Tag Archives: Israel

NYC – Technion-Cornell Cornerstone of the Future

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NYC Tech Campus:
“Our greatest strength is our diversity. This is the day we really do usher in the high tech economy.”


Technion President Peretz Lavie

“No more faculties but HUBS that are flexible, overlapping and interact with industry: an open very flexible system built around themes rather than traditional fields of science.
…We found a partner, and what a partner. A program of innovation. We are not going to have an extension of the Technion or Cornell but something new that will really energize this city. 
…The links between Technion and New York go back to the 1910s, with a donation from US philanthropist Jacob Schiff….
…The Technion was founded in 1912…100 years later we come to New York to close the historic circle. We are building the bridge between Israel and the US, Technion and Cornell, New York and Haifa.” 

...from Jaffa oranges to semiconductors

…I just came from Stockholm… this is as exciting as a Nobel”

Cornell President David J. Skorton:
“A story of connectivity, between people and their ideas, between teachers and their students…
…Success needs technology,innovation, entrepreneurial ecosystem…
…We need to extend the talent pool… and retain them in NYC – as many as possible for as long as possible.”
New campius: “An environmental standard bearer.”
Mayor Bloomberg:

 “Today will be remembered as a defining moment.”

“A dynamic joint submission from two world class institutions”

“The economic impact will be greater than we thought. A game changer.”

“Transformative, cutting edge campus, pioneering green elements…”

The bid- “The most students, faculty, building space, environmentally sustainable”

“The element includes elements to integrate the campus with the city… “

“Unprecedented fund for start ups with high dividends”

“Technion sits at the center of an ecosystem of startups + hightech giants”

“3/4 nobel scientists in Israel came from Technion – “

 Technion – Cornell: “A tantalizing groundbreaking partnership.”

“Cornell Tech campus will spin out more than 600 new companies over 30 yrs”

“The courage to expand… their success will be our success”
They are calling the Technion Israel’s version of MIT. This is very flattering, but there is a difference. Technion was founded in 1912 – decades before the birth of the State of Israel. It was the inculcation of expert skills, creativity and pioneering ingenuity among young people that facilitated the birth of a nation. You can check the Technion’s unique history on Wikipedia, or view it rapidly in the video below! If you want it in a different language, go to Technion Channel and take your pick!
100 years ago, the first cornerstone was laid for Israel’s 1st university. So much was embodied in that cornerstone, including the realization of the hopes, dreams and genius of a people who had been disenfranchised for centuries. The original charter of the Technion was not only Zionist. It was to bring skills, education and training to people denied access to higher education in the service of all humanity.
In 2012, in the year of the Technion’s cornestone centenary, a third millennium cornerstone is to be laid, on that realized the vision to be of service to all humankind. United with Cornell University – an institution unrivaled in its creativity, standards of excellence and flair for innovation, Technion will be working to establish the foundations of the global village of tomorrow – a center of higher education that will transform the New York of the coming 100 years – bringing innovation, employment and creativity, introducing tomorrows generation of medicine, life sciences, nanotechnology, software, electronics and  global entrepreneurship.
At Technion, tomorrow begins today.
The path of progress. Technion & Cornell link up
to announce the bid for NYC ‘genius’ tech campus

Unconstrained by geography… the Technion – Cornell link-up
to generate innovation at the heart of the global village.

Green, clean and aesthetic… artists impression of the new
campus on Roosevelt Island.

A coalition to lay the scientific and technological foundations
of tomorrow’s world.

Cornell President Skorton in a video conference with
Technion President Peretz Lavie.

NYC – Technion-Cornell Cornerstone of the Future

Leave a comment
NYC Tech Campus:
“Our greatest strength is our diversity. This is the day we really do usher in the high tech economy.”


