Category: Uncategorized

ANN ARBOR—Consider a future in which robots work alongside humans to search for disaster survivors and seniors monitor their response to bacterial infections in real time.

A $20 million gift from The D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation will expand collaboration among researchers at the University of Michigan, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel to help enhance quality of life through advancements in robotics and precision health.

“Collaboration is critical when addressing important societal issues like precision health and robotics,” said S. Jack Hu, U-M vice president for research and the J. Reid and Polly Anderson Professor of Manufacturing. “In partnering with our colleagues at two of the world’s leading research universities, we are able to accelerate the promising potential in these significant areas of research.”

Since 2011, researchers at U-M, ​Technion and Weizmann have collaborated on nearly 50 competitively funded research projects as part of the Michigan-Israel Partnership for Research and Education. The partnership, funded by philanthropic gifts, supports research, fosters innovation and spurs collaboration among the three institutions in fields ranging from biomedical sciences to engineering. With this new gift, The D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation has given a total of $25 million to U-M for the partnership.

“In this day & age, international and interdisciplinary collaborations are vital to the future of science and engineering.” Said Prof. Boaz Golany, Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development at Technion. “The support of the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation enables three world leading universities to join hands in a partnership that will benefit people not only in the US and Israel, but worldwide.”

“We are grateful to The D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation for this visionary gift,” said Israel Bar-Joseph, vice president of resource development and public affairs at Weizmann. “We look forward to building an impactful research program that will deepen the relations between these three great institutions.”

This week, researchers from all three institutions are gathering in Ann Arbor as part of the seventh-annual D. Dan and Betty Kahn Symposium. The gift, announced Thursday, will support two large inter-university research projects, the annual symposium and smaller-scale collaborative projects.

“The D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation is pleased to support this unique partnership as an outgrowth of the Kahn Symposium that began in 2011,” said Larry Wolfe, president of The D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation. “We see the partnership as a natural extension of Dan Kahn’s vision and an opportunity for three of the world’s great universities to pursue transformative research advancements in health, science and education. We hope this gift will inspire others to support  this incredible cause.”

Collaborative research projects

One project aims to advance the frontiers of autonomous robotic science by discovering new principles, creating new technology and demonstrating innovations in autonomous systems.

“While autonomous vehicles have been pushing the boundaries of what robots can do without any human guidance, the greatest impact robots can have is by being right by our side,” said Alec D. Gallimore, the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering, the Richard F. and Eleanor A. Towner Professor, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, and a professor of aerospace engineering.

“Robots can be designed with physical capabilities complementary to our own, and rather than replacing humans, the robots we envision can make existing jobs easier. They could increase productivity, improve worker safety and allow workers to spend more time on the creative and engaging parts of their jobs, while robots seamlessly support them by performing the tiring and repetitive parts.”

As part of the second project, researchers from the three institutions plan to develop tools that enhance privacy and computational effectiveness in big-data analytics in precision health.

“When it comes to precision health, we have tremendous opportunities to advance scientific discovery and implementation with the right technical, clinical, regulatory and communication strategies,” said Marschall S. Runge, executive vice president for medical affairs and dean of the U-M Medical School. “If we can increase multidisciplinary collaboration, we can bring cohesion and momentum to this new but fragmented field and establish a strong, stable foundation for future precision health discoveries.”

In addition to collaborative research, the partnership has supported the exchange of 15 early-career researchers between U-M and either Technion or Weizmann.

 

 

Researchers at the Technion’s Schulich Faculty of Chemistry have developed innovative synthetic methods that expand the chemical toolbox and enable effective preparation of new and complex proteins.

