PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2015
| “My mission in life is to provide others with the tools to realize their dreams and goals.” Shalom (Stanley) Zielony ז”ל |
Tag Archives: Technion
Technion mourns the passing of Shalom Zielony.
| “My mission in life is to provide others with the tools to realize their dreams and goals.” Shalom (Stanley) Zielony ז”ל |
Technology Transfer All the Way.
The company Mazor Robotics won FDA approval to apply its robotic surgical system to neurosurgery in July 2012. In the same month, the flagship company Corindus won FDA approval for its CorPath 200 System to be used in performing percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI). The technology is now approved in the United States to assist interventional cardiologists in performing PCI, a procedure to restore blood flow to blocked arteries in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).Recent global headlines have evidenced the ongoing miracle of Israel’s ability to translate new discoveries into patented innovations that become applicable on world markets. In the past two months, two flagship companies created through the dynamic activities of the T3 – the Technion office of Technology Transfer, passed the key milestone and significant hurdle in the process of effective technology transfer, with the reception of approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The mission of T3 – the technology transfer arm of the Technion, is to transform scientific discoveries and innovative technologies into real-life, applied solutions for the advancement of humanity, the State of Israel, and the Technion. By creating optimal alliances between scientists, industry and investors, T3 facilitates the smooth transfer of technologies to the commercial sector. This is accomplished through the licensing of intellectual property and the establishment of start-up companies. Occasionally, T3 also plays an active role as an entrepreneur by building teams, preparing business plans and providing the capital necessary to bring the technologies developed by Technion researchers to maturity.
The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is Israel’s first university and home to three Nobel Laureates. The Technion is credited worldwide for its ability to generate start-ups, its remarkable ability to innovate and its powerful connections to industry. Known as “Israel’s MIT,” the Technion has made a significant impact across the range of applied science and technology including electronics, information technology, water management, nanotechnology, life sciences & chemistry, clean-tech, materials engineering and aerospace engineering.
During the past years, T3 has enjoyed a robust and marked increase both in the number of patent families originating from Technion research as well as in the number of commercialization successes. With 80-100 new patent filings every year, over 400 granted patents and over 900 pending patents, Technion now has approximately 400 patent families available for commercialization.
Technion Supercomputing & the Octopus
An SGI computer which has been nicknamed the ‘Octopus’ and which is currently the largest civil server cluster in Israel has been installed at the Technion computer labs.
The computer will mainly serve researchers at the Minerva Center for Cognitive Processes and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) but researchers from a variety of fields that demand high performance computing will also have access.
Technion Supercomputing & the Octopus
An SGI computer which has been nicknamed the ‘Octopus’ and which is currently the largest civil server cluster in Israel has been installed at the Technion computer labs.
The computer will mainly serve researchers at the Minerva Center for Cognitive Processes and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) but researchers from a variety of fields that demand high performance computing will also have access.
New Life – The Healing Promise of Stem Cells
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| Diseases and conditions where stem cell treatment is promising or emerging. Source: Wikipedia |
Since the late 1990s, the Technion has been at the forefront of stem-cell research. Stem cells are the master keys because they can be converted into many different kinds of cells, opening many different doors to potential cures and treatments. Beating heart tissue is one of the major stem cell achievements from the Technion.
Healing the Heart
Technion scientists showed this year that they can turn skin tissue from heart attack patients into fresh, beating heart cells in a first step towards a new therapy for the condition. The procedure may eventually help scores of people who survive heart attacks but are severely debilitated by damage to the organ.
By creating new heart cells from a patient’s own tissues, doctors avoid the risk of the cells being rejected by the immune system once they are transplanted.Though the cells were not considered safe enough to put back into patients, they appeared healthy in the laboratory and beat in time with other cells in animal models.
“We have shown that it’s possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young – the equivalent to the stage his heart cells were in when he was just born,” Prof. Lior Gepstein told the British national paper The Guardian.
Pancreatic Tissue for Diabetes
Prof. Shulamit Levenberg of the Technion, who has spent many years trying to create replacement human organs by building them up on a “scaffold,” has created tissue from the insulin-producing islets of Langerhans in the pancreas surrounded by a three-dimensional network of blood vessels.The tissue she and her team created has significant advantages over traditional transplant material that has been harvested from healthy pancreatic tissue.
“We have shown that the three-dimensional environment and the engineered blood vessels support the islets – and this support is important for the survival of the islets and for their insulin secretion activity”, says Prof. Levenberg of the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
In the Bones
In collaboration with industry and global research partners, Technion scientists have grown human bone from stem cells in a laboratory. The development opens the way for patients to have broken bones repaired or even replaced with entire new ones grown outside the body from a patient’s own cells. The researchers started with stem cells taken from fat tissue. It took around a month to grow them into sections of fully-formed living human bone up to a couple of inches long. The success was reported by the UK national paper The Telegraph.
