Science

Innovation aside, the whole entity of civilization depends on energy. Where energy supplies deplete, nations implode, wars explode and suffering corrodes. With a finite supply of fossil fuels and an exponential increase in demand for energy, the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) is presently completing a decade of intense multidisciplinary activity. In these ten years, GTEP has grown from proof of concept to a veritable virtual and physical global hive of energy innovation. Spanning faculties, universities and continents, GTEP’s network of scientists and facilities also has deep inroads into industry, pioneering, for example, the cultivation of expertise to harvest Israel’s newly found natural gas reserves. The GTEP Graduate Studies Program attracts highly motivated graduates in science and engineering who are also required to carry out a research project. The program is designed to produce leaders in all energy-related fields. GTEP is active in four dimensions: Alternative Fuels, Energy Storage and Conversion, Renewable Energy Sources, and Energy Conservation.    

How mimetics at the nano scale are improving man made materials We’re all familiar with the Biblical saying: “There’s nothing new under the sun.” The study of the ancient mechanisms of the brittle starfish led Technion scientists to the innovative secrets which would allow them to follow suit – creating ultra-tough ceramics. An international research team led by Prof. Boaz Pokroy, Dr. Iryna Polishchuk, Dr. Alex Katsman Stas Kozachevich, and Yael Etinger-Geller at the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering uncovered the unique protective mechanism of highly resistant lenses found in the Ophiocoma wendtii, a coral reef-dwelling brittle starfish. On the arms of this creature are hundreds of focal lenses that hold clues to making tough ceramics. Made of chalk, the lenses are powerful and accurate, and the deciphering of their crystalline and nanoscale structure has occupied lead researcher Prof. Boaz Pokroy and his team for over three years. “Ophiocoma wendtii lenses are created in the open sea, not in a laboratory, and in effect we have discovered a strategy for making brittle material much more tough and durable under natural conditions,” said Pokroy. “It is ‘crystal engineering’ and tempering without heating and quenching – a process that could be very useful in materials science and engineering. Just as nature exhibits creativity in improving an organism’s abilities in various contexts such as strength, sensing, and self-defense, we see very high efficiency by the brittle star’s use of existing raw materials under natural conditions to create hardy and precise transparent lenses,” said Prof. Pokroy. Scientists and engineers can now apply this biostrategy in toughening and strengthening synthetic ceramic materials utilized in various applications that span from optical lenses to automotive turbochargers and even biomaterial implants. The research was published in Science in December 2017.

  For two days in December, researchers and students converged on Technion to hear from the world’s foremost experts on one of the most dynamic and groundbreaking fields today: using deep learning and big data to improve healthcare. Technion recently hosted the first ever “Biomedical Informatics – Big Data Science” Conference, drawing a large audience eager to hear about the latest developments in this fascinating field. Applying deep learning to medical data makes it possible to generate new hypotheses and to make discoveries that would not have been possible in the past. The conference was brilliantly organized by Prof. Roy Kishony, world authority on antibiotic resistance and Head of the Technion Lokey Center for Life Sciences and Engineering and Dr. Kira Radinsky, visiting Technion professor and director of data science of eBay. Their unique synergy resulted in a precise mix of speakers who covered a wide range of topics – from practical applications of data science in medical care to ethical precision medicine and next generation healthcare. In the course of two days, 24 eminent speakers from around the world shared their latest research findings with the international audience. The conference was sponsored by Yad Hanadiv.   “We’re living in a fascinating era for scientific research, an era where extensive data is used to improve diagnoses and treatments”    – President Prof. Peretz Lavie Prof. Shai Shen-Orr, of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and the conference organizing team, addressed the ongoing efforts to build a cell-centered view of genomic data that can be integrated with primary immunology literature. Experts from around the world included Prof. Nigam Shah from Stanford University, who described the initiative he leads, which takes data from electronic health records and uses machine learning to help doctors answer clinical questions. Dr. Hannah Bayer, a neuroscientist from New York University, spoke about the HUMAN Project, which studies 10,000 New York City residents over a period of 20 years, tracking everything from financial and social data to environmental and health factors.