HAIFA, ISRAEL (October 8, 2018) – Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University have developed a new method of protein synthesis that could one day be used to promote biochemical, structural and functional studies, and in the creation of new drugs. The findings were recently published in Nature Communications. The research team led by Prof. Ashraf Brik of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry included  Muhammad Jbara, Shay Laps, Dr. Guy Kamnesky, and Guy Mann, along with Prof. Cynthia Wolberger of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Proteins are vital components of the living cell from which organelles are built into cells, muscles, and more, and the ability of the Technion-Johns Hopkins team to create them artificially could dramatically affect such endeavors.

The team was able to form complex protein clusters by precisely tuning chemical processes. This is an expansion of the chemical toolbox for the synthesis of proteins and the opening of a new channel for the development of chemistry based on organometallic complexes. The method was demonstrated by the synthesis of a copper storage protein (CSP1) and in the reaction of ubiquitinated proteins for the formation of a strong (covalent) complex of nucleosome-enzyme.

Prof. Brik completed his master’s and doctoral degrees at the Technion and later became Israel’s first Arabic chemistry professor. After a meteoric career at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, he joined the faculty of the Technion on the initiative of Nobel Laureate and Technion Distinguished Prof. Aaron Ciechanover. Prof. Brik has won numerous awards including the Humboldt Research Award (Germany), the Hirata Award (Japan), the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award, the Eli Hurvitz Award (Israel), and the Israel Chemical Society’s Prize for the Outstanding Young Scientist. He was recently elected as a member of the Israel Young Academy.

This study was supported by the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF).

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Intel Corporation inaugurated a new Center for Artificial Intelligence (AI) yesterday, Monday, October 8th. The Center is chartered with advancing research in AI fields and collaboration between Technion and Intel researchers.

Intel’s Dr. Michael Mayberry, chief technology officer, and Naveen Rao, corporate vice president, and general manager of the Artificial Intelligence Products Group represented Intel at the inauguration of the new AI Center. Prof. Boaz Golany, vice president for External Relations and Resource Development, Prof. Wayne Kaplan, executive vice president for Research, Prof. Nahum Shimkin, dean of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Prof. Dan Geiger, dean of the Computer Science Department and Prof. Carmel Domshlak, Dean of the William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, represented the Technion.

Prof. Shie Mannor from the Technion Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering will head the Center. “The Technion is the leading university in Israel in the field of artificial intelligence and is one of the top ten universities in the world in the field,” Mannor said. “In 2018 the Technion ranked 7th in the CS Rankings: Computer Science Rankings.  The Technion has about 20 faculty members whose main field of research is computational learning and another 40 [researchers] are working in related fields. The majority of the researchers come from the Faculty of Computer Science, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management and some of them are from other faculties such as Medicine and Biology.”

Mannor added: “As part of this collaboration with Intel, the company will support research projects of Technion faculty members engaged in computational learning and artificial intelligence together with Intel researchers. The research will cover a variety of areas, including natural language processing, deep learning and hardware optimization for different learning algorithms.”

Intel Israel CEO Yaniv Garty said, “We are proud of the cooperation with the Technion, which will promote Israeli technology and Intel’s technological leadership in the field of artificial intelligence.”

“Intel is a leader in this field and the research center will help further advance AI innovation. I have no doubt that we will achieve breakthroughs that will lead to significant developments in the coming years. Intel has always maintained a close cooperation with Israeli academia, which has included many contributions, support of teaching programs, scholarships for outstanding students, joint research and more,” he said.

Prof. Boaz Golany, Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development added: “The Technion intends to expand its activities in the fields of machine learning and intelligent technology in the next few years and the joint activity with Intel is one of the first steps in this direction. We are working to raise unprecedented resources to support basic research in the field and in parallel, to work with leading companies such as Intel to promote applications in a wide range of fields including healthcare, autonomous vehicles, smart environments, home, and industrial robots and more.”

Intel and The Technion have maintained close ties for many years. In 2009, Intel awarded The Technion the “Intel Award” in recognition of the university, whose graduates were the founding nucleus of the company’s branch which was established in Haifa in 1974. To date, Intel supports some Technion’s labs and funds many scholarships for students at the Technion, including specifically supporting outstanding students in electrical engineering and computer science.

