I recently returned to my institution, the University of Maryland, from a month-long stint as a Visiting Scientist in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion.  My office at the Technion was in the Rabin Civil Engineering building, a building with a presence that signifies the central role of civil engineering to the construction of Israel’s civil society. Working from my new office, I had the opportunity to interact with faculty and students, establish new research collaborations and develop lasting friendships.

Technion Professor Eyal Levenberg and Elise Miller-Hooks (UMD) with families have dinner in Haifa.

Of course, the Technion’s reputation as Israel’s premier engineering institution of higher education was important to my decision to make the Technion my home base during my sabbatical. My decision to visit there, however, was also personal. I have family on a kibbutz, Ramot Menashe, just outside of Haifa. With great regret, I hadn’t seen them for nearly a quarter of a century. I knew that the Technion would provide not only an intellectual home, but an opportunity to reunite with my family.

Much of my research is in disaster preparedness and response. The Technion has several important ongoing efforts in this area. Of particular interest to me is a recently established Interdisciplinary Research Center for Extreme Loads and Catastrophic Events directed by Professor David Yankelevsky, Head of the Technion’s National Building Research Institute (NBRI). I met with Professor Yankelevsky to learn more about the Center and worked with Professor Shlomo Bekhor, Head of the Transportation Research Institute, and a graduate student , to develop mathematical models for the optimal location of emergency resources for wildfire response– a collaboration that we hope to last beyond my visit. My host, Yoram Shiftan, his graduate students, and I discussed our research and considered possible ways we might work together in the future.

As a faculty member in engineering, I work extensively with foreign students. I’ve long thought about what it must be like for them to arrive in the U.S. with only book knowledge of the language, having to build a new life and adapt to a new culture. My time in Israel gave me that important experience. I rented an apartment in the Carmel Center, a car from Tel Aviv and a cell phone from Brooklyn. I was a stranger in my new, albeit temporary, home. In search of food to fill my fridge before the first Sabbath of my visit arrived, I passed right by the supermarket a block from my apartment thinking it was an industrial building, and stood in the aisles  of a market 1 km further trying to decipher what was in the containers. On numerous occasions, I repeatedly circled the city in my car in search of my destination, dodging motorcycles and scooters willing to squeeze between the tightest of spaces, and enduring the impatient honking of following cars at intersections even before the light turned green. I felt like a foreigner.  Like my students who come from India, China, Taiwan, Iran, Nigeria, Turkey, Thailand, Korea and other parts of the world, I was in a foreign land. Unlike my students, however, this foreign land was somehow also my home.

When my year-long sabbatical ends this summer, I am certain to look back on my month at the Technion as the main highlight.

Elise Miller-Hooks is Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland.

Men in white ties and tails, and women in stunning ball gowns made up the capacity crowd. Professor Ziporah Shechtman (Dan’s wife) and the Shechtman children were seated in the second row from the stage, while the extended family was seated in the fourth row.

The evening began with the Swedish Royal Anthem, followed by an address from Dr. Marcus Storch, Chairman of the Board of the Nobel Foundation. After welcoming the laureates and guests, Dr. Storch offered five factors that promote creativity based on a study of the life of Alfred Nobel. These include a home environment conducive to study; good schooling; living in a cosmopolitan environment where opportunities for learning are abundant; exposure to leading researchers who are on the frontiers of science; and time and patience.

The presentation of the Prizes by the King followed. Each Prize was preceded by an introduction of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences member who represented the particular discipline. Their remarks were in Swedish but a booklet was provided with translations. Professor Sven Lidin paid tribute to Prof. Shechtman and said, “Your discovery of quasicrystals had created a new cross-disciplinary branch of science, drawing from, and enriching chemistry, physics and mathematics. This is in itself of the greatest importance. It has also given us a reminder of how little we really know and perhaps even taught us some humility. That is truly a great achievement.”

