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Researchers Break Through Intel SGX, Intel’s Security Wall

HAIFA, ISRAEL (August 15, 2018) – Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers and their colleagues abroad have broken through Intel’s innovative security wall, Intel Software Guard Extension (SGX). SGX is a recently introduced security feature of Intel processors for protecting the privacy and integrity of information and applications on the computer. It is available in all recent Intel processors and is broadly deployed in both personal computers and cloud computing services.

The attack, dubbed Foreshadow, exploits certain weaknesses in the existing mechanisms of Intel CPUs, allowing an attacker to expose private application data and forge computations secured by SGX.

The researchers reported Foreshadow to Intel in January of 2018. Further analysis into the causes of Foreshadow performed by Intel revealed that the same hardware flaw enables a number of other devastating attacks. Called Foreshadow –NG, these attacks put in risk the privacy of users of cloud computing systems that use Intel CPUs. The patches that mitigate these attacks have already been released.

The researchers from the Technion are Assistant Prof. Mark Silberstein of the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering and his graduate student Marina Minkin from the Computer Science Department. They conducted the study together with their colleagues from The University of Adelaide (Australia), The University of Michigan (USA) and KU Leuven (Belgium). Former Technion graduates Ophir Weiss and Assistant Prof. Daniel Genkin were also involved in the research. The team’s work will be presented today (August 15, 2018) at the leading security conference, USENIX Security ’18, in Baltimore, Maryland.

SGX is a revolutionary hardware technology that enables the creation of secure execution environments, called secure enclaves. According to Prof. Silberstein, SGX has a wide range of potential applications. “Let’s say a company such as Netflix is interested in guaranteeing that its customers may watch movies only via Netflix’s own video streaming application to prevent illegal copies of the streamed contents. How to ensure that the client does not hack into the application, dumps its memory, or replaces it with a reverse-engineered version, given that the computer is entirely under her control?”

With SGX, Netflix servers can verify that the client application is invoked in a secure enclave that runs genuine Netflix software, and only then start transferring the movie. Moreover, SGX automatically encrypts all the information in the enclave’s memory with a unique key hardware-protected key. “This way, only the Netflix client, and no other applications on the computer, not even a computer administrator, may access the movie in the computer’s memory, as long as the processor hardware itself is not compromised.” SGX is also useful for cloud computing systems that rent remote computers by the hour because SGX allows their users to trust the computations performed on remote cloud computers as if they were their own.  Therefore, leading cloud computing vendors including IBM, Google, and Microsoft have already announced products that rely on SGX.
But the Foreshadow attack breaks these essential SGX security guarantees.

Researchers managed to read all the information stored in the enclave – the information that the user assumes is confidential. Moreover, Foreshadow compromised the secure storage mechanisms upon which the mechanism for validating the authenticity of a remote enclave is built, enabling the researchers to forge the programs running in the enclave. In other words, Foreshadow compromises core security guarantees provided by SGX, toppling large part of the entire SGX ecosystem by exploiting a single critical hardware vulnerability.

Dr. Daniel Genkin and Dr. Yuval Yarom, two of the researchers who discovered Foreshadow, were also involved in the discovery of the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities that rocked the world in January 2018. That disclosure required Intel to distribute security updates to about 90% of the processors it had sold over the past five years. Foreshadow is a Meltdown-style attack too – the first such attack on Intel SGX.

The current study is supported by the Technion Hiroshi Fujiwara Cyber Security Research Center (Prof. Silberstein is the head of Center’s Scientific Committee), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Commerce, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the Ariane de Rothschild Women Doctoral Program, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

 

 

Technion alumni star among the “Israeli Hottest Start-ups of 2018” list published in The Marker

In July, The Marker published a list of Israel’s hottest start-ups of 2018 – 20 innovative companies which are expected to shape the future.  Technion alumni fill senior positions in about 50% of the selected companies.

Tom Livneh, a Technion International-MBA program graduate, is the CEO and founder of VerbIT AI, a company that developed low-cost and rapid automatic transcription services.  The VerbIT platform combines original algorithms, a speech-identification engine and thousands of human transcribers, who improve algorithm performance.

Asaf Yigal, a Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering graduate, is one of the founders of Logz.io, which developed a technology that enables collection of large amounts of data, then used to perform complex analyses, presented in graphical and user-friendly formats.

