned expert in sleep research, is an entrepreneur and one of the founders of Itamar Medical and other biomedical engineering companies. Prior to his appointment as President of the Technion, he served in other senior positions, including as Dean of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and as Vice President of the Technion for Public Relations and Resource Development. In 2015, while serving as President of the Technion, he was appointed Chairman of the Committee of University Heads. Over the years, Prof. Lavie has been a consultant and global expert in the field of sleep, and was involved in several significant public decisions, including the cancellation of “zero hour” classes in elementary schools, the introduction of daylight-saving time, the extension of the minimum sleep time in the IDF, and the “Quiet Wave” radio station during the first Gulf War.

Prof. Lavie currently serves as Chairman of the Israel Friends of the Technion and Chairman of the National Council for Civil Research and Development.

We recently released the February edition of our e-newsletter, Technion ‘LIVE,’ which includes a special interview with Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan, a story about a possible cure for ALS, an algorithm that fights antibiotic resistance, scientific experiments in far-away galaxies, and breaking news on two Technion professors who will receive the prestigious Israel Prize in May 2022.

Prof. Emeritus Joshua Zak (pictured, left) of the Faculty of Physics will be awarded the 2022 Israel Prize in the Field of Physics and Chemistry Research. Known for the Zak Transform and the Zak Phase, Prof. Zak is awarded for his contribution to the understanding of condensed matter physics.

Prof. Emeritus Yoram Palti (pictured, right) of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine will receive the 2022 Israel Prize in the Field of Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation. Prof. Palti developed groundbreaking cancer treatments that fight malignant brain tumors using electric pulses in a non-invasive manner.

To read the latest edition of ‘Technion LIVE,’ click here. To get our e-newsletter straight to your inbox, click here.

 

Two Technion faculty members have won Proof of Concept (PoC) grants from the European Commission for Research (ERC). The prestigious grants, each worth €150,000, are intended to promote the application and commercialization of academic research, including the establishment of a start-up company. They are awarded only to researchers who have won an ERC grant in the past. In the current round, 348 applications were submitted of which 166 research proposals were selected. Eighteen of the winning proposals were from Israelis, two of whom are faculty members at the Technion: Professor Shulamit Levenberg from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, and Professor Shahar Kvatinsky from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Prof. Shulamit Levenberg from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering won an award for her innovative development for 3D bioprinting and post-printing tissue growth: Print and Grow

Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting is one of the most promising technologies in the world for tissue engineering, and its corresponding leading technology is bioprinting using suspended hydrogels. In this method, hydrogel living cells are incorporated within bioinks extruded layer by layer onto a granular support material which undergo gelation through diverse cross-linking mechanisms. This technology provides precise fabrication of complex structures but turning the resulting structure into quasi-natural tissue requires additional steps after printing, including cell growth in those structures. At these stages a significant problem arises: the printed structures undergo various structural changes, including contraction and deformation, and the result is a gap between the desired engineered tissue and that actually obtained.

The solution developed at the Levenberg Laboratory is the Print and Grow concept. “With this technology,” explained Prof. Levenberg, “we achieve long-term structural stability of the printed structures, through a unique microwave, improved structural support and continuous real-time monitoring of tissue growth. The first experiments we did with the method led to a high life of the engineered tissue, while maintaining its desired structural properties (shape and size). We intend to improve the properties of the support materials and develop techniques suitable for different sizes, different tissue types, and production on a large scale. And the efficiency of bio-printing for tissue engineering, discovery of new drugs, and the civilized meat industry.”

Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received a grant for the development of Real Processing in Phase Change Memory (PCM). One of the bottlenecks in computer performance today is the communication between the two “brains” of the traditional computer – the processor and the memory. Although the capabilities of processors are improving at a rapid pace, the “dialogue” between the processor and memory requires a relatively long time that prolongs the performance of tasks on the computer. Based on the previous ERC grant he received (Starting Grants category), Prof. Kvatinsky developed an innovative unit called mMPU that combines processing and storage in the same cell. As part of the new grant, he intends to connect this to the “Phase Change Memory” (PCM) technology, which is based on monitoring changes in the electrical resistance of the material. This technology is already commercially available, and according to Prof. Kvatinsky, “A successful demonstration of a mMPU unit based on phase change memory may lead to the design and construction of fast and energy efficient computers, that are cheaper than existing computers. Such a breakthrough will dramatically affect different applications such as artificial intelligence, databases, and genomics.”