Professor Shechtman then stepped forward and stood center stage with the King, who presented him with his Nobel diploma and medal as trumpets heralded him and the audience clapped enthusiastically. Prof. Shechtman then followed the tradition of bowing to the King, the Royal Academy members seated on the right hand side of the stage, and finally to

the audience. The Technion delegation, which included Technion President Peretz Lavie, beamed with pride as did people in Israel and Jews all over the world.

Between each Prize presentation, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra performed, delighting all in attendance.

The ceremony concluded with the Swedish national anthem, after which the Laureates and guests traveled to City Hall where a special banquet was held in their honor. The laureates were seated with members of the Royal Family at a table of honor in the center of the room. Click on this link to view the seating (http://www.nobelprize.org/press/nobelfoundation/press_releases/2011/table-of-honor.html). Click on the following link to see the menu for the evening

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/award_ceremonies/menus/menu-2011.html

Prof. Shechtman and the other laureates addressed the 1,300 guests in attendance. He concluded his remarks with:

“Science is the ultimate tool to reveal the laws of nature, and the one word written on its banner is TRUTH. The laws of nature are neither good nor bad. It is the way in which we apply them to our world that makes the difference.

It is therefore our duty as scientists to promote education, rational thinking and tolerance. We should also encourage our educated youth to become technological entrepreneurs. Those countries that nurture this knowhow will survive future financial and social crises. Let us advance science to create a better world for all.”

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.

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

Professor Shechtman shares a page from his logbook dated April 8, 1982.

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

At the official Nobel Prize press conference this morning at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman said that his loneliness in the academic world did not break his spirit, because he believed in his science. Prof. Shechtman’s personal journey to the Nobel Prize began in 1982 when the scientific community refused to recognize his discovery of quasicrystals. Today there are books and conferences dedicated to the study of quasicrystals, and the ultimate recognition with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

“Today a new chapter to the discovery is evolving. For example, physicists are developing optics with quasiperiodic arrays whose uses and applications are unknown at the present time,” said Prof. Shechtman.                                        Click to view slideshow.

In response to a question about the Technion’s success in producing three Nobel Prize winners in seven years, Prof. Shechtman said: “I have been associated with the Technion for half a century. First as a student and then as a faculty member. In the early days it was not easy to be admitted to the university, and even more difficult to be a student there. In my day, if you failed one course, you had to repeat the whole year. But our graduates know that they receive the best training in engineering and high-technology.”

He added that the quality of incoming faculty members at the highest level is also an important factor to consider. The Technion looks for those who have a chance to do great science — but global competition is fierce. To entice potential faculty to come to Haifa, the Technion provides top funding for state-of-the-art laboratories and equipment as well as highly trained graduate students.

His final point was that while is important to understand how Nobel Laureates are produced, it is also important to look at how a country educates its base. He admitted that the State of Israel faces challenges in how to best educate its young people, and he shared his plans to work to improve the situation and encourage greater governmental investment in education at all levels.

Forum Panelists: Prof. Anders Flodström, Former University Chancellor and Head of the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education; Keynote speaker Professor Dan Shechtman; Maud Olofsson, Former Swedish Minister for Enterprise and Energy, Advisor to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on female entrepreneurship; Prof. Karin Markides, President Chalmers University of Technology ; and in the back – Prof. Martin Schuurmans, Founding Chairman of the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) Governing Board  

The Forum for Innovation Management (FIM) hosted “Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education,” on December 6. Some 85 attendees from the Swedish academic, government and business communities listened to keynote speaker Distinguished Technion Professor Dan Shechtman, the 2011 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and expert panelists discuss the challenges facing many countries in today’s economy, as well as ways to improve performance and growth through entrepreneurship.

Matias Bonnier, Chairman of the Karl-Adam Bonnier Foundation, welcomed participants and speakers to Nedre Manilla, his ancestral home where the event was held.

In his introduction, Mikolaj Norek, FIM Director, said that like entrepreneurs, Professor Shechtman had to fight for recognition to achieve success, since the scientific community did not initially believe in his discovery.

“Entrepreneurship education is vital to the survival and growth of a country’s future, especially when natural resources are being depleted at an accelerated rate,” said Prof. Shechtman.

