Just What the Doctor Ordered

Among the 241 new MDs who received their Technion diplomas this past June, visually impaired Dr. Keren Amiel stands out for overcoming unusual challenges.

“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, ever since I was a child,” Dr. Amiel says. “I knew it was going to be a challenge, so initially I was apprehensive, but I decided to try.”

Amiel suffers from congenital nystagmus, a condition she inherited from her father which causes her eyes to “dance” uncontrollably, resulting in significant visual impairment.

Last month, 241 Technion graduates of the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine received their Doctor of Medicine diplomas. Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan spoke at the graduation ceremony; the daughters of Ruth and Bruce, Dr. Vered Drenger-Rappaport and Ms. Irith Rappaport, congratulated the new doctors. For half of them, the ceremony comes two years after their graduation, as no ceremonies were held at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Dr. Amiel, the apprehensions were over when she finally held her MD diploma. Not only that, but over the past year, she completed her internship at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and started residency in child and adolescent psychiatry at Schneider Children’s Medical Center.

Excelling while thinking outside the box 

The chief challenge, Amiel says, was being the first, blazing the trail. “The faculty was very supportive and willing to make the necessary adjustments,” she says. “But we had to figure out together what these adjustments were – identify the problems, and figure out how to overcome them. It took some out-of-the-box thinking.”

For example, in anatomy classes, where one has to recognize structures in the human body, she used surgical loupes like surgeons use when performing delicate operations. On one thing she agreed with the faculty from the start: in no way would her education be compromised; there would be no lowering the bar.

“The Technion encourages one to excel,” she says. “It poses a challenge, and an opportunity to learn from the very best. That’s why I wanted to study here.”

ד"ר קרן עמיאל בטקס
Dr. Amiel receiving her MD diploma

Currently, in her work with young patients, Dr. Amiel’s disability offers an unexpected advantage: it helps her to connect with patients. A doctor can be quite intimidating, but a doctor who is also a human being – less so. “I often ask children what they want to be when they grow up,” Dr. Amiel says. “If a child is afraid he or she won’t be able to achieve their dreams, I can encourage them through telling them about the challenges I’ve overcome.”

Paving the way for more people with disabilities 

Commenting on integration of people with disabilities, Dr. Amiel says: “I think visibility is important. The first time my colleagues in the hospital saw me with my nose glued to the computer screen, I suppose it looked weird. But the more common it is, the less weird it becomes, and that opens the way for more people with disabilities.”

While Dr. Amiel is the first visually impaired doctor in Israel, a few have passed this hurdle previously around the world. The first was Jacob Bolotin, who graduated from the Chicago Medical School in 1912. In more recent times, David Hartman earned his medical degree at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1975, followed by Tim Cordes graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. The knowledge that she might be the first in Israel, but others around the world have succeeded before her, helped Amiel persevere, and find the way to achieve the goal she has set for herself.

Story by Tatyana Haykin

Do We All Understand Coronavirus News?

Being afraid of math prevents people from engaging with it when they need it – even if they learned it at school, a new study claims.

Since COVID-19 emerged as a global crisis, the news has been dominated by graphs and terms like “R numbers” and “exponential growth,” referring to the rate of spread of the disease. To what extent does the average adult understand the quantitative information appearing in the news? The results of a new study paint a gloomy picture: When asked about “math in the news” items presented to them, even people who had taken advanced mathematics classes in high school did not typically figure everything out, but obtained only an average “grade” of 72/100. But these advanced learners make up a small minority of high school graduates. Those who took only the mandatory level of high school math – as over 50% of high school graduates with official Israeli matriculation certificates tend to do – correctly interpreted much fewer items on average (54/100).

Results were even more troubling for participants who had not passed all the examinations required for the official state certificate. Participants in this group obtained an average “grade” of 44/100 – suggesting they didn’t understand over half of the items in the questionnaire. This latter group represents about 45% of the total cohort of 17-year-olds in Israel in recent years. These findings raise concern about the relevance of school mathematics to the real-life needs of most learners and call attention to the importance of providing all learners with mathematics literacy.