Elram Goren, a graduate of the Faculties of Physics and Electrical Engineering at the Technion, is the CEO and founder of CommonSense Robotics, a company that develops programs and mini-robots for smart storage room management. This technology enables retailers to provide quick and effective deliveries to the client, without high manpower demands.

Eilon Reshef, a Faculty of Computer Science Technion alumnus who participated in the Technion’s Rothschild program for outstanding students, is the co-founder of Gong.io and manages the company’s technology. Gong developed a technology to improve the performance of sales people and organizations.  The technology performs a computerized analysis of sales conversations and provides organizations with essential information from these calls – whether the product was presented properly, what the client was hesitant about, etc.

Eli Cohen, a Technion Industrial Engineering and Management Faculty alumnus, is a co-founder and VP of Donde Search – a company that develops search technologies that will enable fashion companies to identify trends, understand customer desires and provide them with personalized and focused recommendations.

Ido Priel, who earned an MSc in Systems Engineering at the Technion, is the co-founder and chief product manager at Space Pharma, a company that developed a platform for performing experiments in outer space. The mini-lab is launched to outer space and experiments can be remotely controlled. To date, the company has launched two such labs.

Dr. Yaniv Altshuler, who earned all of his advanced degrees at the Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion, is the co-founder and CEO of Endor, a platform which enables decision-makers to predict consumer behavior using an automatic prediction engine.

Several Technion alumni are in the Jacada corporate management team: directorate member Haim Shani, a Davidson Industrial Engineering and Management alumnus, Yoel Goldenberg, an Industrial Engineering and Management alumnus, and Jacques Tchenio, VP of Sales, who earned his MSc at the Faculty of Mathematics.

Yosef Bert, of blessed memory, was a Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering alumnus, is the founder of Silentium, a company that is currently managed to Yoel Naor, developed an innovative noise-reduction technology for offices, bedrooms, and others. Currently, it is primarily used in the context of reduction of noises in the car.

The late Rami Feig, a Technion alumnus, was the founder of Hailo, which develops dedicated chips for artificial intelligence and big-data applications. The processor that the company is developing, will run artificial intelligence applications in connected computers, in drones, smart homes, and others. The late Avi Baum, the cofounder and chief technology manager at the company, is a Technion graduate, as is the serial entrepreneur Zohar Zisapel. Feig, Baum and Zisapel are Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering graduates.

 

German and Israeli supercomputers spend 100 weeks crunching astronomical numbers

The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite, and its creation still raises many questions for astrophysical research. Indeed, the Moon may not have been alone in the skies of primeval Earth. Recent studies have shown that there were once a number of smaller moons – known as moonlets – but where they came from is a mystery.

Working with Dr. Uri Malamud and Professor Hagai Perets of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and Christoph Burger of the University of Vienna, University of Tübingen’s Dr. Christoph Schäfer has been investigating to find out what happened to Earth’s moonlets. The researchers’ complex simulations show that they could have fallen to Earth in collisions that changed the composition of Earth’s mantle. Their findings are published in the latest edition of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

According to the currently accepted theory, the Moon was created some 4.5 billion years ago in a collision between the proto-Earth and another proto-planet the size of Mars. Astrophysicists call this proto-planet Theia. That led to the formation of a disc around the Earth, composed of material thrown out of both bodies by the collision. The material in the disc eventually conglomerated into the Moon we know today.

But the latest research shows that the Earth was subject to not one, but several such major collisions; and that smaller bodies hit the proto-Earth even more frequently. These processes led to the formation of several moonlets, which the researchers have assumed to have each been between one-sixth and half of the Moon’s mass.

The Technion-Vienna-Tubingen team has been investigating the fate of those moonlets. “There are three possibilities: The moonlets may have joined up under the force of gravity to form larger objects (and eventually these mergers formed the moon), some of these moonlets interacted gravitationally and were ejected from the Earth’s gravitational pull, or – the third possibility – they may have been pulled back down to the Earth,” Dr. Christoph Schäfer explained. “Those are the three options we are looking at and in this paper we are investigating the third one.”

To simulate the collisions of the moonlets with the Earth, the researchers used a computer program developed under Dr. Schäfer’s direction at the Tübingen Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics by Professor Wilhelm Kley’s working group. The calculations themselves were conducted in the Tübingen BinAC computer cluster and the TAMNUN cluster in Israel. The Tübingen physicists’ program used smooth particle hydrodynamics to model the processes, and graphics processing units to accelerate the highly complex computations. Christoph Burger of the Vienna University Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics wrote the code for the complicated initial conditions for the simulations.

