Research

Last June, Technion announced a $50 million gift from the Helen Diller Family Foundation to support a new state-of-the-art quantum center. Thanks to this gift, Technion is poised to be a world leader in one of the 21st century’s most important fields of science and technology. The Helen Diller Center for Quantum Science, Matter and Engineering is headed by Dist. Prof. Moti Segev and Prof. Gadi Eisenstein. Prof. Segev is the Robert J. Shillman Distinguished Professor of Physics. Prof. Eisenstein holds the Mark and Diane Seiden Chair in Optoelectronics and is the director of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI). There are more than 30 faculty members engaged in quantum-related research. The grant from the Helen Diller Family Foundation will enable Technion to recruit ten new faculty members between 2018 and 2028. Notable research breakthroughs include: > The first-ever topological insulator laser – Prof. Moti Segev > The most advanced single and entangled photon generating technique – Prof. David Gershoni > Metamaterial-based quantum manipulation – Prof. Erez Hasman and Prof. Moti Segev > Advanced opto-atomic clocks – Prof. Gadi Eisenstein An Ultrafast Transmission Electron Microscope facility, the only such system in Israel and one of a handful worldwide, will be inaugurated in 2019. In this system, the electron beam is pulsed – synchronized with an ultrafast optical pulse. It is used for quantum electrodynamic experiments and other ultrafast quantum phenomena. In November 2019, an important symposium organized jointly by Technion and the newly formed Munich Quantum Center (which includes Ludwig Maximilian University, the Technical University of Munich, the Max Planck Institute and the Deutsche Museum) will take place at the Max Planck Institute in Garching near Munich.

T3 has been instrumental in birthing many outstanding success stories which directly contributed to making the world a better place. T3, the Technion Technology Transfer Unit – is where great ideas from campus labs and faculty members are protected, enhanced, accelerated and translated into products through dynamic processes of commercialization. T3 is part of the Technion Research and Development Foundation Ltd. (TRDF). T3’s new Managing Director, Rona Samler, sees T3’s role as both active and proactive: “Our ability to streamline the commercialization process, making Technion innovation accessible in a dynamic and changing environment, is fundamental,” she says, adding that, “The holistic approach means we are active and proactive partners in promoting applications of high-quality science. This is in relation to both Technion faculty and to industry.” T3’s business activities include collaboration with industry, facilitating sponsored research, licensing and the establishment of start-up companies based on Technion technologies. One reflection of the innovative strength of Israel’s top institute of technology is seen in the 100 affiliated companies which were established through the intellectual property of the Technion ecosystem. The Technion has tools to support and invest in these companies, from pre-seed through follow-up investments in designated funds, including the DRIVE accelerator, AMIT ‘s biomedical venture and The Technion Investment Opportunity Fund. Here are some examples of how the commercialization of Technion discoveries has had a far-reaching impact, actively contributing to ‘Tikun Olam’: * “healing the world” – a central value in Judaism that espouses benefiting humanity Sealantis Based on Technion technology, Sealantis develops medical adhesives which mimic the mechanism of algae adhering to rocks in water and which have much lower risks of infection or allergy. The company was sold in January 2019 for US$25 million to Advanced Medical Solutions Group from England. Sealantis was established under the auspices of the Alfred Mann Institute at Technion (AMIT), under the leadership of Prof. Havazelet Bianco-Peled, a world renowned expert in biomedical polymers, from the Wolfson Faculty of Chemical Engineering. Mazor Robotics Technion-born Mazor Robotics sells for a record $1.6B The biggest health tech exit in Israel’s history In the largest ever ‘exit’ of an Israeli biotech company, Mazor Robotics – a pioneering developer of robotic systems for spine and brain surgery, founded at Technion – was bought in September 2018 by Irish-American medical device company Medtronic for $1.64 billion. Mazor’s innovative products were originally developed by Prof. Moshe Shoham of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Mazor started out in the Technion Entrepreneurial Incubator Company (TEIC). Itamar Medical Itamar Medical Ltd. is a publicly traded company that develops non-invasive medical devices for monitoring sleep and diagnosing sleep disorders based on its proprietary PAT™ technology. This technology was developed in the laboratory of Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie, who is also one of the company’s founders. Itamar Medical is based in Caesarea and markets the WatchPAT (pictured above) and EndoPAT devices worldwide. BreezoMeter BreezoMeter was founded in 2012 by Technion alumni Ran Korber, Ziv Lautman and Emil Fisher. Environmental engineers aware of the connection between health and the environment, they were interested in knowing the quality of the air we breathe in real time. The result is the most accurate air quality application programming interface (API) in the world. Novocure In 2000, Prof. Yoram Palti of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine sought to leverage his expertise in biophysics to develop a new way to treat cancer that would destroy tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue. His research led to the founding of Novocure, which has grown into an international oncology company with more than 495 employees and operations in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The company’s development center remains in Haifa. Corindus Corindus Vascular Robotics, Inc. is a global technology leader in robotic-assisted vascular interventions. Prof. Rafi Beyar, Former Director of Rambam Healthcare Campus and former Dean of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, co-founded the company. Corindus’ next-generation CorPath GRX System is advancing the field of robotic interventional cardiology, offering