The findings emerged from a new study on mathematical media literacy among a representative sample of 439 Israeli adults. The study was conducted by a team of researchers at the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology during the first wave of COVID-19 cases in Israel (March-April 2020). The team was led by Profs. Einat Heyd-Metzuyanim, Ayelet Baram-Tsabari and Aviv J. Sharon.

Profs. Einat Heyd-Metzuyanim, Ayelet Baram-Tsabari and Aviv J. Sharon

The researchers were surprised to find a factor that appears to be even more strongly associated with the participants’ understanding of mathematical information in the news than the level of math they had taken at school: the participants’ self-perceptions as being “good at math” and the extent they find mathematics useful and interesting. This finding suggests that being afraid of math prevents people from engaging with it when they need it – even if they had learned it at school.

“These results seem to show that school mathematics, especially in its high levels, may prepare adults to understand critical information important for their well-being, such as at a time of global pandemic. However, they also indicate that negative attitudes towards math may significantly hinder adults’ engagement with such information,” said the study’s lead author, Prof. Heyd-Metzuyanim. “Our findings should trigger some soul-searching in the mathematics education field,” she added. “After all, the goal of learning mathematics, for most of the public, is to be able to deal with mathematical information in their daily lives. We should therefore make sure that high-school graduates leave school with both the cognitive tools for processing mathematical information around them, and the attitudes and dispositions that would allow them to do so.”

Click here for the paper in Educational Studies in Mathematics

Winning Warmth in AI Systems

Users Prefer the Warmth of an AI System Over Its Competence

A Study by three Technion researchers reveals that AI systems’ competence isn’t enough: for users to choose a system, it needs to have warmth.

Spotify or Apple Music? Waze or Google Maps? Alexa or Siri? Consumers choose between artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems every day. How exactly do they choose which systems to use? Considering the amount of money and efforts spent on AI performance enhancement, one might expect competence and capability to drive users’ choices. Instead, a recent study conducted by researchers from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology shows that the “warmth” of a system plays a pivotal role in predicting consumers’ choice between AI systems.

Technion AI researchers: (l-r) Dr. Ofra Amir, Dr. Liat Levontin, Zohar Gilad

Research findings from a study featuring more than 1,600 participants, recently published in the Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, offer some insight into the psychology of potential users. The researchers, Zohar Gilad, Prof. Ofra Amir, and Prof. Liat Levontin from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion, examined the effects of users’ perception of AI systems’ warmth, that is, the systems’ perceived intent (good or ill), and AI systems’ competence, that is, the systems’ perceived ability to act on those intentions, on the choices they made.

Most of the research done to date regarding warmth perceptions of AI-based systems addressed systems with a virtual or physical presence, such as virtual agents and robots. The current study, though, focused on “faceless” AI systems, with little or no social presence, such as recommender systems, search engines, and navigation apps. For these types of AI systems, the researchers defined warmth as the primary beneficiary of the system. For example, a navigation system can prioritize collecting data about new routes (benefitting the system) over presenting the best-known route, or vice versa.

The research showed that the users’ preference for warmth persisted even when the highly warm system was lacking competence.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The researchers found that the system’s warmth was important to potential users, even more than its competence, and they favored a highly warm system over a highly competent system. This preference for warmth persisted even when the highly warm system was overtly deficient in its competence. For example, when asked to choose between two AI systems that recommend car insurance plans, most participants favored a system with low-competence (“using an algorithm trained on data from 1,000 car insurance plans”) and high-warmth (“developed to help people like them”), over a system with high-competence (“using a state-of-the-art artificial neural network algorithm trained on data from 1,000,000 car insurance plans”) and low-warmth (“developed to help insurance agents make better offers”). That is, consumers were willing to sacrifice competence for higher warmth.