Under the auspices of the Helen Diller Center for Quantum Science, Matter and Engineering at the Technion, an interdisciplinary team of scientists has collaborated on groundbreaking research leading to the development of a new and innovative scientific field: Quantum Metamaterials. The findings are presented in a new joint paper published by the prestigious journal Science.

Haifa, Israel September 13^th, 2018 – Two teams of scientists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have collaborated to conduct groundbreaking research leading to the development of a new and innovative scientific field: Quantum Metamaterials. The findings are presented in a new joint paper published by the prestigious journal Science.

The study was jointly conducted by Distinguished Professor Mordechai Segev, of the Technion’s Physics Department and Solid State Institute and his team Tomer Stav and Dikla Oren, in collaboration with Prof. Erez Hasman of the Technion’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and his team Arkady Faerman, Elhanan Maguid, and Dr. Vladimir Kleiner. The two groups are affiliated with both the Helen Diller Center for Quantum Science, Matter and Engineering; and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute.

The researchers demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to apply metamaterials to the field of quantum information and computing, thereby paving the way for numerous practical applications including, among others, the development of unbreakable encryptions, as well as opening the door to new possibilities for quantum information systems on a chip.

Metamaterials are artificially fabricated materials, made up of numerous artificial nanoscale structures designed to respond to light in different ways. Metasurfaces are the 2-dimensional version of metamaterials: extremely thin surfaces made up of numerous subwavelength optical nanoantennas, each designed to serve a specific function upon the interaction with light.

While to date, experimentation with metamaterials has widely been limited to manipulations using classical light, the Technion researchers have for the first time shown it is experimentally feasible to use metamaterials as the building blocks for quantum optics and quantum information. More specifically, the researchers have demonstrated the use of metamaterials to generate and manipulate entanglement – which is the most crucial feature of any quantum information scheme.

“What we did in this experiment is to bring the field of metamaterials to the realm of quantum information,” says Dist. Prof. Moti Segev, one of the founders of the Helen Diller Quantum Science, Matter and Engineering Center at the Technion. “With today’s technology, one can design and fabricate materials with electromagnetic properties that are almost arbitrary. For example, one can design and fabricate an invisibility cloak that can conceal little things from radar, or one can create a medium where the light bends backward. But so far all of this was done with classical light. What we show here is how to harness the superb abilities of artificial nano-designed materials to generate and control quantum light.”

“The key component here is a dielectric metasurface,” says Prof. Erez Hasman, “which acts in a different way to left- and right-handed polarized light, imposing on them opposite phase fronts that look like screws or vortices, one clockwise and one counterclockwise. The metasurface had to be nano-fabricated from transparent materials, otherwise – had we included metals, as in most experiments with metamaterials – the quantum properties would be destroyed.”

“This project started off in the mind of two talented students – Tomer Stav and Arkady Faerman,” say Profs. Segev and Hasman, “who came to us with a groundbreaking idea. The project leads to many new directions that raise fundamental questions as well as new possibilities for applications, for example, making quantum information systems on a chip and controlling the quantum properties on design.”

In their research, the scientists conducted two sets of experiments to generate entanglement between the spin and orbital angular momentum of photons. Photons are the elementary particles that make up light: they have zero mass, travel at the speed of light, and normally do not interact with each other.

In the experiments, the researchers first shone a laser beam through a non-linear crystal to create single photon pairs, each characterized by zero orbital momentum and each with linear polarization. A photon in linear polarization means that it is a superposition of right-handed and left-handed circular polarization, which correspond to positive and negative spin.

In the first experiment, the scientists proceeded to split the photon pairs – directing one through a unique fabricated metasurface and the other to a detector to signal the arrival of the other photon. They then measured the single photon that passed through the metasurface to find that it had acquired orbital angular momentum (OAM) and that the OAM has become entangled with the spin.