improvements in radiation protection for physicians and the potential to reduce radiation exposure for staff and patients. Technion DRIVE Technion DRIVE – an accelerator for entrepreneurs who are part of the Technion community and whose start-ups are in the pre-seed or seed stages – is bearing fruit after only 2.5 years. DRIVE start-ups cover a large range of fields. One company, VineSight, developed an algorithm that identifies fake news and is now gaining traction. Another start-up, NanoSynex, founded by two young Technion alumni who are both new immigrants (from France and Brazil), raised $1.5 million to fund further development of their product: rapid identification of antibiotic resistance. The technology is based on research that was carried out in Prof. Shulamit Levenberg’s lab. BrainVu detects emotions on faces non-invasively and remotely using Technion technology. Last year, it was acquired by Mantis Vision. Out of the 26 companies in DRIVE’s portfolio, four are based on Technion technologies. The others are by alumni. Companies that are accepted to the program receive up to $100,000, business mentorship, space in DRIVE’s offices on campus and access to Technion labs and resources. The nine-month program provides participating entrepreneurs with assistance in fundraising and finding potential clients, as well as introducing them to a huge network of mentors and investors, many of whom are Technion alumni themselves. Dr. Shuli Shwartz, DRIVE’s Managing Director, is herself an experienced entrepreneur who founded three ventures and recently co-managed Runway, a start-up incubator program for postdocs at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute in New York (see page 40). She is personally involved with each of the accelerator’s start-ups, customizing the mentorship training of the first-time entrepreneurs and helping with pitching and fund raising, team building, product development and more.

Technion’s newly inaugurated Center for Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems is set to become a hub of creativity and research that will benefit the scientific and medical communities, and industry. Technion has succeeded in building a strong world-class AI group, with more than 20 faculty members carrying out first-rate theoretical and applied research. The new Center for Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems that was recently inaugurated will maintain Technion’s position as one of the top universities worldwide in both the research and teaching of intelligent systems. Prof. Shie Mannor of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering heads the new AI Center. Prof. Mannor is an associate editor of the Journal of Machine Learning Research, Operations Research and Math of Operations Research, and held the Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning between 2005-2009 while on the faculty of McGill University. By promoting both pure and applied research in machine learning, the Center serves as a bridge between academia and Israeli and global high-tech industries. It will educate hundreds of scientists and engineers and train researchers specializing in data science and machine learning, as well as attracting leading researchers from all over the world, and hosting industry and medical experts. The Center provides a holistic multidisciplinary approach to the investigation of complex problems such as the application of machine learning in personalized treatment of cancer. Its scope includes defense and homeland security, agritech, home and industrial robots, health and medicine, smart environments, fintech, and autonomous vehicles. Technion’s goal in establishing the Center is to leverage its multidisciplinary experience and expertise in fields such as data, information and computer sciences; control theory; automation and robotics; statistics and complex systems; neurosciences and more, in order to address relevant challenges in artificial intelligence and machine learning science. As a leader in this field, Technion plays a key role in the country’s efforts to maintain and enhance the qualitative edge in science and technology that is vital to its security and economy. Technion is well positioned to enhance its many existing research relationships with Israeli industry leaders and global companies and to expand its range of partnerships in areas that relate to the new Center. In this context, Technion has already established close ties with Intel, Bank Hapoalim, Hyundai and other companies. “The new Center is a one-stop-shop. Now we can work with much larger companies with complex needs.” – Prof. Shie Mannor

IMAGING Improved Brain Scans An interdisciplinary research team at Technion has developed nanometric particles that will improve the quality of brain scans by combining MRIs and light microscope photography. The team from the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute is led by Assoc. Prof. Lilac Amirav from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, together with Dr. Shai Berlin and Prof. Itamar Kahn from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. The problem with MRIs is that they don’t provide high enough resolutions at the level of a single cell. Light microscopy, on the other hand, is able to show single cells, but it requires that the tissue be penetrated. The nanometric particles developed at Technion are effective markers in that they are visible in both MRI scans and light microscopes, and they can navigate within the cells.   AI Artificial Intelligence Hardware: 1000x Faster A team led by Asst. Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky at the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering has developed hardware for machine learning that is much faster than regular graphic processor units, yet requires much less energy. Most artificial intelligence applications rely on computers that run programs using mathematical models whose processing capabilities are insufficient. In order to accelerate the computation and reduce the energy, Prof. Kvatinsky’s team uses novel nano-scale devices called memristors to support deep neural networks using one of the most popular learning techniques – gradient descent with momentum. The research team developed a dedicated hardware based on memristors that is 1,000 times faster than GPUs, while using seven times less energy.   