These findings are similar to what is known of human interactions: warmth considerations are often more important than competence considerations when judging fellow humans. In other words, people use similar basic social rules to evaluate AI systems and people, even when assessing AI systems without overt human characteristics. Based on their findings, the researchers concluded that AI system designers consider and communicate the system’s warmth to its potential users.

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Sticker Patch to Diagnose Tuberculosis

Technion scientists have developed a tuberculosis-diagnosing sticker patch. Delayed diagnosis is a significant challenge to treating the deadly disease, which is still prevalent in developing countries

Technion scientists have demonstrated a novel means of diagnosing tuberculosis by means of a sticker patch that catches compounds released by the skin. Using an artificial intelligence (AI) analysis of these compounds, the scientists were able to provide a quick, non-invasive diagnosis. The research was published in Advanced Science.

Graphic rendition on skin adhesive sensors for Tuberculosis from Technion Israel Detection

In future implementations, the group plans to integrate the sensors into the patch and use a smartphone to read its results.

Tuberculosis, colloquially known as “consumption,” is prevalent in the developing world, where there is 95 percent of cases. In 2019, an estimated 10 million people fell ill with tuberculosis, and 1.4 million died of the disease. About one-third of the world population is estimated to be infected by tuberculosis bacteria. Since 1993, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has defined tuberculosis as a “global health emergency.” Effective treatment for tuberculosis is available, but diagnosis remains a roadblock, with around 3 million cases missed annually.

Rapid and efficient early diagnosis of Tuberculosis in the developing world could help alleviate a global health threat
 Rapid and efficient early diagnosis of Tuberculosis in the developing world could help alleviate a global health threat

Early symptoms of tuberculosis are non-specific, complicating diagnosis. What makes matters worse is that currently existing diagnosis methods are slow, and at times too expensive or complex for resource-limited settings. For example, a sputum smear ($2.60 to $10.50 per examination) is too expensive in a location where people live on $1/day, while a mycobacterial culture test takes 4–8 weeks and at least three visits by the patient to finalize the diagnosis and begin treatment.

Every year, 10 million people fall ill with tuberculosis (TB). Despite being a preventable and curable disease, 1.5 million people die from TB each year – making it the world’s top infectious killer. (WHO)

The World Health Organization (WHO) regards a fast, cheap, and efficient tuberculosis test as crucial to fighting the disease. And it is this need that the team of Professor Hossam Haick from the Wolfson Department of Chemical Engineering at the Technion address in their ground-breaking study. Led by Dr. Rotem Vishinkin, the group created a sticker patch to be applied on the patient’s arm. Containing a pouch of absorbing material, the patch collected compounds released through the skin. These provided the sought-after diagnostic tool.

Prof. Hossam Haick at the Wolfson Department of Chemical Engineering at Technion

A device based on this proof-of-concept study, called A-patch, is already undergoing clinical trials. Dr. Vishinkin, the project’s scientific leader, explained, “our initial studies, done on a large number of subjects in India and in South Africa showed high effectiveness in diagnosing tuberculosis, with over 90% sensitivity and over 70% specificity. We showed that tuberculosis can be diagnosed through the compounds released by the skin. Our current challenge is minimizing the size of the sensor array and fitting it into the sticker patch.”

Project leader Dr. Rotem Vishinkin, Technion

The platform the group is developing is cheap, fast, and simple in its utilization, and requires no specially trained personnel. The group hopes the same methodology and the same platform could in the future be used to diagnose other diseases and conditions, making effective diagnosis accessible to remote areas in the world.

Skin Adhesive Sensors for Tuberculosis Detection

The clinical studies were conducted in the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital, South Africa, the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, India, and the University of Latvia and Riga East University Hospital, Latvia. The study was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and generously assisted by Professor Gilla Kaplan. The continuation of the development under A-Patch project is supported by Horizon 2020. Dr. Vishinkin thanks the Ariane de Rothchild Fellowship for their support during her Ph.D. studies.