In the second experiment, the single photon pairs were passed through the metasurface and measured using two detectors to show that they had become entangled: the spin of one photon had become correlated with the orbital angular momentum of the other photon, and vice versa.

Entanglement basically means that the actions performed on one photon simultaneously affect the other, even when spread across great distances.  In quantum mechanics, photons are believed to exist in both positive and negative spin states, but once measured adopt only one state.

This is perhaps best explained through a simple analogy: Take two boxes each with two balls inside – a red and a blue ball.  If the boxes are not entangled then you can reach into the box and pull out either a red or a blue ball. However, if the boxes were to become entangled, then the ball inside the box could either be red or blue but will only be determined at the moment the ball in one box is observed, simultaneously determining the color of the ball in the second box as well. This story was initially related by the famous Nobel Laureate Erwin Schroedinger, presenting the scenario of a cat in a box, where the cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened.

Distinguished Prof. Mordechai Segev is the incumbent of the Robert J. Shillman Distinguished Research Chair; Prof. Erez Hasman is the incumbent of the Schlesinger Chair.

Click here for the paper in Science

Prof. Marcelle Machluff becomes Lady Globes: ‘Woman of the Year” for 2018

Dean of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at Technion Prof. Marcel Machluf has been chosen as Lady Globes’ Woman of the Year for 2018. Prof. Machluf is one of Israel’s leading scientists in the field of cancer and nanotechnology,

“The choice of the Woman of the Year is based on values that are important for us to emphasize,” writes the editor of the magazine Vered Ramon Rivlin. “Not only does her excellence support the public good through biomedical research but also she is an exceptional social motivator. ”

Machluf was born in Morocco and moved to Israel with her mother and grandmother when she was one year old. She was raised in the Southern town of Ashdod, where her mother supported the family as a seamstress and cleaning lady.

After completing high school and army service, Machluf applied to medical school but was rejected.  Instead, she decided to study Biology and received a B.Sc. from the Hebrew University. She went on to receive her Master of Science and a Ph.D. in biotechnology engineering from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Machluf conducted her postdoctoral research as a fellow at Harvard Medical School, where she focused on gene therapy, tissue engineering and the control of drug delivery in cancer therapy.

Currently, Machluf is a Full Professor and the Dean of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at the Technion, as well as the director of the Laboratory for Cancer Drug Delivery & Cell Based Technologies, where she is developing the “nano ghost”, a modified stem cell to treat metastatic melanoma and mesothelioma, in collaboration with the New York University Langone Medical Center.

Prof. Machluf was also selected as a torch-bearer at Israel’s 2018 Independence day celebrations.

For the full article at Lady Globes: https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001251489

The Chinese Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang recently visited the Technion, meeting with Technion leadership and exploring the tremendous possibilities of future cooperation in research and innovation between Technion and China.

During his visit, Minister Zhigang  met with Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Prof. Dan Shechtman; Technion Senior Executive Vice President Prof. Adam Shwartz; Dean of Undergraduate Studies of the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) Prof. Moshe Eizenberg; Head of the Helen Diller Center for Quantum Science, Matter and Engineering  Prof. Gadi Eisenstein; and Director General of the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research Prof. Moshe Sidi.

This is Monister Wang Zhigang’s first visit to Israel, aimed at strengthening cooperation between China and Israel through innovation and technology. The Minister came to Technion to gain insight into  cooperation in research and entrepreneurship between China and the Technion and to learn from the Technion’s extensive experience in promoting technological innovation.

Prof. Shwartz presented the some of the research carried out at the Technion and spoke about the Technion’s branches in New York and China. The Minister – a trained electronics engineer – thanked Prof. Shwartz for the reception and said that he came to Israel to strengthen technological cooperation between Chinese and Israeli companies. “The Technion has trained thousands of engineers,” he said, “It’s a significant and central factor in Israel’s technological development. The three Nobel Prize laureates and the Technion’s high placement in academic rankings testify to its research and academic excellence.”