Stem Cell Proliferation
““These are our next generation of scientists and Nobel Laureates,” says Prof. Dror Seliktar, of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “The future of the Technion relies on that.”
Seliktar and his research team at the Lokey Center for Biomaterials and Tissue Regeneration at Technion is working on a new material for the mass production of stem cells to make their commercial use viable on an industrial scale.
“In the biotechnology industries, there is an inherent need for expanding populations of stem cells for therapeutic purposes,” says Seliktar, who has published over 50 papers in the field, won over 14 awards and launched one of Israel’s promising biotech startups, Regentis Biomaterials.
Prof. Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor of the Faculty of Medicine was on the international team that in 1998 first discovered the potential of stem cells to form any kind of tissue and pioneered stem-cell technology. The breakthrough garnered headlines around the world. He is the Director of the Technion Stem Cell Center.
New Life – The Healing Promise of Stem Cells
|
| Diseases and conditions where stem cell treatment is promising or emerging. Source: Wikipedia |
Since the late 1990s, the Technion has been at the forefront of stem-cell research. Stem cells are the master keys because they can be converted into many different kinds of cells, opening many different doors to potential cures and treatments. Beating heart tissue is one of the major stem cell achievements from the Technion.
Healing the Heart
Technion scientists showed this year that they can turn skin tissue from heart attack patients into fresh, beating heart cells in a first step towards a new therapy for the condition. The procedure may eventually help scores of people who survive heart attacks but are severely debilitated by damage to the organ.
By creating new heart cells from a patient’s own tissues, doctors avoid the risk of the cells being rejected by the immune system once they are transplanted.Though the cells were not considered safe enough to put back into patients, they appeared healthy in the laboratory and beat in time with other cells in animal models.
“We have shown that it’s possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young – the equivalent to the stage his heart cells were in when he was just born,” Prof. Lior Gepstein told the British national paper The Guardian.
Pancreatic Tissue for Diabetes
Prof. Shulamit Levenberg of the Technion, who has spent many years trying to create replacement human organs by building them up on a “scaffold,” has created tissue from the insulin-producing islets of Langerhans in the pancreas surrounded by a three-dimensional network of blood vessels.The tissue she and her team created has significant advantages over traditional transplant material that has been harvested from healthy pancreatic tissue.
“We have shown that the three-dimensional environment and the engineered blood vessels support the islets – and this support is important for the survival of the islets and for their insulin secretion activity”, says Prof. Levenberg of the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
In the Bones
In collaboration with industry and global research partners, Technion scientists have grown human bone from stem cells in a laboratory. The development opens the way for patients to have broken bones repaired or even replaced with entire new ones grown outside the body from a patient’s own cells. The researchers started with stem cells taken from fat tissue. It took around a month to grow them into sections of fully-formed living human bone up to a couple of inches long. The success was reported by the UK national paper The Telegraph.
Stem Cell Proliferation
““These are our next generation of scientists and Nobel Laureates,” says Prof. Dror Seliktar, of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “The future of the Technion relies on that.”
Seliktar and his research team at the Lokey Center for Biomaterials and Tissue Regeneration at Technion is working on a new material for the mass production of stem cells to make their commercial use viable on an industrial scale.
“In the biotechnology industries, there is an inherent need for expanding populations of stem cells for therapeutic purposes,” says Seliktar, who has published over 50 papers in the field, won over 14 awards and launched one of Israel’s promising biotech startups, Regentis Biomaterials.
Prof. Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor of the Faculty of Medicine was on the international team that in 1998 first discovered the potential of stem cells to form any kind of tissue and pioneered stem-cell technology. The breakthrough garnered headlines around the world. He is the Director of the Technion Stem Cell Center.
All eyes on CORTICA as it raises +7 million.
Cortica gets $7M to bestow computers with the power of sight.
Image: Cortica website.
Israeli startup Cortica raised $7 in a second round of funding. The investment was led by Horizons Ventures, owned by the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing. Venture capitalist Ynon Kreiz also participated in the round, as did Ynon Kreiz, the former Chairman & CEO of the Endemol Group, the world’s largest independent television production company. The company had already raised $4 million from a group of high quality angel investors. Mr. Kreiz joins Cortica as its Chairman; founder Technion graduate Igal Raichelgauz continues as CEO.