Click here for the paper in Advanced Science 

 

Alliance for a Sustainable Future

Doral Energy-Tech Ventures (Doral-Tech), Doral Energy Group’s innovation and investment arm, will invest in Technion projects in the fields of renewable energy, energy storage, and climate studies. Technion researchers will enjoy access to the Doral Group’s sites in Israel and around the world for the purpose of developing and promoting the technologies.

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Doral-Tech have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for strategic cooperation. Under the MOU, both parties will promote research, development, and commercialization on a range of issues, and work towards identifying and realizing joint business opportunities – in response to global challenges in the fields of energy, climate, and the environment.

Technion and Doral-Tech: Innovating sustainable solutions for the planet.

Doral Energy-Tech Ventures (Doral-Tech), the innovation and investment arm of Doral Energy Group, will invest in various technological projects, including renewable energy, energy storage, agro-solar (integration of agriculture and solar energy), hydrogen production, carbon capture, waste treatment, water, and environmental infrastructure, as well as supporting the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP).

Roee Furman, CEO of Doral Energy-Tech Ventures

As part of the collaboration, Doral-Tech will promote the Technion DRIVE Accelerator – the Technion’s accelerator program, while building a mechanism for joint investments and partnering with startups to join the track. In addition, the company will fund advanced applied research and receive initial exposure to investing in renewable energy technologies from the Technion Technology Transfer Unit (T3). 

The researchers will have access to Doral’s testing facilities in order to advance selected projects and exposure to markets in Israel and abroad. As part of the agreement, Doral will award scholarships to Technion graduate students.

Roee Furman, CEO of Doral Energy-Tech Ventures:  “We are excited and proud of this strategic cooperation with the Technion. This is of commercial and national importance in the development and promotion of the local ecosystem of startups and innovation in the fields of renewable energy, climate, and environmental infrastructure. The Technion has world-renowned researchers, as well as some of the most

advanced laboratory infrastructure in the world. Doral will strengthen academic-industrial ties and provide a platform for researchers to move from laboratory research to Doral’s testing sites and applications in diverse projects in Israel and around the world. This engagement with the Technion will provide Doral with additional and unique opportunities for entrepreneurship, locating and investing in breakthrough technologies, and strengthening its position as a pioneer and leader in its field.”  

Technion Vice President for Research Professor Koby Rubinstein: “The Technion works in many ways to strengthen research ties with the industry, and with the energy sector in particular. We welcome the collaboration with Doral, which will lead to many important research and application achievements.”

Technion Vice President for Research Prof. Koby Rubinstein

Technion Executive Vice President and Director General Professor Boaz Golany: “The agreement with Doral is, in our view, the first step in establishing a broader network of cooperation with energy companies and government bodies engaged in the field. The Technion has established, in large part thanks to generous donors such as the Grand Family, a unique research infrastructure for various energy projects, and now it strives to reach its full potential through collaborations with key players in this sector.

Executive Vice President and Director General Professor Boaz Golany

Schmidt Science Fellowship

Dr. Ofer Neufeld

Dr. Ofer Neufeld, who completed three consecutive degrees at the Technion and recently completed his doctoral research in the Faculty of Physics, has been informed that he is the recipient of a Schmidt Science Fellowship. The Schmidt Science Fellows program, which was founded by Wendy and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to cultivate the next generation of science leaders, will fund Dr. Neufeld in his postdoctoral research following his dissertation at the Technion, a thesis that has already won him an Adams Academy Fellowship, a Jacobs Award and the Israel Physical Society Prize for Outstanding theoretical Ph.D. Students.

Dr. Neufeld grew up in Haifa and started out at the Technion studying for a dual B.Sc. in Physics and Materials Science and Engineering. It was already then, while studying organic photovoltaic cells for renewable energy, that he became interested in research and theory.