100 weeks of calculation time

The astrophysicists assumed a simplified model of the proto-Earth and a falling moonlet, in which both had an iron core and a silicate mantle. Their fractions were assumed identical to the present day values. The group carried out more than 70 simulations of a moonlet colliding with the Earth, varying parameters such as the angle of impact, the size of the moonlet, and the rotational velocity of the Earth. “In total, the calculations took more than 100 weeks of computing time,” said Dr. Uri Malamud, of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Astrophysics Group.

In Haifa, Dr. Malamud analyzed the results of the simulations. He determined which fragments of the bodies would have been able to escape from the system, which would have entered a captured orbit around the Earth, and which would remain after hitting the Earth. He also calculated the change in the Earth’s rotation period caused by the collision.

“Our results show that when a moonlet strikes the Earth, the incoming material is not homogeneously distributed. This kind of collision can therefore lead to asymmetries and inhomogenities in the composition of the Earth’s mantle,” said Dr. Malamud. “This collaborative research gives us a more complete picture of how the Moon was created and places it into the broader context of planetary formation in the solar system.”

Technion researchers discovered a mechanism underlying plant adaptation to changes in nutrient availability in its environment

In findings published this week in Developmental Cell, researchers in the Technion Faculty of Biology present an explanation for root capacity to adjust their growth in response to changes in the availability of minerals essential to plant nutrition.

The research was led by Dr. Amar Pal Singh, a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Sigal Savaldi-Goldstein’s laboratory, and involved fellow lab members as well as collaborators from the lab of Professor Arnon Henn at the Technion and the ENS Lyon, France.

“Plants are critical to life on Earth and are fascinating organisms to study,” says Prof. Savaldi-Goldstein. “They differ from animals in several aspects. While animals can move and migrate to safer locations, toward water sources and the like, plants are fixed in place. In contrast to animals, plants generate new organs throughout their life and regulate their growth rate in accordance with environmental conditions – which is essential to their survival. During evolution, the plant kingdom developed various strategies to adapt to fluctuating environmental conditions. The root, for example, can accelerate or decelerate its growth and to form new side roots that emerge from it, depending on nutrient availability in the soil.”

Steroid hormones, called brassinosteroids, are critical for plant growth and development. The Technion researchers assessed the activity of brassinosteroids and the proteins they regulate, in the root of the Arabidopsis (a small flowering plant related to cabbage and mustard). They discovered that the proteins in the brassinosteroid pathway are also impacted by signals arising from the nutrient composition in the root environment.

The researchers demonstrated that the mineral composition in the plant growth media (that is, in laboratory conditions) can have contradictory impacts: iron deficiency in the plant environment increases the intensity of the brassinosteroid pathway and thus accelerates root growth, while phosphate deficiency in the environment, which leads to iron accumulation in the root, weakens the brassinosteroid pathway activity, thereby slowing root growth.

The researchers also identified the link between the plant and its environment in these processes – a protein called BKI1. They discovered that this protein – which is known to regulate the steroid pathway – is also affected by environmental conditions; iron deficiency reduces its expression levels, thereby accelerating root growth, while phosphate deficiency increases its expression, leading to slowed root growth. That is, BKI1 sits at an “intersection” between a pathway of an internal origin signal (hormone) and a pathway originating from the environment (nutrient availability).

The researchers also discovered a reverse effect: the intensity of the brassinosteroid pathway affects the amount of iron that is accumulated in the root, which serves as a feedback signal that likely ensures root growth in accordance with environmental conditions.

“We have essentially uncovered a mechanism that links the availability of these two nutrients – phosphate and iron – and the steroid pathway, which together adjust root growth”. Understanding the complexity of plant response to limited mineral availability might assist in the future to improve crop yield while reducing the need for fertilizers.”

From the very start of her research endeavors, Professor Savaldi-Goldstein has been focusing on plants as a great model to study biology. Her lab at the Faculty of Biology at the Technion seeks to understand developmental principles in plants. To this end, she studies the two sources influencing plant growth – namely, the signals coming from within the plant and those coming from its environment. Her work integrates different experimental tools such as live imaging, analysis of gene expression at a cellular level and developmental genetics techniques.