TISSUE ENGINEERING Regenerating Damaged Tissues Prof. Shulamit Levenberg of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering and her team have brought successful tissue engineering a step closer, paving the way for superior methods of replacing damaged human tissue. The field of tissue engineering involves taking cells from the body and incorporating them with very porous scaffold biomaterials, which act as 3D templates that guide the growth of new tissue. Prof. Levenberg and her team found that the most mature grafts with complex vessel networks increased graft-host vessel anastomosis and improved penetration of the vessels in the recipient. The less-mature vessels were less successful in combining with the host tissue and caused more clots to be formed.   QUANTUM World’s 1st Quantum Metamaterials Two teams of Technion scientists have collaborated to conduct trailblazing research which is leading to the development of a new and innovative scientific field: Quantum Metamaterials. The study was jointly conducted by Dist. Prof. Moti Segev, of the Physics Faculty, and his team, Tomer Stav and Dikla Oren, in collaboration with Prof. Erez Hasman of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and his team, Arkady Faerman, Elhanan Maguid, and Dr. Vladimir Kleiner. The research demonstrates that it is possible to apply metamaterials to the field of quantum information and computing, thereby paving the way for numerous practical applications, such as the development of unbreakable encryptions, and new possibilities for quantum information systems on a chip.   MEDICINE “Immune Age”: An Accurate Measure of Health A team of Technion researchers led by Assoc. Prof. Shai Shen-Orr in collaboration with Stanford University, have found that the state of our immune system provides a more accurate measurement of health. The team has developed a way to gauge “immune age,” which may push the limits of personalized medical treatment, drug and vaccine clinical development, and health management. “Unlike your actual chronological age, your immune-age is directly linked to the state of your immune system, the body’s chief sentinel. We can therefore capture medically relevant information using immune age that physicians would otherwise miss,” explains Shen-Orr.   ENVIRONMENT CT Scans for Clouds Will Improve Climate Prediction Inspired by medical CT scans, a space mission consisting of tiny satellites will reveal detailed images of cloud structures and properties, and may resolve some major uncertainties that limit current climate prediction. The project, which was recently awarded €14 million by the European Research Council Synergy program, is led by Prof. Yoav Schechner of the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, an expert in computer vision and computed tomography, along with Prof. Ilan Koren from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Prof. Klaus Schilling of the Center for Telematics in Würzburg, Germany. In analogy to the better-known medical CT, images will be taken simultaneously from many directions around and above the clouds. This feat will be made possible by the networked self-organizing formation of multiple, inexpensive, small satellites.   BIG DATA Chronic Use of β-Blockers Found to Increase the Risk of Parkinson’s Disease A new study led by Visiting Prof. Kira Radinsky of the Computer Science Faculty indicates that chronic use of β-blockers confers a time- and dose-dependent increased risk for Parkinson’s disease. Prof. Radinsky and her team used Maccabi Health Services electronic charts to identify all patients receiving their first β-blocker treatment. They calculated the morbidity hazard of Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in users of β-blockers compared with non-users, as well as users of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors for hypertension. The adjusted hazard ratio for Parkinson’s disease among β-blocker users was 1.51. In contrast, the Parkinson’s disease morbidity hazard for patients receiving ACE inhibitors was no different than for the general population.   INFORMATION PROCESSING Revolutionizing Information Processing Technion 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 in Science, was led by Assoc. Prof. Guy Bartal of the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Assoc. Prof. Netanel Lindner of the Physics Faculty. The researchers demonstrated that an electric field can take on a “skyrmion” shape and that these “light hedgehogs” are robust against various defects in the material hosting the electromagnetic waves. The new discovery could enable future replication of this unique effect in a wide range of systems and materials, including liquids, nanoparticle systems and even cold atomic gases. It might also lay the ground for new skyrmion applications in optical (rather than magnetic) information processing, transfer and storage.   HEALTH Innovative System Predicts the Effectiveness of Antibiotic Cocktails Researchers at the Faculty of Biology discovered an innovative system for measuring the effectiveness of “antibiotic cocktails” and proved that the variety of drugs in the cocktail has a much larger impact than their dosages. The research was led by Prof. Roy Kishony of the Faculties of Biology and Computer Science, and his findings were recently published in the journal Nature Microbiology. Prof. Kishony’s team developed a system that automatically and precisely measures the effect of different antibiotic cocktails on bacteria. They found that the larger the number of different antibiotics in the cocktail, the lower the doses required of each antibiotic without reducing the cocktail’s effectiveness.   REGENERATIVE MEDICINE Revealing the Therapeutic Promise of Programmed Cell Death Asst. Prof. Yaron Fuchs from the Faculty of Biology is the 2019 grand prize winner of the Sartorius and Science Prize for Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy, for work that reveals a role for programmed stem cell death in wound healing and tissue regeneration. The findings, described in his prize-winning essay, “The therapeutic promise of apoptosis,” could potentially pave the way to novel regenerative medicine and tumor therapies that target stem cells undergoing apoptosis – a type of programmed cell death. Prof. Fuchs heads the Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.