The field of technological innovation is currently one of the key strategic goals of the Chinese government, which views technological development as a means of transforming China into a technology and science powerhouse. “The Chinese government views innovative and technological progress as a growth engine for China and a resource for promoting the welfare of its residents,” said the Minister.

At the meeting, Nobel Laureate Prof. Dan Shechtman said that 30 years ago he introduced an entrepreneurship course at the Technion. To date, about 10,000 engineers have benefitted from this program. Twenty percent of those students were later involved in the development of entrepreneurship in Israel. He said that on his many visits to China, he has lectured extensively on entrepreneurship and innovation in organizations. He  presented a project with which he’s involved in Qingdao, China: in which science is introduced to children already at kindergarten.

Prof. Moshe Eizenberg told the Minister that last year, the first set of students began their studies at  the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. This year, 280 new students will begin studying on three tracks. Upon completion, they will receive a certificate from both the Technion and the Chinese Ministry of Education. “To date, we have recruited 20 new faculty members from around the world who are beginning to assemble their labs, submit research proposals, and recruit graduate students,” said Prof. Eizenberg. “In training the students at the Technion’s branch in China, we grant them the high academic standards of the Technion in Haifa, including courses on innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Prof. Gadi Eisenstein presented the Helen Diller Center for Quantum Science, Matter and Engineering to the Minister. “Quantum is at the heart of global research and we are at the forefront of a technological revolution in this field. It is, therefore, a major research area on which the Technion will focus and invest in the coming years. China, too, has many projects in the quantum field, and we will be happy to take part in research collaborations.”

After the meeting, the Minister visited Dr. Erez Karpas’ cognitive robotics laboratory at the Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management. Dr. Erez Karpas has specialized in tools for planning robotic activity, with an emphasis on the work of robots and humans in a shared space. The laboratory under his leadership, which was recently renovated in cooperation with Intel Israel, and the course he teaches at the Technion also deal with these subjects.

The Technion’s Formula team participated in two Formula Student competitions in Europe this summer. In both competitions, the Technion’s car was the lightest, at 139 kg, after the team spent the year working on a 38 kg reduction as compared with last year’s vehicle.

The competitions were held one after the other, and according to student Liel Elgrabli, “The improvement from the first competition to the second was evident in all heats thanks to perseverance, faith, and willpower.” In the first competition, in Austria, the team was only three seconds behind the best team in the world. In the second competition, in Germany, there was a noticeable improvement, and indeed, in the acceleration heat, the vehicle improved by two-tenths of a second and the team improved its placement by 15 spots.

Tal Lipshitz, 21, became Formula Technion’s Team Leader, replacing David Diskin who led the team the previous two years. According to Diskin, “This year, our Formula was produced in record time – less than half a year – and it accelerates to 100 mph in 3.2 seconds. It is driven by 60 hp, just like the Technion’s first Formula in 2013, but weighs only half of what that one did.”

1. Board of Governors
   1. council
      1. president
         1. Senate + Academic Assembly
         2. Technion Comptroller
         3. Senior executive VP
            1. Dean of Undergraduate Studies
            2. Dean of the Graduate School
            3. Dean of the Unit for Continuing Education and External Studies
            4. Pre-Univ Education Center
            5. Heads of Academic Units
            6. Dean of Students
         4. Executive VP for Research
            1. Technion Research & Development Foundation (TRDF)
               1. Research Authority
               2. Finance & Economics

• Technion Technology Transfer Office

1. Israel Institute of Metal
2. Azrieli Continuing Education & External Studies Division
3. Human Resources

• Legal Department

5. Executive VP for Academic Affairs
   1. Academic Staff
6. Executive VP & Director General
   1. Finance
   2. Human Resources
   3. Operation
   4. Investments
   5. Safety Affairs
   6. Information Systems
7. VP for Resource Development & External Relations
   1. Resource Development
   2. External Relations & Communication
   3. Events and Visits
8. Assistant to the President for Strategic Projects

 

The first prize final project at the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering conference

With a cellphone app to predict and diagnose atrial fibrillation, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology students Noam Keidar and Gal Eidelstein won first prize at the recently held Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering Final Project Exhibit Competition. The project was mentored by Assistant Professor Yael Yaniv of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering.