Researchers in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Biology have unearthed a new role of the caspase-3 protein in organ size determination. Their discovery could pave the way for novel therapeutic approaches in regenerative medicine and tumor therapy. This research was published as a cover story in Molecular Cell.

 

HAIFA, ISRAEL (July 27, 2018) – Scientists have long known that organ size is shaped by many factors, including the size of each cell, proliferation, cell differentiation, death, and, of course, the total number of cells. However, the molecular mechanisms directly regulating organ size had until now remained elusive, setting the stage for the current research directed by Assistant Professor Yaron Fuchs and led by Dr. Yahav Yosefzon.

The Technion researchers discovered a previously unknown molecular mechanism that regulates the size of sebaceous glands in the skin. The skin is the largest organ in the human body, weighing approximately 9 kg (almost 20 lbs.) in adults and with an overall area of approximately 2 m² (21.5 square feet). It is composed of an epidermis (the outer layer) and the dermis (the lower layer). The sebaceous glands are located in the epidermis, where they produce and secrete an oily substance (sebum) that protects the skin and the hairs covering it. Since sebaceous gland abnormalities can lead to acne and cancer development, there is a great need to understand the mechanisms responsible for their normal development and size.

The present study focused on the caspase-3 protein. Caspase-3 is considered a key player in apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death where dysfunctional cells “commit suicide,” which is essential for preventing the emergence of cancer and ensuring organismal survival. Caspase-3 functions by cleaving other vital proteins to execute cell destruction.

The Technion researchers found that, in contrast to the accepted dogma, caspase-3 does not induce apoptosis, but rather, leads to cell proliferation and thereby influences sebaceous gland size. Therefore they sought to elucidate the molecular mechanism by which Caspase-3 regulates cell expansion and organ size.

One major protein that governs these processes is the YAP protein. YAP is a transcription factor, which drives cell proliferation when it gains access to the cell nucleus. It is therefore very tightly regulated, in order to avoid uncontrolled cell division, which can lead to the development of cancer. To prevent it from entering the nucleus, YAP is anchored to the cell membrane by the a-catenin protein. The present work discovered that caspase-3 can cleave a-catenin, thereby liberating YAP from the membrane, enabling it to translocate to the cell nucleus and promote cell division.

This discovery is particularly important as it sheds light on the common cancer treatments, including radiation and chemotherapy, which intentionally accelerate caspase-3 activity to execute tumor cell apoptosis. “Our discovery has various potential applications, including in hindering cancer and promoting wound healing by manipulating caspase-3. Now that we have uncovered this novel non-apoptotic role of caspase-3, it should and must be taken into consideration in treatment strategies. Our lab’s preliminary and promising results indicate that inhibition of caspase-3 may be a highly efficacious means of treating advanced cancerous tumors,” said Assistant Professor Fuchs.

Assistant Professor Fuchs heads the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Faculty of Biology and is a researcher at the Lorry Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering. His lab focuses on researching stem cells, which are responsible for tissue regeneration in our bodies. Within this framework, the lab isolates new stem cell populations, studies the mechanisms underlying stem cell apoptosis and promotes novel techniques for regenerative medicine and cancer therapy.

The study was supported by the Office of the Chief Scientist (KAMIN), RCDA, ICRF and GIF grants.

Researchers from Israel’s Technion have created a new type of optical system. Their “nano-hedgehogs  of light”, also known as optical skyrmions, set the stage for a new platform for information processing, transfer and storage applications.

HAIFA, ISRAEL (July 26, 2018) – Technion-Israel institute of Technology researchers have succeeded in generating minute “nano-hedgehogs of light” called optical skyrmions, which could make possible revolutionary advances in information processing, transfer and storage.

The research, published recently in Science, was led by Professor Guy Bartal of the Viterbi Department of Electrical Engineering and Professor Netanel Lindner of the Physics Department at the Technion. The research team also included Professor Bergin Gjonaj of the Albanian University Faculty of Medicine in Tirana; as well as Shai Tsesses, Evgeni Ostrovsky and Kobi Cohen, all research students at the Technion.

The term “skyrmion” is derived from the name of Dr. Tony Skyrme, an English physicist who, in 1962, discovered that high-energy arrangements of physical systems with fields that have a “hedgehog-like configuration” enjoy an enhanced stability. Over the years, the concept was applied to several material systems, most notably in magnets. Hedgehog arrangements are considered a highly promising alternative for data representation, which could drastically increase computer memory storage.