After completing his dual degree B.Sc. studies, Dr. Neufeld began studying for his M.Sc. in the Grand Technion Energy Program. Under the supervision of Prof. Maytal Caspary Toroker, he researched theoretical methods for improving photoelectrochemical cells for the production of hydrogen fuel from solar energy. On completing his master’s degree summa cum laude, he proceeded to the doctoral program in the Technion Faculty of Physics. Under the supervision of Prof. Oren Cohen, he researched fundamental processes involved in light-matter interactions, specifically, interactions of strong laser fields with atoms and molecules.

Dr. Neufeld is currently pursuing his postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. Angel Rubio. The $100,000 Schmidt Science Fellows stipend will be used to support his postdoctoral research.

Dr. Neufeld is the second student from the Technion, and from all of Israel, to be awarded a Schmidt Science Fellowship, after Grisha Spektor of the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2019.

 

Gazing Together Into Space

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Israel Aerospace Industries to Collaborate on Student Project to Develop Nano Satellites

The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Technion has signed a cooperation agreement with the Space Division at Israel Aerospace Industries to develop and launch a nano-satellite that will enter low-altitude orbit around the moon and collect data using a payload of scientific instruments. The student-performed project will start at the beginning of the next academic year, in October 2021. It is expected to continue until it reaches completion in a few years.

l-r: Niko Adamsky, Prof. Tal Shima , VP and GM of IAI's Space Division Shlomi Sudri, and Prof. Gil Yudilevich Dean of the faculty of Aerospace Engineering. Credit: Mark Goldman, Technion communications office.
l-r: Niko Adamsky, Prof. Tal Shima , VP and GM of IAI’s Space Division Shlomi Sudri, and Prof. Gil Yudilevich Dean of the faculty of Aerospace Engineering.
Credit: Mark Goldman, Technion communications office.

IAI’s Space Division will assist the project in several ways, including, providing space engineers to help define, characterize, and closely mentor the students’ mission. Participating students will also be provided with tours of IAI’s space laboratories and facilities where satellites undergo experiments in an environment simulating outer space. At the end of the process, the students will be partners in launching the nano-satellite.

The joint project is the culmination of a faculty-wide process striving to balance two fields: aeronautics and outer space. According to Faculty Dean Professor Tal Shima, “while in the past only about 10% of the faculty syllabus was dedicated to space, over the past few years there has been an effort to change this and reach a more equal balance between the two fields. To achieve this, we updated the faculty curriculum and we are currently in the midst of the process of hiring new staff members with expertise in outer space. Cooperation with IAI’s space facility will allow us to expose students to additional joint projects with IAI focused on outer space. This is a fascinating field where activity in Israel and the world is stepping up and I hope to see as many students as possible focusing on it.”

“The project will allow students to become partners in a project with the industry and help them reach the end of their studies prepared to be integrated into Israel’s developing space industry,” said Professor Gil Yudilevitch, who initiated and leads the cooperation on the faculty. On IAI’s side, the project will be headed by the faculty alumnus Niko Adamsky, who today serves as a space engineer in IAI’s Space Division.

Shlomi Sudri, VP and GM of IAI’s Space Division said during the signing ceremony, “IAI is leading a process to strengthen cooperation with the Technion through a project for students in the field of nano-satellites. This will open a whole new world for them, a world that includes innovative system design. They will be able to gain experience in engineering a unique system in the field of space exploration. The dimension of space necessitates engineering and system capabilities with specialized knowledge. For the students, this is an opportunity to integrate into the field of space in Israel, to be exposed to the wide industry working on outer space, and to get a taste of the engineering and infrastructure capabilities that exist in IAI.”

The agreement was signed shortly after a delegation of senior IAI officials, headed by President and CEO of IAI Boaz Levy, who is an alumnus of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, visited the Technion and met with Technion President Professor Uri Sivan and the Deputy President of Research, Professor Kobi Rubinstein. IAI’s delegation also included Guy Bar Lev, Interim Director of the Systems, Missiles and Space Division, and VP and GM of IAI’s Space Division, Shlomi Sudri.