For the announcements of the ERC grants:

https://erc.europa.eu/news/erc-2021-proof-of-concept-grants-results

Machine Learning Antibiotic Prescriptions Can Help Minimize Resistance

Antibiotics are a double-edged sword: on the one hand, antibiotics are essential to curing bacterial infections. On the other, their use promotes the appearance and proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Using genomic sequencing techniques and machine learning analysis of patient records, the researchers have developed an antibiotic prescribing algorithm which cuts the risk of emergence of antibiotic resistance by half.

The paper, published earlier this month in Science, is a collaboration between the research groups of Professor Roy Kishony from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Biology and the Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, and Professors Varda Shalev, Gabriel Chodick, and Jacob Kuint at Maccabi KSM Research and Innovation Center headed by Dr. Tal Patalon. Focusing on two very common bacterial infections, urinary tract infections and wound infections, the paper describes how each patient’s past infection history can be used to choose the best antibiotic to prescribe them to reduce the chances of antibiotic resistance emerging.

Clinical treatment of infections focuses on correctly matching an antibiotic to the resistance profile of the pathogen, but even such correctly matched treatments can fail as resistance can emergence during treatment itself. “We wanted to understand how antibiotic resistance emerges during treatment and find ways to better tailor antibiotic treatment for each patient to not only correctly match the patient’s current infection susceptibility, but also to minimize their risk of infection recurrence and gain of resistance to treatment”, said Prof. Kishony.

The key to the success of the approach was understanding that the emergence of antibiotic resistance could be predicted in individual patients’ infections. Bacteria can evolve by randomly acquiring mutations that makes them resistant, but the randomness of the process makes it hard to predict and to avoid. However, the researchers discovered that in most patients’ infections resistance was not acquired by random mutations. Instead, resistance emerged due to reinfection by existing resistant bacteria from the patient’s own microbiome. The researchers turned these findings into an advantage: they proposed matching an antibiotic not only to the susceptibility of the bacteria causing the patient’s current infection, but also to the bacteria in their microbiome that could replace it.

“We found that the antibiotic susceptibility of the patient’s past infections could be used to predict their risk of returning with a resistant infection following antibiotic treatment’ explained Dr. Mathew Stracy, the first author of the paper. “Using this data, together with the patient’s demographics like age and gender, allowed us to develop the algorithm.”

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Israel Science Foundation within the Israel Precision Medicine Partnership program, the Ernest and Bonnie Beutler Research Program of Excellence in Genomic Medicine, the European Research Council (ERC), the Wellcome Trust, and the D. Dan & Betty Kahn Foundation.

“I hope to see the algorithm applied at the point of care, providing doctors with better tools to personalize antibiotic treatments to improve treatment and minimize the spread of resistance,” said Dr. Tal Patalon.

Click here for the paper in Science.

Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS, and multiple other neurodegenerative diseases have a commonality: they are all characterized by proteins (different ones for each disease) aggregating in neurons within the brain and nervous system. Now, Technion scientists have found that the cells have the mechanisms to clear those aggregates – they just fail to activate them. Their study was recently published in Nature Communications.

Proteins are the building blocks and the functioning units of our body. Any time the body needs something done, specific proteins are generated to accomplish it. To do this, the code for the particular protein is read from the DNA, and the protein is built from sub-units called amino acids. It is then folded into the 3D shape it needs to assume. Other proteins, called “chaperones,” assist in this folding process.

Aggregates form when certain proteins form incorrectly. Instead of performing the function they were supposed to perform, they attach to each other, creating sizeable clusters that not only are useless, but also disrupt the cells’ normal functionality. Ph.D. student Kinneret Rozales and M.D./Ph.D. student Amal Younis, working as part of the research group of Professor Reut Shalgi, examined how the cells respond to the aggregates building up inside them.

