PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2015
“My true passion,” she says, “is arming humanity with scientific capabilities to automatically anticipate, and ultimately affect, future outcomes based on lessons from the past.”
Dr. Kira Radinsky, who this year finished her doctoral studies at Technion, has been placed on the prestigious Innovators Under 35 list of MIT Technology Review Magazine.
Each year, the list highlights 35 of the world’s leading innovators under the age of 35. Dr. Radinsky (26) was chosen from among hundreds of nominees and made the list “be devised outstanding, and given her work prominent in software.”
Previous honorees of the MIT TR35 include Technion’s Prof. Hossam Haick and Prof. Kinneret Keren of the Technion Faculty of Physics.
“Over the years we have registered success in the selection of women and men in their inventions, and the companies established have deeply influenced various trends in human society” said Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher. “Past winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google; Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook; Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief designer; and David Karp, founder of the Tumblr. We are proud of our achievements and variety, and are proud to add the Kira this distinguished list.
“Dr.Radinsky began studying at the Technion at 15, became part of the Technion excellence program and has completed three degrees at the Faculty of Computer Science under the supervision of Prof. Shaul Markovitch. During her studies, she developed a novel prediction method, which predicts events with an average precision of 80 percent . Scanning digits from the last 500 years, within all material published in the New York Times from 1880 on, she found a strong correlation between events of different types. Among other things,she found that the combination of a form of storms is a precursor to Cholera and now maintains ties with medical organizations to implement the findings and provide.
“The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
During her studies Dr. Radinsky worked at Microsoft Research USA, led by Eric Horowitz, and later she joined Yaron Zakai to establish SalesPredict.
Dr. Radinsky’s research has earned her awards from various organizations, including Google, Yahoo and Facebook.
“Kira is a brilliant researcher with unique qualities that absolutely justify her inclusion in the list,” says Prof. Shaul Markovitch of the Faculty of Computer Science. “She combines intellectual ability with creativity and intense curiosity – a rare combination typical of outstanding inventors. Her doctoral research is a valid problem that seemed unsolvable with current tools – developing algorithms with good predictive capability for global events by using huge databases of web-based information sources. The boldness of her choice of problem, and her scientific competence demonstrated in the successful solution earned her the inclusion on the list.
Dr.Kira Radinsky said today following the publication: ” It is an honor be included on the Young Innovators list of MIT. Hopefully it will encourage researchers and scholars from Israel to engage in research in this field and for Israel to build its position as a superpower in empirical research.”