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan: “The connection between industry and academia is important and fruitful for both sides, and connecting with a significant and large entity such as IAI is an important step. The interface between academia and industry is changing fast and the Technion is investing great efforts in being established in Israel and internationally. We are working to promote close research cooperation and to turn the Technion into a hub for many diverse industries, a platform where industry and academia meet. We are quickly working to commercialize technologies that originated on campus. The past year has been a record one in establishing startup companies in the Technion. Another expression of the strengthening ties comes in establishing specialized routes for learning and vocational training for people in the industry who are interested in lifelong learning.”

IAI President and CEO Boaz Levy: “As an alumnus of the Technion, accompanying projects and different mentoring programs over the years, I am excited by the existing and future cooperation between IAI and the Technion. We must strengthen cooperation with the Technion, especially the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, which is unique to its kind in Israel, and which holds a leadership position among similar faculties worldwide. Increasing our cooperation with the Technion produces added value to both sides and will help us strengthen and integrate, to create groundbreaking, challenging, and leading technology in Israel and abroad. To this end, it is important we formulate together the image of the engineer we envision – an involved engineer with system-wide perspective and deep business understanding and research capabilities.” 

 

Congratulations, Prof. ‘Ishi’ Talmon

Professor Emeritus Yeshayahu (Ishi) Talmon of the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering has been inducted into the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

פרופ'-אמריטוס ישעיהו (אישי) טלמון
Professor Emeritus Yeshayahu (Ishi) Talmon

Prof. Talmon completed his B.Sc. (summa cum laude) and M.Sc. in the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering at the Technion, attained his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, and in 1979 returned to his home faculty at the Technion, this time as a faculty member. Between the years 2013-2019, he served as a member of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education. He has won prestigious awards and titles, including the Overbeek Gold Medal, an Honorary Doctorate from Lund University in Sweden, and an honorary membership at the Israeli Society for Microscopy and the Israeli Society of Chemical Engineering.

Prof. Talmon studies nanometric structures of synthetic and biological complex fluids, developing cryogenic electron microscopy methods (Cryo-EM), the interaction between polymers and surface-active materials, and more.

Upon his appointment, Prof. Talmon became one of nine Technion faculty members who are members of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The acceptance of the seven new members of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities was approved at the general assembly of the Academy on June 15, and the official appointment ceremony will be held at the end of 2021.

The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities was chartered by law in 1961 to bring together the best scientists and researchers, in order to foster and promote science in Israel. In order to fulfill its purpose, it advises the government on activities relating to research and scientific planning of national significance, publishes articles that advance science and scholarship, and maintains active contact with the international scientific community.

Congratulations, Prof. Talmon!

Academic Ties: Indian Officials Visit Technion

Indian Ambassador to Israel Sanjeev Singla visited the Technion yesterday to discuss possible scientific collaborations. Singla, along with First Secretary Mayuri Rahkhee, met with Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan and Indian students attending the Technion.

Singla expressed his hopes to deepen academic ties by further increasing the number of Indian students at the Technion (from approximately 100). He was pleased to hear about the ongoing collaboration in physics between Technion and various Indian universities.

 Indian Ambassador and First Secretary

Prof. Sivan, along with Prof. Alon Wolf, Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development, and Prof. Jacob (Koby) Rubinstein, Executive Vice President for Research, welcomed the ambassador and expressed the importance of further strengthening the ties with India.

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan and Indian Ambassador to Israel Sanjeev Singla

The Indian Ambassador also met with several Indian students and post-doctoral researchers, who told him about their experiences on campus, and gave ideas about how to help spread the word and promote the Technion among the post-doc community back in India. In attendance were Kaushalendra Patel and Rahul Suresh, Ph.D. students from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry; researcher Sruthi Sekar and postdoctoral student Sumana Kundu of the Faculty of Materials Engineering; Marketing Manager Hadas Shafir presented Technion International.