Currently, most of the world’s information is inserted or extracted on hard drives via a mechanical arm. But information management based on skyrmions only requires weak electrical currents. And skyrmions are of nanoscale dimensions – with diameters 10,000 times smaller than that of a hair strand. Such features are why skyrmions are expected to dramatically optimize, speed up and reduce the costs of information processing, transfer and storage.

The Technion researchers were the first to extend Dr. Skyrme’s idea to the world of optics: they managed to generate skyrmions using the electrical field of electromagnetic waves. In contrast to “regular” light waves, whose electrical fields usually point along a specific direction (a physical principle underlying, for example, polarized sunglasses), the Technion researchers demonstrated that an electric field can take on a “skyrmion” shape and simultaneously face in all directions, such that its spatial configuration looks like the quills of a hedgehog. In addition, they showed that these “light hedgehogs” are robust against various defects in the material hosting the electromagnetic waves.

Successful generation of skrymions in electromagnetic waves may be of critical importance in practical applications. To date, materials in which skrymions are formed are very rare and usually require cooling to very low temperatures, typically achieved with liquid nitrogen or helium. The new discovery by the Technion team could enable future replication of this unique effect in a wide range of systems and materials, including  liquids, nanoparticle systems and even cold atomic gasses. It might also lay the ground for new skyrmion applications in optical (rather than magnetic) information processing, transfer and storage.

The work was supported by the Jacobs Foundation, I-CORE Excellence Center, the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the European Research Council (ERC).

Technion Researchers Discover “Severe” Bluetooth Communication Breach

HAIFA, ISRAEL (July 25, 2018) – Researchers in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Computer Science Department and the Hiroshi Fujiwara Cyber Security Research Center at the Technion have successfully deciphered Bluetooth communication, which was previously considered a safe communication channel against breaches. This was done as part of Lior Neumann’s master’s thesis, supervised by Prof. Eli Biham, head of the Hiroshi Fujiwara Cyber Security Research Center.

Bluetooth technology, developed in the 1990s, quickly became a popular platform thanks to its simplicity of use. Unlike Wi-Fi, Bluetooth is not based on a network connecting several devices to one another but rather on the individual pairing of two devices (e.g. a headset and a telephone). This method allows convenient use and configuration and makes securing communication between devices easier.

When using a Bluetooth headset, for example, the user must confirm the action on his phone. A connection is then established between the headset and the phone: an encrypted channel is formed between the two devices. Over the years, Bluetooth technology has developed and expanded, and has advanced to the latest encryption technologies. For this reason, this technology was widely considered immune to attack. And thanks to its simplicity and low cost, Bluetooth technology is present in almost every technological consumer device such as wearable equipment, car speakers, smart TVs, smart clocks, keyboards, and computers. It also supports Internet connections, printers and faxes.

After a year of theoretical and experimental work, Neumann and Prof. Biham developed an offensive that exposes a vulnerability in all the latest versions of Bluetooth. According to Prof. Biham, who is considered to be one of the world’s most prominent researchers in cryptography, “The technology we developed reveals the encryption key shared by the devices and allows us, or a third device, to join the conversation. We can eavesdrop on or sabotage a conversation. As long as we do not actively participate, the user has no way of knowing that there is a third party listening in.”

Bluetooth device coupling uses a mathematical concept called ECC: elliptic-curve cryptography. At the moment of coupling, the Bluetooth devices use points on a mathematical structure called an elliptical curve to determine a common secret key on which encryption is based. The Technion researchers found a point with special properties located outside the curve, which allows them to determine the result of the calculation without being identified as malicious by the device. Using that point, they set the encryption key that will be used by the two coupled components.

The offensive developed by Neumann and Prof. Biham is relevant to both aspects of Bluetooth technology – the hardware (chip) and the operating system (such as Android or iOS) in both devices (the headset and phone in the case of the example above) – and threatens the newest versions of the international standard. The Technion researchers contacted the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University and Bluetooth SIG and informed them of the breach they discovered. “We also contacted major international companies including Intel, Google, Apple, Qualcomm, and Broadcom, which hold most of the relevant market, and informed them about the breach and ways to fix it,” said Prof. Biham. “Google defined the breach as ‘severe’ and distributed an update about a month ago; Apple released an update this week. Other manufacturers who heard about the breach contacted us in order to check their products.”