Atrial fibrillation is a dangerous heart disorder treated with a defibrillator, a device found today in many public areas. Immediate treatment of atrial fibrillation can save approximately 90% of patients, but each minute that passes after the event lowers the survival rate by approximately 10%, making early or immediate diagnosis critical.

The student-developed app predicts events at least 4 minutes in advance – with a 100% prediction rate. Such a warning enables early referral of the patient for medical assistance or treatment with a defibrillator. The app is based on recordings of the electrical activity of the heart (ECG) of many healthy people and deep learning (stratified neuronal networks). In addition to the life-saving and clinical damage-prevention potential of this app, the system is expected to provide the research community with extensive information about the evolvement of atrial fibrillation.

The novel project was recently presented at the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering Final Projects Exhibit. The exhibit displayed 23 projects of fourth-year, undergraduate students at the faculty. The projects involved are in three main disciplines: (1) imaging and medical signal processing, (2) biomechanics and (3) flow, biomaterials and tissue engineering.

Associate Professor Amir Landesberg, who has spearheaded the exhibit for the past few years, presented the dramatic global biomedical engineering trends. He noted that approximately $2 billion is invested each year in Israel alone and that the annual growth rate in this field stands at approximately 7%.

“To date, our Faculty has 1,108 graduates, 96% of whom work in the field and approximately 13% of whom are senior managers in industry,” said Landesberg. “Biomedical engineering is an essential element of future medicine – predictive, preventative, personalized and precise medicine.”

Other top prizes during the exhibition sponsored by Dr. Doron and Liat Adler were:

Second prize was awarded to Shunit Polinsky, who developed a user interface for a printed robotic hand, under the guidance of Dr. Yoav Medan and Yair Herbst of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and the nonprofit organization Haifa D3, which engages in the development of low-cost, personalized bionic hands. Polinsky developed a lightweight, rotating hand, which can be actuated by a healthy leg or hand. Use of the robotic hand is intuitive and enables a broad range of movements, including holding a disposable cup filled with water. The price of the hand is estimated at approximately 100 dollars while existing bionic hands cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Noah Michael and Zemach Bar-Mocha won third place for their project on degradable scaffolds for spinal cord injuries, prepared using 3D printing and freeze-drying. The students developed a degradable polymeric scaffold suitable for treatment of injured spinal cords. The scaffold was fabricated by 3D printing, can be tailored to patient specifications and the implant is integrated relatively rapidly into the spinal cord. The project was directed by Ben Kaplan from the laboratory of Professor Shulamit Levenberg of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering.

The “Audience’s favorite” Prize was awarded to Nofar Azoulay and Eyal Habif, who developed a platform for drug transfer via artificial saliva, a work mentored by Shani Elias Krema from the laboratory of Associate Professor Josue Sznitman of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering.

 

HAIFA, ISRAEL (August 22, 2018) – Dr. Kira Radinsky and Shahar Harel of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Computer Science Department have developed a smart system for the development of new drugs. Founded on artificial intelligence and deep learning, the system is expected to dramatically shorten and reduce the costs of drug development. It will be presented this week during the KDD 2018 conference in London.

Drug production is a costly and lengthy process. How costly and lengthy? Costs of half a billion to 2.5 billion dollars per drug, over 10-15 years are common numbers in the world of pharmacology.

In the past, new drugs were serendipitously discovered, with the discovery of penicillin being the most famous example. But modern-day processes are computerized and more systematic, beginning with a screen of many molecules and selection of those that have the greatest therapeutic potential.