Even as a young academic, Prof. Shechtman foresaw the value in educating engineers in this area. For more than 25 years he has taught technological entrepreneurship at the Technion and counts some 10,000 graduates of this course. The course exposed students to both successful and non-successful entrepreneurs and provided training legal, business and marketing professionals who offered real-world advice.

“Israel is unique, as our students have completed military service where they are already exposed to some of the most sophisticated high-tech in the world. They are also older and more mature when they start their university studies,” said Prof. Shechtman.

While this may give Israel an advantage, Prof. Shechtman believes that there are similarities in small countries such as Sweden and Israel that can create the cultural environment that can ultimately foster a start-up economy.

He also said that Israel faces the challenge of many start-ups developed with an exit strategy in mind. This does not allow for the creation of larger companies that can be impactful through the production of exportable products, and, most importantly, in job creation.

The panelists echoed Prof. Shechtman’s belief that entrepreneurship should start at an early age, even at the Kindergarten level, to create a spirit of entrepreneurship. Matias Bonnier commented that younger students should be active participants in their entrepreneurial education. They should interact, talk and ask questions of their teachers. He added that entrepreneurship is a bridge between societies and nations.

They also suggested that the government take an active role in setting policies that can foster growth in this area.

Tor Bonnier, Chairman of FIM, concluded the meeting with the message that it is clear that the study of entrepreneurship is important to have in any society. “It is important to foster budding entrepreneurs based on our own culture in order to be competitive in a global economy.” he said.

The event was co-created by the Israeli Embassy in Sweden.

FORUM FOR INNOVATION MANAGEMENT (FIM) was established in 1999 as a non-profit activity within the Karl-Adam Bonnier Foundation. FIM is currently in its twelve year, having organized 60 exclusive seminars bringing together influential representatives such as policy makers and selected representatives from financial, legal and academic institutions as well as practitioners in the corporate and entrepreneurial business sectors. FIM has also published two books in the series of “Swedish Innovation Force” – which summarizes many of the topics discussed at the seminars.

Winning the Nobel Prize alone, without partners, has been a rare occurrence in recent years. At a press conference that opened the 2011 Nobel week in Stockholm, Lars Heikensten, Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation, said that there may not be many more cases like this in the future. The nature of research has changed and is now conducted collaboratively in interdisciplinary groups of scientists and through alliances between universities

All Nobel Laureates, including Professor Shechtman are already in high demand as “Nobel Week” is in full swing. The week will culminate with the awards ceremony and banquet on Saturday night, December 10.

Earlier today Prof. Shechtman signed a chair at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, a tradition that dates back to 2001 (see below for slideshow) . This evening, Prof. Shechtman was the keynote speaker at a special event hosted by the Forum for Innovation Management. He and a group of panelists discussed innovation and entrepreneurship. Check this space for more details about the event.

In more Nobel news it was announced that Claudia Steinman, widow of Professor Ralph Steinman who passed away just days before the announcement of his Nobel Prize in Medicine, will receive the award and will sit on stage together with other distinguished winners. This is the first time that this has occurred since the Prize was first established in 1901.

Starting Wednesday, December 7th, ATS Director of Communications Tova Kantrowitz will be covering the events of Nobel week from Sweden. Please check back here for updates.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               In honor of the 100 year anniversary of the laying of the Technion cornerstone, we are sharing the amazing stories of Technion innovators and leaders.

April 2012 marks 100 years since the laying of the Technion cornerstone. Caught up in Technion nostalgia, I cracked open historian Carl Alpert’s Technion: The Story of Israel’s Institute of Technology, and found an interesting reflection.

The piece was quoted by Arie Rosenfeld, a Technion alumnus who helped launch the digital printing giant Scitex, one of Israel’s first global start-ups.