How can we know how a cell feels? We cannot ask it whether it is happy or in pain. But we can examine which genes the cell expresses. We know the cell would activate certain genes when it feels stress. On the other hand, if everything is fine, those genes would not be activated.

Some of what the cell does in response to stress is activating specific chaperones, in an attempt to correct or remove misfolded proteins. But which chaperones are activated? And which ones are needed to solve the problem? A great many different chaperones are encoded in the human DNA. Rozales and Younis examined 66 of them in cells with Huntington or ALS-associated protein aggregates. Some chaperones, they found, only make things worse. But quite surprisingly, they also found chaperones that could eliminate the aggregates, curing the cell. The tools to cure the disease are already within us, encoded by our own DNA!

Why then, if the necessary chaperones exist, do they not cure patients’ cells before neurons degenerate? “It is not enough that the tools exist in the cell’s toolbox,” said Prof. Shalgi. “The cell needs to realize there is a problem, and then it needs to know which out of the many tools available to it, it should use to solve the problem.”

Unfortunately, the group found, this is where the bottleneck lies. In cells with Huntington-associated protein aggregates, the cells sensed there was a problem, and activated some stress-response chaperones, but not the correct ones. The cells did not know what was causing the stress, or what they should do to correct the situation. With ALS-associated aggregates, things were even worse; the cells did not realize that they need to activate chaperones at all and displayed no signs of stress.

“The cell is a complicated system,” said Prof. Shalgi in explaining the surprising findings. “Think of your computer: when something is wrong, sometimes you do not realize it at first. It just responds a bit slower than it used to, perhaps, or it throws an error message that you ignore and forget. When you do realize something wrong – in the way of a blue screen or a refusal to start, you, or a technician on your behalf, attempt to diagnose and solve the problem. Sometimes the solution is found straight away, but other times it is something that you never encountered before, and you don’t know which driver needs to be installed, or piece of hardware needs to be replaced. It is the same with our cells: they do not always realize there is a problem, or know how to solve it, even when they do in fact have the tools to do so. The good news is that since the ability is there, we hope future treatments can be developed to activate it and employ the body’s own tools to cure these debilitating neurodegenerative diseases.”

The study was done in collaboration with the Berlin Lab at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and supported by the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF), the ERC, the Prince Center for Neurodegenerative Disorders, and the Rappaport Institute.

For the full article in Nature Communications click here

Ahead of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we sat down for an interview with Technion Professor Asya Rolls, a trailblazing scientist who leads a predominantly female research group that studies the effect of the brain on our body   

Soul, spirit, mind, consciousness – that something inside us that calls itself “me” – what power does it have over the inner workings of our body? Is it separate from the body, or part of it? Our body has shape, it occupies space. But what shape or form does our thought take? And if it is not a “thing” that exists in space, can it affect the physical?

If the mind is, to use Gilbert Ryle’s words, “the ghost in the machine,” the body being a machine whose nuts and bolts we study, then surely our thoughts, our state of mind, cannot affect its workings. And yet, the placebo effect – belief in the efficacy of a treatment alone causing it to have a positive effect – is taken into account in every medical study, and psychosomatic illnesses, while not fully understood, are well documented. How is that possible?

We sat down with Asya Rolls, Associate Professor in the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion, who started her career in our Faculty of Biology. Her Ph.D. was in neuroscience and immunology at the Weizmann Institute, and her postdoctoral work – in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University. The subject of how the mind affects the body always interested her, she says. Intuitively, it is a phenomenon observed in everyday life, and commonly accepted among medical practitioners. Good mood helps recovery, stress makes people ill. But scientifically, we didn’t really understand how that happened and what the mechanisms were. What kind of experiments can you conduct, what kind of models do you use to study this question?

 

The effect of the brain on the immune system

It is the emergence of new technology that made it possible to explore the connection between mind and body, and specifically, the aspect that interested Prof. Rolls most – the effect of the brain on the immune system. Recently developed methods allowed scientists to see with great precision what neurons are being activated in the brain at any given time, as well as to activate specific neurons themselves. This was the tool Prof. Rolls needed.

She made the mind-body problem the focus of her research. The results were novel, and at the same time so intuitive, that it was a wonder nobody had done this before. “I needed to see those results more than once before I believed common intuition had been right.” Asya Rolls says of her research. “I knew what we found, it seemed right, and that’s exactly why I had to doubt myself. It was very reassuring when groups started reproducing the same results.”