More information can be found here: https://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~biham/BT/

 

 

 

Researchers at Technion’s Computer Science Department and the Technion Hiroshi Fujiwara cyber security research center successfully deciphered Bluetooth communication, which was considered a safe communication channel against breaches. This was done as part of Lior Neumann’s master’s thesis, supervised by Prof. Eli Biham, head of the Hiroshi Fujiwara Cyber Security Research Center at the Technion.

Bluetooth technology, developed in the 1990s, quickly became a popular platform thanks to its simplicity of use. Unlike Wi-Fi, Bluetooth is not based on a network connecting several devices to one another but rather on individual pairing of two devices – a headset and a telephone, for example. This method allows convenient use and configuration and makes securing communication between devices easier.

For example, when using a Bluetooth headset, the user must confirm the action on his phone. A connection is then established between the headset and the phone: an encrypted channel is formed between the two devices. Over the years, Bluetooth technology has developed and expanded, and has advanced to the latest encryption technologies. For this reason, this technology was widely considered immune to attack. Thanks to its simplicity and low cost, Bluetooth technology is present in almost every technological consumer device such as wearable equipment, car speakers, smart TVs, smart clocks, keyboards, and computers. It also supports Internet connections, printers and faxes.

After a year of theoretical and experimental work, Neumann and Prof. Biham have succeeded in developing an offensive that exposes a vulnerability in all the latest versions of Bluetooth. According to Prof. Biham, currently one of the most prominent researchers in cryptography, “The technology we developed reveals the encryption key shared by the devices and allows us, or a third device, to join the conversation. We can eavesdrop on, or sabotage a conversation. As long as we do not actively participate, the user has no way of knowing that there is a third party listening in.”

Bluetooth device coupling uses a mathematical concept called ECC: elliptic-curve cryptography. At the moment of coupling, the Bluetooth devices use points on a mathematical structure called an elliptical curve to determine a common secret key on which encryption is based. The Technion researchers found a point with special properties located outside the curve, which allows them to determine the result of the calculation but is not identified as malicious by the device. Using that point, they set the encryption key that will be used by the two coupled components.

The offensive developed by Neumann and Prof. Biham is relevant to both aspects of Bluetooth technology – the hardware (chip) and the operating system (such as Android or iOS) in both devices (the headset and phone in the case of the example above) – and threatens the newest versions of the international standard. The Technion researchers contacted the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University and Bluetooth SIG and informed them of the breach they discovered. “We also contacted major international companies including Intel, Google, Apple, Qualcomm, and Broadcom, which hold most of the relevant market, and informed them about the breach and ways to fix it,” said Prof. Biham. “Google defined the breach as ‘severe’ and distributed an update about a month ago; Apple released an update this week. Other manufacturers who heard about the breach contacted us in order to check their products.”

 

More information can be found here: https://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~biham/BT/

Researchers from Israel’s Technion have developed a new method for super-resolution single-molecule microscopy with unrivaled efficiency. In a matter of seconds/minutes, it produces images that typically take hours or even days to produce, and could make it possible to visualize nanoscale dynamic processes in real time.

HAIFA, ISRAEL (July 23, 2018) – Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed an innovative image reconstruction technique for super-resolution microscopy. The method exhibits unprecedented speed and accuracy, achieving state-of-the-art resolution without any assumptions on the structure in the sample. In a matter of seconds/minutes, it produces images that typically take hours or even days to produce.

The research group was led by Dr. Yoav Shechtman of the Technion Faculty of Biomedical Engineering and Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences & Engineering, and Dr. Tomer Michaeli of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering. The study, published in Optica, was conducted by student Elias Nehme and post-doctoral researcher Dr. Lucian E. Weiss.

“Typically in super-resolution microscopy, the data is analyzed and an image is produced only after the acquisition is over,” said Dr. Shechtman. “It would be highly desirable to visualize nanoscale dynamic processes in real time, and this technique gets us one step closer to this feat, by enabling ultra-fast image reconstruction.”

In traditional optical microscopes, the resolution (or sharpness) of the image is constrained by the Abbe diffraction limit, a boundary calculated by German physicist Ernst Karl Abbe in 1873. Abbe proved that a microscope’s potential resolution could not go beyond a certain point – approximately half a wavelength. In other words, using wavelengths that are visible to the human eye, it is impossible to distinguish features smaller than 200-300 nanometers.