Reminiscing and looking ahead simultaneously, Arie said: “when I graduated from the Technion in 1965, it didn’t have satellites, protein

Arie Rosenfeld

engineering, … supercomputer toolkits, active vision, eco-homes … membrane technology… medical imaging … cellular phones and phrases like cutting edge and state-of-the art.” The list went on for nine lines.  “But it had plenty of vision,” he added.

I tracked down the former Scitex CEO, to hear more about the days when Israel’s main export was oranges, and the Technion was still a fairly small school on top of a big hill.

“In my days at the Technion, we were using a central computer and slide rules,” says Arie. “No one had desktops or calculators. And of course there were no cell phones.” To put the era in context: Michael Dell, whose name is practically synonymous with personal computers, was born that year. The late Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc., whose birthday, oddly enough is the day after Dell’s, was just 10. And the Technion had not yet established five of its current departments, including those of Medicine and Computer Science.

A Hungarian immigrant, Arie moved to Israel when he was six. His parents, who did not speak a word of Hebrew, came with nothing – “just two kids and two suitcases,” he says. They moved to Kibbutz Kfar Szold in the Upper Galilee, but unaccustomed to communal living, soon moved to Acco, then Haifa.

After attending private high school in Haifa, Arie entered the Technion. “I don’t remember ever wanting to study anything but engineering.” The work was rigorous, the environment competitive, and most important “we were trained to take risks, to dare to think out of the box,” he says. “We came through the Six Day War, and before that we helped in building a nation. Everything was possible.”

Arie thought of studying aeronautics. But worried that his opportunities would be limited to a career in government or the Israel Air Force, he went into electrical engineering. “Now there are hundreds of companies to apply to. Then there were five or six. Most of my friends went to work for the Ministry of Defense.”

Graduating from the Technion, Arie served in the Ordnance Corps, where his main task was to update to western standards the Russian tanks that were captured from the Egyptians during the Six Day War. Finishing his service in 1968, he started looking for a job.

“I received good offers, big names,” including IBM. But he turned them down to join a four-person start-up, founded just three months earlier – Scitex. “I was already married and my family thought I was doing a stupid thing. But I liked the idea of starting something new. I was young, so if it didn’t work, I could always go back to IBM,” he says.

Arie’s first assignment at Scitex was to build a large tracking platform that would be used to mount cameras and telescopes photographing targets in the sky. “It was very challenging, very interesting.” The defense ministry gave Scitex two or three such projects, and the company gradually added engineers – most Technion grads. “This was how we got started.”

Soon however, the fledgling company realized they couldn’t depend on government work to turn a profit. “Sometimes they paid, sometimes they didn’t, and often they changed their specs midstream,” recounts Arie. Going after non-military work, they attracted jobs in imaging technologies – the first of which was designing patterns for knitting textiles. It was innovative and successful, and launched the group into printing fabric. “By the late 1970s, we moved into printing paper, and this is how Scitex became famous,” he says.

Producing products, systems and equipment for the graphics design, printing and publishing markets – which can all be done today on one’s desktop – Scitex is often hailed as Israel’s first high-tech company. “Every Jewish mother wanted her kids to work for Scitex,” Arie recalls.

At its peak, in early 1992, the company was worth close to $2 billion and so influential that following an announcement of weak earnings, Israel’s stock market dropped about 10 percent. “President Ezer Weizmann, called me up and said ‘do something about the market,’” Arie remembers. “What can I do? Scitex isn’t even traded in Israel, but on NASDAQ,” Arie told him. But Weizmann shot back, “it doesn’t matter. Just do something.’”

Arie went on to head up Scitex’s activities in Europe, and later in 1988, worldwide, and left the company in 1995. Since then, he has invested in start-ups and assisted half-a-dozen companies, taking them over at an early stage and turning them into viable businesses. He also mentors Technion graduates who are launching tech start-ups. Scitex has been sold in parts to Eastman Kodak and Hewlett-Packard.

He and his wife split their time between Brussels and Israel, where they have a son and grandson. Uniquely poised to compare entrepreneurship in Europe vs. Israel, he says: “Europeans are not trained to take risks. If they start a company and they fail, they can never start another one. In Israel, you can start, you can fail, you start again and nobody holds it against you. This is the mentality. And it is very good.”