Now, she is more confident in the direction her study is taking, and her research opens the way to therapeutic applications and potential improvement to patients suffering from many different conditions.

The placebo effect: mice whose reward system had been activated fought off bacteria considerably better

A patient receives an inert tablet, such as a sugar pill. It’s not supposed to do anything at all, but the patient reports feeling better. This is the placebo effect. What helps the patient feel better if it is not the pill itself?

Previous studies found that taking a pill with the hope it will help you, activates the reward area in the brain. This is the same area that is responsible for our wanting and enjoying such activities as eating and sex – activities necessary for the body to survive and procreate. We perform the activity and are rewarded with a sense of wellbeing. In the case of the sugar-coated pill, the expected positive effect triggers the reward system.

“Feeling better” can mean many things for a patient. “Feeling” is still in the mind. Prof. Rolls sought to see effects on the body. To examine this, her group, in collaboration with Prof. Shai Shen Orr’s research group at the Technion, directly activated the reward system in mice, and then collected blood to test the ability of the mice’s immune system to combat disease. The results, published in Nature Medicine, were undeniable – mice whose reward system had been activated fought off bacteria considerably better. A positive experience, triggered directly in the brain, activated their immune system.

 

Keeping a positive outlook

“I was keeping a positive outlook,” a cancer survivor recently spoke of her journey to remission in an Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) webinar. “I found the humor in situations, I reminded myself every day of all the things I could be grateful for.”

There is no doubt that this positive outlook helped her mentally. But did it help her physically as well? Prof. Rolls and her research group, in collaboration with Dr. Fahed Hakim (of the Rambam Health Care Campus) and Technion’s Dr. Michal Rahat, tested this question. Once again, stimulating the reward system produced a dramatic effect; tumors were significantly smaller in mice whose reward system was activated. A positive sensation in the brain caused their body to fight cancer with greater effectiveness. These results were published in Nature Communications.

 

Psychosomatic illnesses: can you switch off symptoms?

In a recent study, published in November 2021 in the prestigious journal Cell, Prof. Rolls’ group explored immune memory. There is an area in the brain called the insular cortex. It is responsible for interoception – the sense of the body’s internal state. This includes feelings like hunger or the need to relieve oneself, heart rate, sexual attraction. If information about an immune response is stored somewhere in the brain, it would make sense for the insular cortex to be involved.

Prof. Rolls’ students, in collaboration with Prof. Kobi Rosenblum of Haifa University, induced bowel inflammation in mice and were able to track which neurons in the insular cortex were activated. Then, they activated those neurons themselves. The neurons acted as a switch; turn them on, inflammation appears, turn them off, inflammation goes away, regardless of whether there is a real reason for inflammation.

Patients with irritable bowel syndrome suffer from repeated digestive tract symptoms that appear to be triggered at least in part by something in the brain – by stress, rather than by some physical cause. Until now, the phenomenon has been hard to explain, and consequently the condition is hard to diagnose and sometimes treated as malingering. Prof. Rolls’ findings support the patients’ experience, and also open the way to treatment – could their symptoms be switched off just like the mice’s symptoms?

‘Remembering’ previous inflammations

Our body must constantly fight various enemies – bacteria, viruses, and more, Prof. Rolls explains. The better prepared the body is to combat, the better and faster it can defeat whatever comes. So, it’s better to activate the immune system not when the infection is already there, but when the body can reasonably expect it. Activities that particularly expose us to infection include eating and sexual intercourse. These are the same activities that activate the reward system. It makes evolutionary sense for the immune system to also be activated by this trigger, to call up the reserves and prepare for battle.

It is even more effective if the body, remembering where the last attack came from, could mobilize its troops to the same place for the next attack. Like a good military commander, the body does just that – it has the capacity to remember the location of a previous inflammation and activate the immune system in that location again.

Of course, activation of the immune system might be a false alarm, causing diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome. Understanding the mechanism should give us a key to developing treatment.

Healthy mind, healthy body?