Indian Ambassador to Israel Sanjeev Singla (center)

New Synergy: Bucharest & Technion

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology last week signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Romania’s Politehnica University of Bucharest, establishing collaboration between the two academic institutions. The MOU will support educational and scientific cooperation, as well as promote student exchange.

Prof. Alon Wolf, Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development, who signed the MOU on behalf of Technion, was part of an Israeli delegation led by President Reuven Rivlin, focusing on strengthening economic and academic ties, including collaborative projects in the fields of smart cities, health and agritech.

Israeli delegation to Romania, led by President Reuven Rivlin (photo: Mark Neiman, GPO)

Politehnica University of Bucharest, which was established 200 years ago, is home to a prestigious engineering school, with over 25,000 students. According to Prof. Wolf, a researcher from the Technion’s Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Politehnica University, much like the Technion, is a beacon of technical excellence, which boasts a cadre of leading alumni in the field of engineering.

Politehnica University Rector Prof. Mihnea Costoiu said: “We have signed a cooperation agreement with Technion, through which we aim to develop courses in areas such as digital health, medical technologies, as well as promote student exchange, internships, opportunities for researchers, and development of joint research projects.”

Prof. Alon Wolf and Prof. Mihnea Costoiu (photo: Politehnica University)

This MOU comes on the heels of an agreement the Technion recently signed with Brazil’s Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, one of Latin America’s largest hospitals, which will support student exchange, collaborative research, and clinical trials.

Congratulations to the Magister Graduates!

Technion City, June 15th, 2021: 827 graduate students receive their Master’s degrees at a festive ceremony. The ceremony was held live in the open air after a long period of intermittent lockdowns during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

 

“Technion is my Alma Mata”: The proud class of 2021.

 

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan at the ceremony.

Advanced Optics for Science and Industry

Technion scientists have dramatically improved and simplified the production of precise optical components by immersing them in liquid. The study, led by Ph.D. student Reut Orange-Kedem and Professor Yoav Shechtman from the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, was published in the journal Nature Communications.

 

The new optical system

Precise optical components are necessary for many fields, including microscopy, telescopy, medical imaging, fiber optics, lasers, and more. In the field of bioengineering, they are crucial for 3D microscopy. However, their production is extremely challenging. The precision required is on the nanometric scale (one-millionth of a millimeter). The manufacturing process is complex, requires high precision, and can only be done in a cleanroom – factors that make it costly.

 

Professor Yoav Shechtman

The scientists developed a novel process of manufacturing these elements – a method that significantly simplifies the production, enabling optical components to be made using a regular 3D printer. This method makes optical components fast and cheap to create, and also allows one to increase the complexity of the elements produced. And all this at no cost in precision.

To achieve this, the scientists immersed the optical component in liquid: a mix of water and glycerol (a cheap substance widely used across industries, including as a food additive). Light moves at different speeds through different substances. For example, it slows down when passing through water or glass. This difference in speed is called the material’s refractive index. The refractive index of the liquid the scientists used is very close to that of their optical component.

Reut Orange-Kedem

Under those conditions, the optical component needs to be 1,000 times bigger in order to perform its function, which is just what the scientists wanted. Being larger, the component is now much easier to produce, and much less sensitive to manufacturing errors. Instead of a lengthy and complex process requiring a cleanroom, it can now be manufactured using a regular 3D printer. The simplicity of the process also allows for the production of more complex components that were near impossible using traditional methods. And the novel components are also tuneable, unlike their traditional predecessors, through manipulation of the glycerol concentration.

Overall, this is an achievement in optics, which puts a better and cheaper tool into the hands of scientists and industries across multiple fields.

Prof. Yoav Shechtman is a member of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI), and the Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences & Engineering.
Reut Orange-Kedem is a Ph.D. student under his supervision. This study was supported by the ERC (Horizon 2020) grant, the Zuckerman Foundation, and the Israel Innovation Authority.

Click here for the paper in Nature Communications 

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