The problem is that between 1023  and 1060 molecules show therapeutic potential. In comparison, there are an estimated 1022 stars in the galaxy. Therefore, the development process is typically shortened by narrowing down the initial breadth to molecules that feature the desired properties, which still leaves an enormous number of molecules.

In the study that will be presented at KDD 2018, the Technion researchers formulated a new approach for the generation of therapeutic molecule candidates. According to Shahar Harel, their working hypothesis is that “the drug development-related organic chemistry vocabulary is similar to that of a natural language. The system that we developed, which uses artificial intelligence and deep learning, acquired this language based on hundreds of thousands of molecules. In addition, we supplied it with the chemical composition of all drugs approved up until 1950, which served as the prototypes upon which it generated new variations – new potential drugs. In order to generate a creative system, we deliberately introduced “noise”, which yields diversity. Namely, the system will generate many variations of existing drugs.”

Thus, the system is based on a pharmacological language, data on existing drugs and a creativity-promoting mechanism. When they instructed the system to propose 1000 drugs based upon old drugs, the researchers were surprised to discover that 35 of the new drugs generated by the system are existing, FDA-approved drugs developed and approved after 1950. In other words, the investigators demonstrated the system’s efficiency in developing ‘rational’ or valid drugs.

“We are essentially presenting here an algorithm which addresses the creative stage of drug development – the molecule discovery stage,” said Harel. “This capacity leans upon our mathematical innovation, which enables the computer to understand the chemical language and to generate new molecules based upon a prototype.”

According to Dr. Radinsky, “What we’ve presented here is not only a means of streamlining existing methods, but also entirely new drug development and scientific practice paradigms. Instead of seeking out specific correlations based upon hypotheses we formulate, we allow the computer to identify these connections from within a massive sample size, without guidance. The computer is not smarter than man, but it can cope with huge amounts of data and find unexpected correlations. This is how we managed to find (in another study) the unknown side effects of various drugs and drug combinations, and now, an innovative drug development mechanism. This is a novel type of science which is not built upon hypotheses tested in an experiment, rather, upon data that generated the research hypothesis.”

The significance of this breakthrough is particularly great in the face of Eroom’s Law, which asserts that the number of new drugs approved by the FDA should decline at a rate of approximately 50% every 9 years (ratio between the number of new drugs and the investment in research and development). The term Eroom was coined in 2012 in an article published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, and is a reverse order of Moore, the name of Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel. Moore observed that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles every two years. In contrast, Eroom’s Law notes that each year, fewer and fewer drugs are marketed.

Dr. Radinksy projects that “this new development will accelerate and reduce costs of development of new and effective drugs, thereby shortening the time patients will have to wait for the drugs. In addition, this breakthrough is expected to lead to the development of drugs that would not have been generated with the conventional pharmacological paradigm.”

Technion Researchers Use Bacteria to Cure Fungal Infections

HAIFA, ISRAEL (August 19, 2018) – Researchers in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering have cured fungal infections using a soil-dwelling bacteria. The findings of the research led by Assistant Professor Boaz Mizrahi and conducted by his student Maayan Lupton and Dr. Ayelet Orbach were published recently in Advanced Functional Materials.

Fungal infections are common among various animals, including humans. One of the primary sources of such infections is Candida – a yeast regularly found in our bodies. Candida exploits abnormal functioning in the organism to spread and harm the host. Most people will experience a fungal infection at least once in their lifetime, in some part of their body – on the skin, in the digestive system or genitals.

The frequency of fungal infections is constantly on the rise due to the aging population and possibly global warming. Additional reasons include the use of drugs, which suppress the immune system, and the increased use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, which indirectly enhance the proliferation of Candida by disrupting the bacteria balance in the body.

Oral antifungal drugs administered today are associated with low efficacy, a spectrum of side effects, such as headaches and rash, and in certain cases, with life-threatening liver and kidney toxicities. In addition, Candida strains resistant to existing drugs have already been discovered.