If having a positive outlook helps the body fight cancer, are patients who suffer from prolonged sadness due to their condition guilty of not improving faster? If bowel inflammation comes from the brain, is it the patient’s fault that they have recurring episodes? Should we all “think happy thoughts” to make ourselves healthy, and is not being healthy punishment for thinking the “wrong” thoughts? If illness comes from the brain, is it malingering?

It cannot be stressed enough that this is not the case. These are findings in rodents that reveal new mechanisms in biology, but there is a long way to go before we can translate them to clinical reality. Even then, the implications of the lab findings won’t be so simplistic. Understanding the intricate connections between mind and body offers a way to help patients.

A conclusion that can be drawn from these studies is already mentioned by Galen and Maimonides in their writings, and one that we know intuitively to be true. It is not enough for the doctor to prescribe the correct pill. A doctor is not a plumber, nor a car mechanic. It is equally the doctor’s task to offer empathy and encouragement – to help the patient’s mind as well as body to get well.

 

Fostering interdisciplinary research

In addition to being a trailblazing scientist, Prof. Rolls — who was recently chosen as one of the most influential scientists in Israel for 2021 by Globes — is also a member of the Israel Young Academy. This organization aims to strengthen the relationships among Israeli academia, policymakers and society, to develop the abilities of young scholars in Israel and to promote research and scientific capabilities.

In this capacity, Prof. Rolls is responsible for multidisciplinarity. “The way academic studies are structured,” she says, “one specializes in an increasingly narrow field. One has to, in order to know it well. But this extreme specialization is also limiting – knowledge from a different field might help me answer a question, or better yet – ask a new one. We would like to offer scientists the opportunity to broaden their horizons.”

For a scientist whose research translates René Descartes’ mind-body problem into the field of physiology, this view is hardly surprising.

Story by Tatyana Haykin

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A little more about Prof. Asya Rolls… Age: 47 Position: Associate Professor in the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology; Head of the Rolls Lab, which is exploring brain-immune interactions Country of Origin: Russia Came to Israel in: 1981 What’s your greatest joy at work? The rare moments when you see a completely unexpected phenomenon that suddenly makes sense Favorite novel: The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig If you weren’t studying psychosomatic effects, what would you be doing? Sleep! Advice to students: You can’t really plan your life, so at least if you are doing something you are passionate about, you know it will be fun

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The COVID-19 pandemic, which has placed a heavy strain on health systems and medical teams, has highlighted the importance of smart technologies for continuous and real-time monitoring of people’s medical conditions. These are mainly wearable devices that monitor important physiological indicators while allowing the patient to go about his daily routine.

The journal Advanced Materials reports on a breakthrough by researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology that is expected to make a significant difference in this field. The breakthrough, which is featured as the journal’s cover story, is the result of research led by Professor Hossam Haick, postdoctoral fellow Dr. Youbin Zheng, and Ph.D. student Rawan Omar of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute. The system developed by Technion researchers is based on smart micro-needles, which are affixed to a sticker (band-aid) that attaches to the skin. The system continuously monitors the patient’s vital parameters and sends the data to the patient and his/her doctor.

Unlike standard medical needles, which are inserted through the skin, reaching blood vessels and nerves, consequently, causing pain and bleeding, the smart microneedles are short and thin and cross only the outer layer of skin. As a result, they cause only minimal discomfort. Despite their length, they monitor important physiological indicators because they reach the interstitial fluid under the skin’s surface and measure different biological and chemical components, including sodium, glucose, and pH level. The transfer of data to the doctor and the patient is done wirelessly through cloud and IoT (“Internet of Things”) technologies. This continuous monitoring, which allows the early detection of various physiological disorders, is essential for the prevention of diseases and other health complications such as heart and kidney diseases, infectious diseases, and more. It eliminates the need for conventional diagnostics such as blood tests that are currently carried out in the clinic, are painful for the patient, and do not provide online or immediate results.

Two of the conditions that the new system monitors are hypernatremia and hyponatremia, both related to the level of sodium in the blood. The first means overly high sodium levels, while the second is sodium levels being too low. Both conditions can affect neurological function and even lead to loss of consciousness and coma. Early monitoring can prevent such deterioration. Sodium is an essential element found in blood cells and blood fluid and plays a vital role in transmitting signals in the nervous system as well as other biological functions.

