Two new I-CORE centers to be led by Technion

The Minister of Education and Chairman of the Council for Higher Education, Gideon Sa’ar, and Chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC), Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg have announced the groups selected to establish 11 Centers of Excellence (I-COREs) in the second wave of the program.

I-CORE – the Israeli Centers for Research Excellence – gradually establishes leading research centers specializing in a range of disciplines. The Centers of Excellence and the program’s vision are aimed at fundamentally strengthening the long term positioning of Israel’s academic research and its stature among leading researchers in Israel and abroad.

Light and Matter

The I-Core for Light and Matter is to be established under the scientific management of Prof. Mordechai (Moti) Segev of the Technion, consisting of researchers from the Technion and the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Segev was the first Israeli to be offered a tenured position in Princeton in 1998. Instead of accepting, Segev chose to return to Technion and to create there a focus of optics research alluring excellent students and faculty from across the world. Some proofs of his global success include  the world’s first observation of 2D lattice solitons, and the first experimental demonstration of Anderson localization in a disordered periodic system.

Physics & Living Systems

The I-Core for Physical Approaches to Dynamic Processes in Living Systems – has been selected as a group under the scientific management of Prof. Amit Meller of the Technion Lorry I. Lokey Center for Life Science & Engineering, consisting of researchers from the Technion, Bar-Ilan University, the Hebrew University, Tel-Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Technion and I-CORE

Among the first four I-COREs previously established, Technion also leads the Solar Fuels I-CORE – a group under the scientific management of Prof. Gideon Grader of the Technion, consisting of researchers from the Technion, Weizmann Institute of Science and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The Grand Technion Energy Program is also taking part in a prestigious national research project on electric fuels for transportation, which was granted by the Israeli Science Foundation. This is a powerful collaboration between scientists at Technion, Bar-Ilan University and Tel-Aviv University, to establish the Israel National Research for Electrochemical Propulsion (INREP).

The 15 Centers of Excellence that were selected until now – those established in the first wave and those that will be established in the second one – promote innovative and groundbreaking research in a range of fields, promote national and international research collaborations, assist in the recruitment of new excellent researchers and pave the way for nurturing the future generation of outstanding researchers in the country by establishing inter-institutional Joint Graduate Schools.

 

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