The researchers assessed the possibility of treating Candida via the Bacillus subtilis bacterium, which naturally produces and secretes substances that inhibit Candida growth. This mechanism evolved in the bacteria as part of its competition with Candida over common growth substrates.

“Our first challenge,” said Assistant Professor Mizrahi, “was to develop a transport system that would enable application of the live bacteria on the infected lesion without impairing their ability to proliferate and secrete their therapeutic substances in the target site.”

To do so, the researchers developed a unique gel that is in liquid form in the refrigerator and at room temperature (enabling easy application on the skin), but which hardens within seconds after being applied to the skin. Beside the thermo-responsive polymers, the gel contains food substances, which ensure maintained bacterial viability on the skin, where they can “treat” the infection.

The researchers applied the gel on the skin of mice suffering from a fungal infection, after marking it (the gel) with a fluorescent substance that would allow for monitoring. The formulation penetrated deep into the skin but not into the underlying blood vessels, implying that the effect of the formula is limited to the diseased area. Later, the clinical efficacy of the bacterial formulation was demonstrated on mice suffering from Candida infection. In the control groups – treated with bacteria-free gel or not treated at all – the infection continued to develop, but the group treated with the Technion-developed bacterial gel showed rapid skin healing. Moreover, comparison of the novel treatment to the commonly used ketoconazole demonstrated the superiority of the Technion gel both from the clinically and the safety point of views.

The researchers noted that aside from development of the unique gel, a new therapeutic treatment model was demonstrated here: a minuscule factory, which after its penetration into the target, begins to produce the active substance. This is in contrast to the standard pharmaceutical model, in which the drug passes through the entire body and portions of it may be broken down in the process. The researchers hope that their novel model will be used in the future to treat a range of diseases, including psoriasis, acne, various inflammations and even cancer.

In addition to his position in the Technion Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Assistant Professor Boaz Mizrahi is a member of the Technion’s Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute and Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering.

 

 

 

 

The Technion continues to lead Israel’s academia

Climbs to 77th place in the list of the world’s best academic institutions

The Technion and Hebrew University (95th place) are Israel’s two representatives in the top 100 of the 2018 Shanghai Ranking  

The Technion jumped to 77th place in the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) – the best ranking for an Israeli university this year.  The Shanghai list is the world’s leading ranking of institutions of higher education. This year’s top 100 also included the Hebrew University, in 95th place.

Since 2012, the Technion has been consistently included in the ARWU’s top 100 and has now returned to the 77th place, where it was positioned in 2015.

Technion President Professor Peretz Lavie said that “the Technion’s presence in the top 100 leading universities worldwide over the past 7 consecutive years is the fruit of the hard and dedicated work of the Technion management, faculty members, and employees. We carefully select our faculty members with excellence being the single criterion. To tighten the Technion’s position as a world-leading science-technology research university, we also act on the global front – a strategy which has brought about the creation of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute (JCTI) in New York and the Guangdong – Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) in China.

Irrespective of the international ranking, we continuously appraise and improve ourselves, but the high Shanghai ranking provides an exciting international stamp of recognition of the Technion’s excellence.”

This year, for the second time, the Shanghai ranking also included a disciplinary ranking – ranking by research subject. In this ranking as well, published on July 17, the Technion starred in several categories. The Technion ranked first place among Israeli universities in several fields: Space Engineering (22nd place in the world), Automation and Control (30), Chemistry (group range 51-57) and Transportation Science and Engineering (group range 51-75).

The Shanghai ranking, which has been published since 2003, evaluates institutions around the world using objective criteria, including the number of Nobel Prize laureates and winners of other prestigious prizes, the number of scientific publications in the leading journals Nature and Science and other performance indicators relative to the size of the university. The comprehensive Chinese research covers 1200 universities, of which 500 are selected as leading universities.  

For the full ranking:  http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2018.html