The Technion’s story has been intertwined with Israel’s for more than a century, from laying the foundations for a new nation to shaping its future.
Frankly, I think 100 years is too far to look into the future because we will see dramatic new scientific areas emerge 20 years from now. My grandfather immigrated to Israel in 1946 from Holland to be a Technion student in civil engineering. At that time, civil engineering and mechanical engineering were the most prestigious […]
The world of dairy farming has come a long way since Anna Baldwen from New Jersey patented her “Hygienic Glove Milker” in 1879. The cows hated it and would often kick over the milk bucket. But her rudimentary handheld mechanized pump heralded a new era in technology. Farmers today are braced for another revolution. Large herds of cows are, for the first time, being milked by robots, thanks to Afimilk, based at Kibbutz Afikim, northern Israel. In 1979, Afimilk launched the world’s first “milk meter” – which measures the yield of each individual cow, senses when the milking is over,…
The time is 4 a.m. The night watchman at the commercial center in Herzliya, which is half abandoned even in the middle of the day, is surprised to see the unusual gathering: a large group of children and their parents are excitedly lining up to enter the building. The location may be drab, opposite a beauty parlor, and a floor above a spy products shop, but what is taking place between the walls of the building is nothing short of revolutionary. It is here that the scientists of SpacePharma developed the new global technological frontline in medical experimentation—an innocent-looking box…
Israeli space company SpaceIL signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to cooperate on a joint mission to the moon in 2024, according to the Technion UK. The mission, called Beresheet 2 in a reference to the Book of Genesis, is one of many new collaborations between the two countries following the signing of the Abraham Accords normalization agreement. It follows the original Beresheet spacecraft launch in 2019, which failed when the craft crash-landed. SpaceIL called the Beresheet 2 mission “the first scientific-technological project to create a common history for the two peoples: the flags of Israel and the…
The first test flight of Blue Origin’s huge New Glenn rocket could have major implications for long-term economics of the space industry, say experts. The launch marked a major milestone for Blue Origin, which was started by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos in 2000. While the company’s New Shepard spacecraft has made multiple launches, sending space tourists to the edge of space, New Glenn takes Blue Origin into the new territory of orbital space missions. Taller than the Statue of Liberty at more than 320 feet tall, New Glenn is one of the largest space vehicles ever built. By comparison, NASA’s…
In this episode of the Technion Alumni Go Global podcast, Technion alum Hava Siegelmann – Provost and Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst – talks about things like so-called ‘catastrophic forgetting’ in very smart machines, how robots can help rehabilitate injured soldiers, and even a little bit about baseball. Professor Siegelmann also tells us […]
Last year was a big one for the space sector, marked by SpaceX’s building momentum, Boeing Co.’s Starliner struggles, and a slew of activity from a host of names. So what can we expect in 2025? Ehud Behar, a physics professor at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, said he was not surprised by the success of the likes of AST SpaceMobile Inc. The space-based broadband company launched its first five commercial satellites into space last year and also announced launch-services agreements to provide space-based cellular broadband service coverage for key markets such as the U.S., Europe, Japan, and…
SpaceX’s Starship megarocket may come into its own in 2025. The 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket system ever built, and it’s designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX believes this combination of brawn and efficiency is the key breakthrough that will allow humanity to achieve a variety of spaceflight feats — including the settlement of Mars, a long-held dream of company founder and CEO Elon Musk. That vision may become clearer over the next 12 months or so, for Starship appears poised to make a big leap in 2025. Starship has launched six…
Even matter ejected by black holes can run into objects in the dark. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found an unusual mark from a giant black hole’s powerful jet striking an unidentified object in its path. The discovery was made in a galaxy called Centaurus A (Cen A), located about 12 million light-years from Earth. Astronomers have long studied Cen A because it has a supermassive black hole in its center sending out spectacular jets that stretch out across the entire galaxy. The black hole launches this jet of high-energy particles not from inside the black hole, but…
Following the events of October 7, Technion students have designed a pilot bus stop to address safety concerns. The stop acts as a shield for passengers from shrapnel and blasts and includes personal safety features such as phone charging, WiFi, and a system alerting bus drivers to waiting passengers. It was designed in three sizes […]
Technion researchers have developed a software package that enables computers to perform processing operations directly in memory, bypassing the CPU. This is a significant step toward developing computers that perform calculations in memory, avoiding time-consuming and energy-intensive data transfers between hardware components. A new and exciting field has emerged in the hardware domain in recent years: in-memory computing. The in-memory computing approach introduces a significant change from the way computers typically operate. While traditionally the CPU runs calculations based on information stored in the computer’s memory, with this innovative approach, some operations are performed directly within the memory, reducing data…
An experimental setup built at the Technion Faculty of Physics demonstrates the transfer of atoms from one place to another through quantum tunneling between optical tweezers. Led by Prof. Yoav Sagi and doctoral student Yanay Florshaim from the Solid State Institute, the research was published in Science Advances. The experiment is based on optical tweezers—an experimental tool for capturing atoms, molecules, and even living cells using an optical potential created by laser beams focused on a micron-sized spot. How is this possible? The interaction of light with matter generates a force proportional to the intensity of the light. This force…