Of course, the optical microscope has advanced since the 19th century and new methods have succeeded in bypassing the Abbe diffraction limit in order to produce higher resolutions, known as super-resolution imaging. Despite this, the field of nano-biology presents challenges to these new methods, in part because short waves that allow for higher resolutions can harm living cells. Moreover, the dynamic nature of living cells makes imaging speed critical.

Localization microscopy, known as PALM (Photo-Activated Localization Microscopy) and STORM (Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy), is a recently developed method that produces a single image from a sequence of images (a movie) containing blinking fluorescent molecules. Computerized analysis of this movie, which typically consists of determining the positions of each individual molecule, produces a single super-resolved image with a resolution about 10 times better than the resolution of a conventional microscope.

Even this technology has difficulties reconstructing a single image from the many pictures of flickering molecules. For example, when nearby molecules blink simultaneously, their images overlap and make it difficult to determine their individual positions. Various computational solutions have been designed to solve this problem, but all of them are very complex, have long run times, and demand parameter-tuning, making them difficult to use for the non-experts.

The innovation of the Technion group is to harness the accumulated knowledge in artificial neural networks to aid with the super-resolution imaging problem. Artificial neural networks are a set of algorithms, modeled loosely after the human brain, that are designed to recognize patterns. Their hierarchical structure allows them to analyze complex information and to interpret sensory data through a kind of machine perception, labeling or clustering raw input.

The Technion researchers trained the computer to automatically produce super-resolution images from blinking data, by feeding it images of dense molecules along with their correct positions. The resulting method produces highly accurate super-resolution images directly from the raw fluorescence intensity images, and does so orders of magnitude faster than existing approaches. Moreover, unlike existing methods, this method does not require any parameters, special skills from the user, or previous knowledge about the structure of the sample.

The research was sponsored by Google Research Fund, the Zuckerman Foundation, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology through its Career Advancement Chairship, the Ollendorf Foundation, the Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation, the Alon Fellowship program, and the Israel Science Foundation. NVIDIA donated a cutting-edge Titan Xp GPU graphics card to the research team.

Click here for the paper in Nature

Technion Leads Israeli Universities with US Patents

The Technion is Israel’s leading university for registering patents in the United States with 56 patents approved in 2017, according to data from the US Patent and Trademark Office. In the list of the world’s top 100 universities registering patents in the US, the Technion ranked 39th – a jump of 14 places in a year, after being ranked 53rd in 2016.

In the ranking, the Technion is ahead of top global universities such as Yale, the University of Tokyo, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, and the French École Polytechnique. The highest rank went to the University of California, followed by MIT, the University of Texas, and Stanford University. Tel Aviv University ranked 64th and the Hebrew University 82nd.

The 2017 ranking was published last month by the NAI (National Academy of Inventors) and IPO (Intellectual Property Owners Association) and is based on data from the US Patent and Trademark Office.

“The institutions on this list are doing incredible work promoting academic innovation and incubating groundbreaking technologies which exemplify the importance of technology transfer to institutional success,” said NAI President Paul R. Sanberg. “It is a privilege to showcase the vital contributions to society made by universities.”

“This joyous achievement expresses our approach to the interaction between basic science and applied science,” said Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie. “At the inauguration of the Technion’s first class in 1924, Menachem Ussishkin said, “Practical science and basic science are two sides of the same coin.” Since then, this concept has been part of the Technion’s DNA. Quality research does not contradict applied science, but rather supports it.”

The Technion’s patent registration is led by its commercialization unit, T³ (Technion Technology Transfer), which is part of the Technion R&D Foundation. The unit is responsible for scouting and examining new ideas and technologies; exploring potential; registration and maintenance of patents; and the commercialization of intellectual property originating at the Technion.

The complete rating: http://academyofinventors.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOP-2017.pdf

Ten researchers from the Technion received prestigious ERC grants from the EU.

A ceremony recently took place during the Technion’s annual Board of Governors meeting, awarding prizes to outstanding researchers. These include prizes donated by Technion supporters as well as recognizing prestigious ERC grants awarded as part of the European Union ‘Horizon 2020’ research program.