Technion President Peretz Lavie

“No more faculties but HUBS that are flexible, overlapping and interact with industry: an open very flexible system built around themes rather than traditional fields of science.
…We found a partner, and what a partner. A program of innovation. We are not going to have an extension of the Technion or Cornell but something new that will really energize this city. 
…The links between Technion and New York go back to the 1910s, with a donation from US philanthropist Jacob Schiff….
…The Technion was founded in 1912…100 years later we come to New York to close the historic circle. We are building the bridge between Israel and the US, Technion and Cornell, New York and Haifa.” 

...from Jaffa oranges to semiconductors

…I just came from Stockholm… this is as exciting as a Nobel”

Cornell President David J. Skorton:
“A story of connectivity, between people and their ideas, between teachers and their students…
…Success needs technology,innovation, entrepreneurial ecosystem…
…We need to extend the talent pool… and retain them in NYC – as many as possible for as long as possible.”
New campius: “An environmental standard bearer.”
Mayor Bloomberg:

 “Today will be remembered as a defining moment.”

“A dynamic joint submission from two world class institutions”

“The economic impact will be greater than we thought. A game changer.”

“Transformative, cutting edge campus, pioneering green elements…”

The bid- “The most students, faculty, building space, environmentally sustainable”

“The element includes elements to integrate the campus with the city… “

“Unprecedented fund for start ups with high dividends”

“Technion sits at the center of an ecosystem of startups + hightech giants”

“3/4 nobel scientists in Israel came from Technion – “

 Technion – Cornell: “A tantalizing groundbreaking partnership.”

“Cornell Tech campus will spin out more than 600 new companies over 30 yrs”

“The courage to expand… their success will be our success”
They are calling the Technion Israel’s version of MIT. This is very flattering, but there is a difference. Technion was founded in 1912 – decades before the birth of the State of Israel. It was the inculcation of expert skills, creativity and pioneering ingenuity among young people that facilitated the birth of a nation. You can check the Technion’s unique history on Wikipedia, or view it rapidly in the video below! If you want it in a different language, go to Technion Channel and take your pick!
100 years ago, the first cornerstone was laid for Israel’s 1st university. So much was embodied in that cornerstone, including the realization of the hopes, dreams and genius of a people who had been disenfranchised for centuries. The original charter of the Technion was not only Zionist. It was to bring skills, education and training to people denied access to higher education in the service of all humanity.
In 2012, in the year of the Technion’s cornestone centenary, a third millennium cornerstone is to be laid, on that realized the vision to be of service to all humankind. United with Cornell University – an institution unrivaled in its creativity, standards of excellence and flair for innovation, Technion will be working to establish the foundations of the global village of tomorrow – a center of higher education that will transform the New York of the coming 100 years – bringing innovation, employment and creativity, introducing tomorrows generation of medicine, life sciences, nanotechnology, software, electronics and  global entrepreneurship.
At Technion, tomorrow begins today.
The path of progress. Technion & Cornell link up
to announce the bid for NYC ‘genius’ tech campus

Unconstrained by geography… the Technion – Cornell link-up
to generate innovation at the heart of the global village.

Green, clean and aesthetic… artists impression of the new
campus on Roosevelt Island.

A coalition to lay the scientific and technological foundations
of tomorrow’s world.

Cornell President Skorton in a video conference with
Technion President Peretz Lavie.

Israel: Land of the Little Apple

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High-tech Giant Apple to set up Israel development center

With Technion graduates heading R&D centers for Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Intel to name a view, Apple has until now been noticeable by it absence. Now, news is surfacing that Technion graduate (first and second degrees) Aharon Aharon will head Apple’s first ever development center outside of its California headquarters.

 
Apple Inc. has decided to open a development center in Israel focusing on semiconductors, the first R&D venture for the company outside the United States, the Israeli Business news service Globes Wednesday. The decision was apparently made even before the company entered into talks to acquire Herzliya-based flash storage solutions provider Anobit Ltd.

Apple has hired Aharon Aharon, Technion graduate and a veteran player in Israel’s high tech industry, to lead the new development center. The planned Israel center will be the company’s first such center outside of its California headquarters.