– Jennifer Frey, American Technion Society

We recently caught up with Professor Andrew J. Levy, who was named TeAMS Program Leader earlier this year, for a Q&A session to find out more about the TeAMS program.

Can you briefly describe the TeAMS program? How does it differ and what are the advantages as compared to other American Medical Schools in Israel?

Dr. Andrew Levy

The TeAMS program provides a four-year medical degree program at the Technion Faculty of Medicine.  The program accepts approximately 25-30 students from the United States and Canada each year.

One of the main advantages of the TeAMS program is its small class size, which provides more personal attention to each student and allows greater participation in class. This more intimate setting has also let us set up a system whereby each student has a one-on-one interaction with a specific faculty member for all four years of their tenure here. The faculty member serves as a student advisor for all academic and non-academic issues.

A second advantage of the TeAMS program concerns research. All of our students are provided the framework to carry out medical research at one of the laboratories in the Technion Faculty of Medicine. Furthermore, any student that wishes to carry out such research will get a small stipend to do this work. Typically, about one half of the students end up publishing an original paper as a result of this work. The quality of this research is generally high, as evidenced by the program’s peer-reviewed grant support, as well as publication in medical journals.

One last advantage that I would like to mention involves clinical rotations. We have recently been selected by the American Association of Medical Colleges to be one of 15 international medical schools to participate in a program involving an exchange of students between participating U.S. institutions.  This will facilitate the ability of our students to obtain clinical rotations at prestigious U.S. schools during their fourth year. We are the only Israeli medical school with this affiliation.

What are the main reasons TeAMS students choose to study at the Technion, as opposed to a school in the states? When they graduate do they have to pass the same licensing exams as their American counterparts?

About one half of our students choose to study at the Technion after having been accepted by a U.S. medical school. In some cases this is due simply to a desire to be in Israel.

Our students take the same exams needed for licensure as any student studying in the U.S. Therefore, our graduates become licensed to practice medicine in the U.S., as well as Israel.

What types of residencies can TeAMS graduates get in Israel and the U.S.? Can you please explain the matching programs and how TeAMs students fare?

TeAMS student Karyn Winkler gains valuable clinical experience while studying at the Technion

All TeAMS students are eligible for obtaining residencies in the U.S. or in Israel. The matching program in the U.S. is a system whereby a medical student selects where he or she will perform postgraduate training (residency) in the US.  There are about 30,000 spots in the U.S. at all of the different hospitals, and each year about 45,000 students apply for these positions.   The hospitals select the students based on their exam scores, clinical performance and letters of recommendation.    Our students have obtained residencies at outstanding institutions in the U.S., a trend we expect to only grow stronger.

Do TeAMS students typically stay in Israel upon graduation or do they return to the U.S.?

Each year 2-3 students decide to stay in Israel upon graduation. The rest return to the U.S.  However, one interesting fact is that many graduates who go to the U.S. for residency training return to Israel upon completion.

You are the new director of TeAMs. Can you share a bit about your own background and your vision for the future of the TeAMs program?

I was born and raised in the U.S. I attended Yale University for my undergraduate education, receiving a bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. I received my M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Johns Hopkins University. I trained in internal medicine at Hopkins and then in Cardiology at Harvard.

The Rappaport Faculty of Medicine

I made Aliyah with my wife and 5 kids in 1997. I run a basic molecular cardiology laboratory at the Technion, supported by NIH and other international granting agencies. There are about 15 students, post-docs and fellows working in my lab.  I am currently Full Professor at the Medical School, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and Director of the TeAMS program.

My vision for TeAMS is that we will help each student reach his or her maximum potential — providing a challenging yet supportive environment in which each student will receive personalized attention.  Technion graduates are innovators, and I believe they will be leaders in the next generation — armed with the skills to bring cutting-edge technology to the bedside to improve patient care and reduce health care costs.  This is no pipedream. I know our students can do this; we just need to provide them the tools.