“To adapt the technology to daily life,” Prof. Haick explained, “we have developed a unique band-aid made of a flexible and soft polymer that stretches and contracts along with the skin and therefore does not interfere with any action whatsoever. Since it is important for us that the system be available to everyone, we made sure to use relatively inexpensive materials, so the final product will not be expensive. The technology we’ve developed represents a leap in diagnosing clinical conditions and continuous physiological monitoring at home and in the clinic.”

Prof. Hossam Haick, head of the Nanomaterials-Based Devices Laboratories and Dean of Certification Studies at the Technion, is a leader in a variety of fields combining nanoelectronics, smart sensing, and other technologies for medical applications, some of which are adapted to the needs of the developing world.

Dr. Youbin Zheng completed all his degrees at Lanzhou University in China and came to Prof. Haick’s laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow.

Rawan Omar is currently a doctoral student in Prof. Haick’s laboratory and a fellow in the Ariane de Rothschild Women Doctoral Program – a program that supports outstanding female doctoral students towards integrating them into key positions in academia and Israeli society.

The study was carried out in collaboration with Prof. Miaomiao Yuan and Rongjun Zhang of the Eighth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University in China.

Video demonstration of the device’s stretch and return to its original size:

For the full article in Advanced Materials click here

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology recently held a gala evening in honor of this year’s 27 new faculty members. Technion President Professor Uri Sivan addressed the audience and began by remarking how his own Technion journey began exactly 30 years ago when he joined the Technion Faculty.

“Most Israeli industry started here at the Technion,” the President told the new faculty members, “and support for the country — its economy and security — is part of the Technion’s DNA. The Technion has always known how to innovate and reinvent itself, and now, as we approach the Technion’s centennial year, we are asking ourselves again, how we can prepare for the next hundred years. Welcome, and I wish you all a successful integration into the Technion family.”

Vice-President for Academic Affairs Professor Shimon Marom gave a moving speech, directed at his colleagues in the wider Technion community and the management, saying, “Many fruitful seeds were planted in our soil this year, and the vision of the Technion in the next ten years or so will be that of the trees that have grown from them. Much depends on the ability of the young scientists to measure, reason, doubt, dare, persevere, and strive for truth. But not less depends on us, the soil in which these seeds are planted, and on our dedication to their nourishment … I hope that we successfully face the challenge. I pray that we can provide them with a sense that the Technion is a place, a home, not an IP address but an actual space; a campus rich in academic, intellectual, and educational buzz … I hope they see in us living examples of dedication, openness, integrity, reliability, avoidance of discrimination, and respect of others.”

The new faculty members joining the Technion are: Dr. Naama Lang-Yona from the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Dr. Shira Wilkof, Dr. Davida Schumann, Dr. Jonathan Natanian, and Dr. Guy Austern from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning; Dr. Michael Levy, Dr. Yitzhak Reizel, and Dr. Dan Bracha from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering; Dr. Assaf Yosef Zinger from the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering; Dr. David Andres Gelbwaser-Klimovsky, Dr. Charlotte Vogt, and Dr. Renana Gershoni Poranne from the Shulich Faculty of Chemistry; Dr. Hila Peleg and Dr. Sarah Keren from theHenry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science; Anna Keselman from the Faculty of Physics; Dr. Omri Ram and Dr. Christian Grussler from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering; Dr. Ariel Rapaport, Dr. Chaim Even-Zohar, Dr. Erez Nesharim, and Dr. Nadav Dym from the Faculty of Mathematics; Dr. Ben Engelhard from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine; Dr. Dana Harari, Dr. Yevgeni Berzak, and Dr. Atar Herziger from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management; Dr. Alejandro Cohen from the Andrew and Irna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Dr. Dustin Lazarovici from the Department of Humanist Studies.

The event was also attended by two faculty members who joined in the spring semester of 2001 – Dr. Luai Khoury and Dr. Yonatan Calahorra, both from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering.

 

Six students – five women and one man – won top honors in the “Jacobs Research Day”, which showcases selected studies of graduate students. This year the research day took place in an online format.