Aharon Aharon comes to Apple with a rich background. His most high-tech venture was Camero Tech Ltd., which develops Radio Frequency (RF) based imaging systems, and which he founded in 2004 with Amir Beeri. Before that, he was chairman of embedded security solutions developer Discretix Inc. and managed their Israel development center. He was also VP operations at Zoran Corp.(Nasdaq: ZRAN), having begun his career at IBM’s Haifa development center where he reached the post of deputy director.

Apple is cultivating it;s new orchard for future growth fast. Aharon will be spending some months at Apple HQ in Cupertino before launching the Israel enterprise and harvesting the local skills and ingenuity. It is one ground breaking decision that is sure to support Apple in maintaining its competitive edge in the next, even smarter generation.

The Birth of Super Resolution – Technion Startup in HD!

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A clear-cut example of the dynamic process of technology transfer at the Technion – the startup BETTERview is slated to revolutionize the quality of HD imaging – by taking and applying new research from the Technion department of electrical engineering all the way to your the screen of your TV, PC or smart phone. Have something old and cloudy? BETTERvIew also offers a conversion service to produce images as crisp as if they were filmed with the cutting-edge cameras of tomorrow.


BETTERView offers SD to true HD (High Definition) conversion and video enrichment. Check the following video to see the quality advantage.




The patented breakthrough in the super resolution promises to breaks the “glass ceiling” of existing technology, says the company, whose team includes world-experts from Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science, which is ranked #15 in the world. While conventional methods use conversion techniques to “blow up” or stretch the SD video onto an HD display, BetterVirw increases optical resolution of a video stream, generating an HD stream that looks as authentic as it gets.


BETTERview technology is based on a novel family of SR algorithms, proposed by a world-leader in this field, Prof. Michael Elad (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology). Elad and his collaborator, Dr. Matan Protter devised the first method that overcomes the requirement for very accurate and explicit motion estimation in previous SR technologies. The new family of SR techniques avoids the exact motion estimation and replaces it by a probabilistic estimate. This enables handling successfully general content scenes containing extremely complex motion patterns. 


The results are impressive, with no visual artifacts, and the process is completely robust. Based on this core technology, BETTERview developed the first cutting-edge industrial-grade robust system that perform SD to True HD resolution conversion. Its solution strengthens the above-mentioned core technology by handling various video artifacts, interlaced content, synchronization issues and run-time efficiency.


The innovative research of Prof. Michael Elad was listed in 2010 by Thomson Reuters Science Watch. You can read their interview with him here.



It has been known for the past 20 years that, in principle, one could take several low-quality images and fuse them into a single, higher-resolution outcome. This has been demonstrated by scientists, adopting various techniques and algorithms. The process is known as Super-Resolution (SR), which  became a hot field in image processing, with thousands of academic papers published during the past two decades on the problem and ways to handle it. The classical approach to fuse the low-quality images requires finding an exact correspondence between their pixels, a process known as “motion estimation”. Several years ago this field experienced a revolution, due to a breakthrough in the way to handle (or better yet, bypass altogether) the motion estimation. 

The Birth of Super Resolution – Technion Startup in HD!

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A clear-cut example of the dynamic process of technology transfer at the Technion – the startup BETTERview is slated to revolutionize the quality of HD imaging – by taking and applying new research from the Technion department of electrical engineering all the way to your the screen of your TV, PC or smart phone. Have something old and cloudy? BETTERvIew also offers a conversion service to produce images as crisp as if they were filmed with the cutting-edge cameras of tomorrow.


BETTERView offers SD to true HD (High Definition) conversion and video enrichment. Check the following video to see the quality advantage.




The patented breakthrough in the super resolution promises to breaks the “glass ceiling” of existing technology, says the company, whose team includes world-experts from Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science, which is ranked #15 in the world. While conventional methods use conversion techniques to “blow up” or stretch the SD video onto an HD display, BetterVirw increases optical resolution of a video stream, generating an HD stream that looks as authentic as it gets.