During the years 2016-2018, 10 faculty members from various disciplines won prestigious ERC grants. ERC Advanced Grants were awarded to Distinguished Prof. Moti Segev (Physics), Prof. Ilan Marek (Chemistry), Prof. Yuval Ishai (Computer Science), and Prof. Moshe Tennenholtz (Industrial Engineering and Management).  ERC Consolidator Grants were awarded to Assoc. Prof. Yuval Shaked and Prof. Lior Gepstein (Medicine).

ERC Starting Grants were awarded to Assoc. Prof. Asya Rolls (Medicine), Assoc. Prof. Uri Shapira (Mathematics), Assoc. Prof. Keren Censor-Hillel (Computer Science), and Asst. Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky (Electrical Engineering).

The Uzi and Michal Halevy Innovative Applied Engineering Award was won by Asst. Prof. Beni Cukurel (Faculty of Aerospace Engineering), and the Uzi and Michal Halevy Research Grants were awarded to Asst. Prof. Vadim Indelman (Aerospace Engineering) and Assoc. Prof. Alejandro Sosnik (Materials Science and Engineering).

The annual Hilda and Hershel Rich Technion Innovation Awards for inventions or research with business potential were won this year by: Assoc. Prof. Moran Bercovici, Nadya Ostromohov, Tal Zeidman-Kalman and Tally Rosenfeld (Mechanical Engineering); Assoc. Prof. Aharon Blank and Itai Katz (Chemistry); Assoc. Prof. Sefi Givli and Dr. Itamar Benichou (Mechanical Engineering); Prof. Gideon Grader, Assoc. Prof. Avner Rothschild, Dr. Hen Dotan, Dr. Gennady Shter and Avigail Landman (Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering); Assoc. Prof. Carmel Rotschild (Mechanical Engineering) and Asst. Prof. Yael Yaniv (Biomedical Engineering).

Era of Cooperation: New Interdisciplinary Science Building at Technion

A generous donation by the Adelis Foundation has enabled the establishment of the André Deloro Building for Biosciences, Medicine and Engineering

The cornerstone of the André Deloro Building for Biosciences, Medicine and Engineering was recently laid on the Technion campus – a new facility dedicated to interdisciplinary research. The new building will be constructed thanks to a generous donation by the Adelis Foundation, and will serve as a meeting place for scientists, bridging fields that were once researched individually.

The ceremony was attended by President of the Adelis Foundation Albert Deloro (brother of the late André Cohen Deloro), Trustee of the Adelis Foundation Rebecca Boukhris, General Manager of Association Technion France Muriel Touaty, Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie and Technion Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development Prof. Boaz Golany. The master of ceremonies was Prof. Eric Akkermans of the Faculty of Physics.  

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said that, “André Deloro was a civil engineer who understood the significance of building bridges between different fields of research, between institutions, between people, and between countries. This understanding led to the establishment of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine in the late 1960s thanks to a prophetic and courageous decision by Technion management. The Faculty’s establishment, just like the building that will be erected here, was based on the understanding that medicine and engineering must go hand in hand.”

“The future of research lies in shattering dogmas and breaking down traditional walls between disciplines,” said Adelis Foundation Trustee Rebecca Boukhris. “The Deloro Building will also have an important social role: making medicine equally accessible to the entire population. We are not only investing money here, but also a great deal of hope, and we have no doubt that Technion will make the best possible use of this investment,” she added.

Technion, the Adelis Foundation and the Deloro family have a longstanding relationship that has generated the establishment of the new interdisciplinary building. The new building will include modern labs and facilities designed for researchers across the Technion, who will work together to advance interdisciplinary research and groundbreaking developments in science and medicine. These developments are expected to affect the lives of millions of people around the world, as Albert Deloro said at the ceremony: “The building will honor the memory of André Deloro in the best possible way – as a home for scientists from different faculties who will work towards a common goal: helping humankind overcome disease. The building will realize André’s vision of a strong Israel open to the world, and will showcase the excellence of Technion’s scientists and their wisdom.”    

The Adelis Foundation was established in 2009 by the late André Cohen Deloro in order to support academic excellence in Israel, especially in the fields of scientific and medical research. After André Cohen Deloro passed away, the Foundation management established the Adelis Prize for Brain Research, in accordance with Mr. Deloro’s intellectual legacy and vision. The prize is intended to encourage excellence in the field of brain research in Israel and to translate the research into global impact for the benefit of all humanity. The prize is open to all young Israeli researchers in the field of brain research, and the winner receives a $100,000 research grant.