The Dean of the Graduate school, Prof. Dan Givoli, said “All the presentations were of the highest standard, and despite the online format the participation was impressive.”

The research day was attended by students who previously won top honors for their research in their department. The ranking of the winners is divided into two categories: Masters and PhD.

In the PhD category, Yonit Maroudas from the Faculty of Physics won first place for her study on “Topological defects in the nematic order of actin fibers as organization centers of Hydra morphogenesis” under the supervision of Prof. Kinneret Keren and Prof. Erez Braun.

Lotan Portal from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering took second place for her research on “Self-Catalytic Growth of 1D Materials within Dislocations in Gold” under the supervision of Prof. Boaz Fokroy and Dr. Maria Kaufman-Christosov.

Sofia Kuperman from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering was awarded third place for “Fluid mechanics in single flow batteries with an adjacent channel for improved reactant transport” under the supervision of Prof. Amir Gat.

In the M.Sc. category, Amit Shemaiah from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering won first place for his research on “Adaptable Canopy-like Structure for Underwater Sensing” under the supervision of Prof. Eyal Sussman.

In second place, was Stav Peled from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering for her research on “Oligosaccharide-Lactoferrin (OS-LFH) conjugate particles for selective targeting of proteins to probiotic bacteria in the colon” under the supervision of Prof. Yoav Livni.

Anna Pshenichny-Mamo from the Faculty of Science and Technology Education took third place, for her study of “Natural History Museums Educators’ Conceptions on the Integration of Nature of Science in Guidance” under the guidance of Dr. Dina Cybulski.

Congratulations to all winners!

Technion students will soon create Hebrew Wikipedia entries as part of their coursework.

The Technion’s Social Hub and the Center for the Promotion of Learning and Teaching have teamed up with the NGO Wikimedia to encourage students to write Hebrew Wikipedia articles, with the aim of sharing knowledge with the public and expanding the free knowledge in the fields of science and engineering.

Today, there are more than 300,000 entries on the Israeli Wikipedia site, but there is a shortage of quality and quantity when it comes to STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

On January 12, an introductory meeting was held for Technion professors to promote the writing of scientific and technological entries for Wikipedia by Technion students, as part of their academic studies. Hebrew Wikipedia is the fifth largest site in Israel in terms of views, with about 2,000 page views per minute.

Dr. Keren Shatzman, coordinator of academic projects at Wikimedia, explained that the organization is working to expand Wikipedia’s free knowledge base.

“In this framework, we seek to encourage students to write entries in their fields of study, which will increase the quantity and quality of free information,” she said. “Although Wikipedia is not an academic source, about 85% of students in Israel use it as ‘pre-search’ – to understand basic terms and gain background on the subject before turning to academic articles – so it is important that the information is good quality and reliable.”

The meeting was attended by the Head of the Center for the Promotion of Learning and Teaching at the Technion, Dr. Olga Chuntonov; academic chairman of the Technion’s Social Hub Dr. Meirav Aharon Gutman; Social Hub Director Ronit Piso; students and faculty members. According to Dr. Aharon Gutman, the collaboration with Wikimedia is part of the social involvement the Hub is trying to encourage at the Technion. “Writing entries in Wikipedia is an effective way of disseminating knowledge to teachers, students, and anyone who wishes to do independent learning, outside the confines of the campus.”

Dafna Levin, a doctoral student and teaching assistant of the “Issues in Urban Sociology” course – one of the courses that form part of the project – spoke about working with the students. “This is meticulous work,” she said. “Trying to find out what our added value is compared to the English entry.”

Technion students have already participated in writing articles for Wikipedia. The entry “Public Space,” written as part of Dr. Aharon-Gutman’s course, has already received 5,000 views, and “Porosity,” written as part of one of Professor Uri Shavit’s courses, has received about 6,000.

At the January meeting, Zohar Weiss, a graduate student in the urban planning track in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, said that writing the entry on “cooperative housing” combined her personal interest with the professional knowledge she acquired in her studies. “At the end of the day people use Wikipedia to find out about everything, but its impact is even greater because the information reaches a really wide audience, which is really exciting.”