BETTERview technology is based on a novel family of SR algorithms, proposed by a world-leader in this field, Prof. Michael Elad (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology). Elad and his collaborator, Dr. Matan Protter devised the first method that overcomes the requirement for very accurate and explicit motion estimation in previous SR technologies. The new family of SR techniques avoids the exact motion estimation and replaces it by a probabilistic estimate. This enables handling successfully general content scenes containing extremely complex motion patterns. 


The results are impressive, with no visual artifacts, and the process is completely robust. Based on this core technology, BETTERview developed the first cutting-edge industrial-grade robust system that perform SD to True HD resolution conversion. Its solution strengthens the above-mentioned core technology by handling various video artifacts, interlaced content, synchronization issues and run-time efficiency.


The innovative research of Prof. Michael Elad was listed in 2010 by Thomson Reuters Science Watch. You can read their interview with him here.



It has been known for the past 20 years that, in principle, one could take several low-quality images and fuse them into a single, higher-resolution outcome. This has been demonstrated by scientists, adopting various techniques and algorithms. The process is known as Super-Resolution (SR), which  became a hot field in image processing, with thousands of academic papers published during the past two decades on the problem and ways to handle it. The classical approach to fuse the low-quality images requires finding an exact correspondence between their pixels, a process known as “motion estimation”. Several years ago this field experienced a revolution, due to a breakthrough in the way to handle (or better yet, bypass altogether) the motion estimation. 

The future: knife-free non-invasive cancer surgery.

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Insightec – voted a top innovator by TIME Magazine for its revolutionary ultrasound system for non-invasive surgery, is a powerhouse of Technion graduates. Here, Yoav Medan, who has taught at the department of electrical engineering at the Technion and who has graduated from there in aeronautical engineering, discusses how this patented Israeli system could soon be saving lives across the planet.

Imagine having a surgery with no knives involved. At TEDMED, surgeon Yoav Medan shares a technique that uses MRI to find trouble spots and focused ultrasound to treat such issues as brain lesions, uterine fibroids and several kinds of cancerous growths.

‘TIME’ honors InSightec’s Focused Ultrasound

By Viva Sarah Press
December 06, 2011
TIME magazine recently called InSightec’s MR Guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS) one of the 50 best inventions of the year.

“Magnetic-resonance-imaging (MRI) and ultrasound technologies are each remarkable in their own right, but combine them and you get something life-changing,” the magazine wrote about InSightec’s technique.

Read full story at Israel 21C

Yoav Medan

Vice President and Chief Systems Architect, Insightec

Yoav Medan, Vice President and Chief Systems Architect, is responsible for developing new platforms for the Magnetic Resonance guided Focused Ultrasound technology.
Prior to joining InSightec in 1999, Dr. Medan spent 17 years in various senior research and management positions at the IBM Research Division and was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology.
In addition to technical and managerial experience, Dr. Medan has academic experience as well, teaching at the EE department at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in addition to serving as a lecturer for Avionic Systems at the Aeronautical Engineering faculty. He is also a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Dr. Medan has widely published and holds nine IBM as well as several other patents. He was awarded the IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, the 3rd Invention Achievement Award and the Outstanding Research Division Award.
Dr. Medan received his D.Sc. and B.Sc.(Summa Cum Laude) in Aeronautical Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and a M.B.A diploma from Bradford University, UK.

The focused ultrasound beam can be seen during the treatment to ensure taht the ultrasound travels through a safe pathway to the focus. This ensures that the correct region is targeted.  Sonication parameters can be adjusted to optimize the treatment and are monitored by the physician during the treatment.

The future: knife-free non-invasive cancer surgery.

5 Comments
Insightec – voted a top innovator by TIME Magazine for its revolutionary ultrasound system for non-invasive surgery, is a powerhouse of Technion graduates. Here, Yoav Medan, who has taught at the department of electrical engineering at the Technion and who has graduated from there in aeronautical engineering, discusses how this patented Israeli system could soon be saving lives across the planet.