Cortica’s image recognition technology fuses neuroscience and computer science by imbuing computers the ability to comprehend visual content on the web in real-time. The core technology was developed at Technion, in Haifa, Israel, by a team of neuroscientists and digital media experts. The technology functions similarly to the human cortex and can identify patterns, and make classifications.
Cortica was conceived in 2006 with a vision to fundamentally revolutionize the way computers understand images and video. The essence of Cortica’s Image2Text™ technology lies in its ability to automatically extract the core concepts in images and video, and map these concepts to key-words and textual taxonomies.
By virtue of their ability to simulate the appearance of the physical world, pictures drive interest, sentiment and commercial intent. Cortica’s product reads and automatically associates images with relevant ads. This groundbreaking model gives publishers a completely new monetization stream and provides brands and marketers the opportunity to reach highly targeted mass audiences.
Cortica was founded by Technion researchers, Prof. Yehoshua (Josh) Zeevi (Faculty of Electrical Engineering); Karina Odinaev; and engineer Igal Raichelgauz, who assembled a multi-disciplinary team of neuroscience researchers, digital multimedia experts and veterans of Israeli military intelligence to develop and commercialize the technology. The underlying technology was derived from scientific research focused on understanding how neural networks of the human cortex perform complex computational tasks, such as identifying patterns, classifying natural signals and understanding concepts.
Cortica’s commercial team will relocate to the US and will be based in NY with an office in Silicon Valley. The first commercial applications of the technology will transform advertising, search and image analytics
The Technion has an unmatched position within (and outside) Israel in neuro-engineering, and is recognized as a leader in the application of engineering methods and principles to the study of neural systems. Indeed, in addition to Cortica, several successful companies have stemmed from the Technion’s activity in this field (e.g., “BrainsGate”, “Elminda”, “GeneGrafts”, “Neurovibes”).
All eyes on CORTICA as it raises +7 million.
Cortica gets $7M to bestow computers with the power of sight.
Image: Cortica website.
Israeli startup Cortica raised $7 in a second round of funding. The investment was led by Horizons Ventures, owned by the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing. Venture capitalist Ynon Kreiz also participated in the round, as did Ynon Kreiz, the former Chairman & CEO of the Endemol Group, the world’s largest independent television production company. The company had already raised $4 million from a group of high quality angel investors. Mr. Kreiz joins Cortica as its Chairman; founder Technion graduate Igal Raichelgauz continues as CEO.
Cortica’s image recognition technology fuses neuroscience and computer science by imbuing computers the ability to comprehend visual content on the web in real-time. The core technology was developed at Technion, in Haifa, Israel, by a team of neuroscientists and digital media experts. The technology functions similarly to the human cortex and can identify patterns, and make classifications.
Cortica was conceived in 2006 with a vision to fundamentally revolutionize the way computers understand images and video. The essence of Cortica’s Image2Text™ technology lies in its ability to automatically extract the core concepts in images and video, and map these concepts to key-words and textual taxonomies.
By virtue of their ability to simulate the appearance of the physical world, pictures drive interest, sentiment and commercial intent. Cortica’s product reads and automatically associates images with relevant ads. This groundbreaking model gives publishers a completely new monetization stream and provides brands and marketers the opportunity to reach highly targeted mass audiences.
Cortica was founded by Technion researchers, Prof. Yehoshua (Josh) Zeevi (Faculty of Electrical Engineering); Karina Odinaev; and engineer Igal Raichelgauz, who assembled a multi-disciplinary team of neuroscience researchers, digital multimedia experts and veterans of Israeli military intelligence to develop and commercialize the technology. The underlying technology was derived from scientific research focused on understanding how neural networks of the human cortex perform complex computational tasks, such as identifying patterns, classifying natural signals and understanding concepts.
Cortica’s commercial team will relocate to the US and will be based in NY with an office in Silicon Valley. The first commercial applications of the technology will transform advertising, search and image analytics
The Technion has an unmatched position within (and outside) Israel in neuro-engineering, and is recognized as a leader in the application of engineering methods and principles to the study of neural systems. Indeed, in addition to Cortica, several successful companies have stemmed from the Technion’s activity in this field (e.g., “BrainsGate”, “Elminda”, “GeneGrafts”, “Neurovibes”).
FDA Approved. Corindus – making heart surgery safer
FDA CLEARS FIRST ROBOTIC-ASSISTED SYSTEM FOR CORONARY ARTERY DISEASE STENT PROCEDURES
Corindus Vascular Robotics wins 510(k) clearance for CorPath® 200 System; Robotic-assisted percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) enhances control and protects physicians from radiation
Continue reading FDA Approved. Corindus – making heart surgery safer