News

Prof. Zeev Zalevsky of the Kofkin Faculty of Engineering, Prof. Jean Paul Lellouche, of the Department of Chemistry, and Dr. David Smadja, a research associate at BINA and Director of Research and Innovation at Shaare Zedek Medical Center developed eye-drops that have been found to repair the corneas and improve short and long sightedness. The nanoparticle solution called as “nanodrops” was successfully used on pigs’ corneas.

Congratulations to Dr. Rinat Meir, a postdoctoral researcher working under Prof. Rachela Popovtzer, who has won the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship for postdoctoral researchers for 2018/9.

Michal Marcus, a doctoral candidate at the Neuro Engineering Research lab led by Prof. Orit Shefi  has won the Rappaport Prize for Excelling Students of Biomedical Engineering. 
Michal (30), a married mother of 3, won the prestigious prize for her development of methods to lead medication directly to infected areas of the body (rather than flowing freely in the bloodstream). The project includes binding the drugs to magnetic nano carriers and using the magnets to lead the drug to the infected area.
Michal was informed of her win by Nobel Laureate Prof. Ciechanover, Aaron, who heads the Baruch and Ruth Rappopot Foundation's awards committee.

Flex Logix Technologies today announced that its embedded FPGA technology will be used by a consortium of Israeli semiconductor and systems companies including Mellanox, SatixFy, DSP Group and Autotalks under a license with Bar Ilan's SoC Lab, headed by Prof. Alex Fish (Engineering) which is part of the HiPer Consortium. The consortium will leverage Flex Logix's platform to design an architecture and technology 16nm evaluation chip and then use Bar-Ilan University's SoC Lab to prove out and implement a chip that can be used by each member company, reports Prnewswire, saying Bar-Ilan is one of the top technology Universities in Israel.

Optometric Examinations Through a Novel Application

6over6, headed by Dr. Ofer Limon - a graduate of all three Faculty of Engineering degrees - is based on a breakthrough technology which performs full optometric testing by means of a software application alone.

"We developed the technology thanks to a different kind of observation of optics and physics than what has been accepted up till now, and out of a deep understanding of optics and years of experience working alongside optometrists," he said. "Our technology enables people to perform the same optometric measurements on their mobile phones, at a time convenient to them, and without leaving their homes, and to use e-commerce platforms to purchase glasses for distance vision”

The Times of Israel reports that a team of researchers is using gold to develop cancer treatments. The team includes Prof. Rachela Popovtzer of BIU's Faculty of Engineering and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, as well as scientists from Tel Aviv University, and the Institute of Oncology, Davidoff Cancer Center at Rabin Medical Center. Their findings were first published in the journal Nanoscale in January 2016.

Congratulations to Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, Head of the Electro-Optics study program at the Faculty of Engineering and Director of the Nano Photonics Center at the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA), for being honored with the esteemed distinction of becoming a Fellow of the American National Academy on Inventors.

Prof. Rachela Popovtzer, of the Faculty of Engineering and Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA), is the recipient of the Leon and Maria Taubenblatt Prize for Excellence in Medical Research for 2017. Prof. Popovtzer earned the award for her research on Theranostic Nanoparticles for Future Personalized Medicine.

Dr. Maya Aviv, Dr. Adi Vagerhoff and Dr. Eyal Cohen, all former students (now alumni) at Prof. Zeev Zalevsky's laboratory at the Faculty of Engineering, collaborated with with two Holon Institue of Technology students, and successfully developed a method to diagnose multiple sclerosis in two to three minutes from imaging, with a certainty close to 100%. They have developed an algorithm that can scan the hundreds of images produced by MRI in two or three minutes and possibly detect cells in the nervous system that are affected. 

(Orignial article in French)

Congratulations to grad student Tal-Shahar Ben Gal and PhD candidate Mariana Biederman, of Prof. Rachela Popovotzer's lab, who each won a 2017 Ministry of Science and Technology Scholarship for the Advancement of Women in Science for Graduate Students. Tal-Shahar won a 50,000NIS scholarship for studying bifunctional gold nano-particles enhancing the immune system. Mariana won an 80,000NIS scholarship for studying nanometric barcodes identifying bio processes inside the body.

Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, Head of the Electro-Optics Program at BIU’s Faculty of Engineering, and Director of BIU’s Nanophotonics Center , has won the American Society of Lasers in Medicine and Surgery’s prestigious Young Investigator Award. Prof. Zalevsky was awarded for his involvement in the development of laser-based remote biomedical sensors. This innovative technology enables biomedical remote sensing in real time, using lasers and reflected pattern analysis.

Dr. Gur Yaari has been appointed a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities' Forum for Young Reserachers in Natural Sciences, along with three other BIU researchers. 

The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities established a Young Researchers Forum in the Natural Sciences. The Forum's objective is to bring together outstanding young researchers from academic institutions in Israel with expertise in a shared field, to engage in scientific discussions of cutting-edge research in the selected field. BIU Rector Prof. Miriam Faust congrtulated the newly appointed Forum members and predicted they will contribute greatly to the Forum's activities, and to leveraging the fields of natural sciences in Israel. 

The Faculty of Engineering's Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, who is also ContinUse Bimoterics CTO, spoke at Calcalist’s 7th digital and mobile conference in Tel Aviv. He also said the healthcare industry is struggling to keep up with patient demand. Read the full Calcalist article here. 

Ofer Schwartz, a PhD candidate in Prof. Sharon Gannot's group, has won the Best Paper Award at the 2017  WASPAA conference (IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics) held in New York earlier this month. The paper, titled "Blind Microphone Geometry Calibration Using One Reverberant Speech Event" was co written with Axel Plinge, of TU Dortmund Universit, who also presented the article during the conference. 

Dr. Koby Baranes develops stem cell research models, in hopes of discovering improved treatment methods for autism and multiple sclerosis