Imagine having a surgery with no knives involved. At TEDMED, surgeon Yoav Medan shares a technique that uses MRI to find trouble spots and focused ultrasound to treat such issues as brain lesions, uterine fibroids and several kinds of cancerous growths.

‘TIME’ honors InSightec’s Focused Ultrasound

By Viva Sarah Press
December 06, 2011
TIME magazine recently called InSightec’s MR Guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS) one of the 50 best inventions of the year.

“Magnetic-resonance-imaging (MRI) and ultrasound technologies are each remarkable in their own right, but combine them and you get something life-changing,” the magazine wrote about InSightec’s technique.

Read full story at Israel 21C

Yoav Medan

Vice President and Chief Systems Architect, Insightec

Yoav Medan, Vice President and Chief Systems Architect, is responsible for developing new platforms for the Magnetic Resonance guided Focused Ultrasound technology.
Prior to joining InSightec in 1999, Dr. Medan spent 17 years in various senior research and management positions at the IBM Research Division and was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology.
In addition to technical and managerial experience, Dr. Medan has academic experience as well, teaching at the EE department at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in addition to serving as a lecturer for Avionic Systems at the Aeronautical Engineering faculty. He is also a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Dr. Medan has widely published and holds nine IBM as well as several other patents. He was awarded the IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, the 3rd Invention Achievement Award and the Outstanding Research Division Award.
Dr. Medan received his D.Sc. and B.Sc.(Summa Cum Laude) in Aeronautical Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and a M.B.A diploma from Bradford University, UK.

The focused ultrasound beam can be seen during the treatment to ensure taht the ultrasound travels through a safe pathway to the focus. This ensures that the correct region is targeted.  Sonication parameters can be adjusted to optimize the treatment and are monitored by the physician during the treatment.

A Scientific and Technological Powerhouse

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Q & A with Israel Minister of Science and Technology Professor Daniel Hershkowitz

December 9, 2011 by The American Technion Society

Israel is a Universal Scientific and Technological Powerhouse

Professor Daniel Hershkowitz, formerly of the Technion Faculty of Mathematics, is in Stockholm this week together with his wife Shimona, for the Nobel Prize Festivities. This is the first time that a governmental official has been invited to join in the Nobel ceremony. The following interview reflects his thoughts about the Nobel Prize and science and technology in Israel.
Q. What does the Nobel Prize mean to Israel?
A. This is another acknowledgement of the very special status of Israel as a universal scientific and technological powerhouse. It’s also an indication of the special status of the Technion. How many universities have three Nobel Laureates in seven years, and all of them grew up in the Technion, studied there and continued to conduct research and teach there. That is remarkable.
Q. What is the impact on the worldwide Jewish Community?
A. Most Jews around the world feel that the State of Israel is their homeland. The Nobel provides them with a great sense of pride. There is naturally excitement throughout the community as this is a great honor for Eretz Yisrael and the entire Jewish world.  I feel that when I represent the State of Israel at the Nobel ceremony, I will be representing Jews around the world as well.
Q. Before becoming a Minister, you were a Professor at the Technion. How important has the Technion been for the State of Israel?
A. In the high-tech sector, some 70% of the managers and founders of companies are Technion graduates. This is dramatic.  Israel is a very young country — only 63 years old — and is an economic miracle. The Technion played a big role in this. Not only in building buildings but in establishing the whole area of technology and also in the defense of our country. Technion graduates develop the cutting-edge technologies at the Israel Aircraft Industries and Rafael, Israel’s Armament Authority.
In addition the Technion has undertaken a new program to educate the ultraorthodox community. This is a great way to integrate this segment of the population so that they may contribute to the economy in a meaningful way.
Q. How can people become part of Israel’s great success in high-technology?
A. They should come to Israel, be involved, be part of what is happening or support it. Organizations that assist Israeli institutions help maintain its status. We need the brightest scientists and innovators but we also need to find a way to fund them. Those who contribute to these efforts are true partners. They should not view their support as a “donation” but rather as a way to express their deep understanding of what is important for our country, and where it needs investment. The people who help the Technion are in effect policy makers in science and technology — and that is the future.

