Professor Eyal Zussman made media headlines recently as the inventor of the “Maya” sticker, one of the Technion’s earliest and most successful developments in the fight against COVID-19. The unique sticker consists of nanofibers coated with antiseptics to trap and kill the coronavirus on the spot. The sticker, made by a 3D printer, was adopted by the COVID-19 National Emergency Team of Israel’s Defense Ministry, developed in conjunction with the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, and is currently in production at the Dykam paper plant on Kibbutz Ein Harod. As of mid-August, Dykam was manufacturing 5,000 stickers per day and had plans to increase production to one million per month. Maya is not yet available in the U.S.

Prof. Zussman earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering at the Technion in 1986, 1988, and 1992, respectively. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Technical University in Berlin, before joining the Technion as a lecturer in 1994. He was promoted through the university’s academic ranks, becoming a full professor in 2012.

He and his team in the Manufacturing Systems Lab conduct research in the fabrication of nanostructures. Their current activities range from the electrospinning of functionalized nanostructures to the study of nanofluids. He holds patents in those areas and serves on the scientific advisory board of Nurami, an Israel-based medical nanofiber technology company.

Prof. Zussman has received numerous awards including the Hershel Rich Technion Innovation Award; a Technion Anti-terror Award for Future Defense Technologies; the Minerva Scholarship for post-doctoral studies, and more.