A Scientific and Technological Powerhouse

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Q & A with Israel Minister of Science and Technology Professor Daniel Hershkowitz

December 9, 2011 by The American Technion Society

Israel is a Universal Scientific and Technological Powerhouse

Professor Daniel Hershkowitz, formerly of the Technion Faculty of Mathematics, is in Stockholm this week together with his wife Shimona, for the Nobel Prize Festivities. This is the first time that a governmental official has been invited to join in the Nobel ceremony. The following interview reflects his thoughts about the Nobel Prize and science and technology in Israel.
Q. What does the Nobel Prize mean to Israel?
A. This is another acknowledgement of the very special status of Israel as a universal scientific and technological powerhouse. It’s also an indication of the special status of the Technion. How many universities have three Nobel Laureates in seven years, and all of them grew up in the Technion, studied there and continued to conduct research and teach there. That is remarkable.
Q. What is the impact on the worldwide Jewish Community?
A. Most Jews around the world feel that the State of Israel is their homeland. The Nobel provides them with a great sense of pride. There is naturally excitement throughout the community as this is a great honor for Eretz Yisrael and the entire Jewish world.  I feel that when I represent the State of Israel at the Nobel ceremony, I will be representing Jews around the world as well.
Q. Before becoming a Minister, you were a Professor at the Technion. How important has the Technion been for the State of Israel?
A. In the high-tech sector, some 70% of the managers and founders of companies are Technion graduates. This is dramatic.  Israel is a very young country — only 63 years old — and is an economic miracle. The Technion played a big role in this. Not only in building buildings but in establishing the whole area of technology and also in the defense of our country. Technion graduates develop the cutting-edge technologies at the Israel Aircraft Industries and Rafael, Israel’s Armament Authority.
In addition the Technion has undertaken a new program to educate the ultraorthodox community. This is a great way to integrate this segment of the population so that they may contribute to the economy in a meaningful way.
Q. How can people become part of Israel’s great success in high-technology?
A. They should come to Israel, be involved, be part of what is happening or support it. Organizations that assist Israeli institutions help maintain its status. We need the brightest scientists and innovators but we also need to find a way to fund them. Those who contribute to these efforts are true partners. They should not view their support as a “donation” but rather as a way to express their deep understanding of what is important for our country, and where it needs investment. The people who help the Technion are in effect policy makers in science and technology — and that is the future.

Nobel Prize lecture in Chemistry, Stockholm.

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The Nobel Lecture in Chemistry, Stockholm University, December 8, 2011
Courtesy of the American Technion Society

At the official Nobel lecture, Professor Dan Shechtman spoke about his groundbreaking discovery of quasicrystals in 1982.  He first explained periodicity and four-fold symmetry and that it looks the same, even if it is rotated. From 1912-1982 all crystals were considered to be ordered and periodic. No one expected something new to be discovered.

Using electron diffraction patterns, Prof. Shechtman was able to observe five-fold symmetry.  On the screen he shared a page from his original laboratory log book dated April 8, 1982 that listed the experiments that he performed and his observations on that day. Several years later he was joined by Ilan Blech and other scientists and together their work, initially rejected, was published and finally accepted in the scientific community.

Professor Shechtman asked why this discovery did not happen before 1982 as some 100,000 crystals were studied for a period of 70 years.  He said that quasicrystals are abundant, not rare. Aluminum alone has hundreds. They are stable and very easy and inexpensive to make.

He shared the five factors that helped lead to the discovery and acceptance:

1. TEM – Transition Electron Microscope. The discovery could not be made with x-rays and required this powerful tool that enabled scientists to see things at the atomic level.

2. Professionalism

3. Tenacity

4. Belief in self as a scientist

5.Courage