This was our Faculty’s year

New year, new Dean

We started off the year with a new Dean: Prof. Ze’ev Zalevsky, who had previously headed the electro-optics track, replaces Prof. Ephraim Zehavi as Dean of the Faculty in 2019. Last year, Ynet published an article on Prof. Zalevsky, dubbing him “Prof. Patent” because of the many patents registered under his name – 80 at the time of the article (a number that has already risen to nearly 100), with dozens more pending. Among his inventions: revolutionary eye drops containing vision-improving nano-particles, named one of the ten revolutionary inventions of the year.

Over the past year, Prof. Zalevsky won the IEEE Fellow Award and given the rank of fellow, in recognition of scientific excellence, in the world’s largest engineering organization numbering tens of thousands of members. Prof. Zalevsky was awarded for his research in super-resolution. More on him can be found here and here. Watch the interview here.

Tracks and programs

Let’s start from the top: over the past year, we have worked ceaselessly on the new Industrial Engineering and Information Systems program, destined to start in the upcoming academic year, subject to the approval of the CHE. The program will be headed by Dr. Izack Cohen who specializes in complex process analysis. We created this attractive program to integrate deep mathematical and computing training with understanding in economics and how people act and make decisions, as well as advanced technologies, to train students to design, analyze, optimize and manage systems, organizations, and processes that involve people, information, sensors, resources, and materials,” says Dr. Cohen. Read more about the new program here.

Until the program is approved, another new program will be launched this year: an expanded computer engineering which incorporates all of the courses from the computer engineering track, plus two courses relevant for industrial engineering and information systems: introduction to industrial engineering and information systems, and basic concepts in economics. The program is open to new students who are interested in studying industrial engineering and information systems and will allow them to start the school year and join the program once it is approved.

In addition, two new tracks will be offered during the upcoming academic year:

• The quantum engineering track: The first of its kind in Israel, this new track is the answer to the increasing demand in both industry and academia, at the dawn of the Second Quantum Revolution. The curriculum is grounded in the current curriculum of the bachelor’s program in electrical engineering and physics. The first two years in both tracks are identical, while the quantum focus starts in the third year. The courses are offered in collaboration with the physics department and include quantum machine learning, quantum measurement, quantum optics, and more. The track will be headed by Dr. Eli Cohen. For more information and registration, click here.
   
• The neuroengineering track: The new track prepares for a future technology that enables greater convergence of humans and computers; its focus is the interface of engineering and neuroscience. The curriculum is grounded in the curriculum of the electrical engineering program. The first two years in both tracks are identical, while the neuroengineering focus starts in the third year, with eight specially designed courses, including neuron network modeling, neurotechnology, brain imaging, neurogenomics, and more. Introductory courses in neuroscience will be offered by the Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center. The track is headed by Dr. Alon Want to know more? Click here

What else?

This was the second year of the Faculty of Engineering’s honors program, 700 Points Club. The program, a joint initiative of the Faculty of Engineering and the high tech company KLA-Tencor, accepts students with a psychometric score of 700 or over. Members enjoy benefits and rewards such as scholarships, practical field experience with actual engineers, and academic guidance. You can read more about it here. Next year, the program will be getting an overhaul and will be headed by Prof. Alex Fish.

In November, the Faculty launched the Odyssey Program in collaboration with the Future Scientists Program and the Department of Talented and Gifted Students at the Ministry of Education. Odyssey is a four-year program for students in grades 9-12 and focuses on quantum engineering. The program includes pre-academic and academic courses in physics and engineering, with emphasis on quantum technologies, as well as expansion courses on entrepreneurship, creative thinking, ethical dilemmas in science and modern scientific work. Participants can accumulate up to 37.5 academic credits in physics and engineering. The program will begin this year – we will keep you updated!

In January, we launched the musenics music club, a collaboration between EnICS impact center and the Department of Music. The club intends to study how music influences creativity in solving engineering problems. Engineering students will study music theory and learn to play the instrument of their choice with the help of students from the Department of Music (some of the participants of the music/engineering track).

Conferences and events

This past year, the Faculty hosted several unique events, conferences, and conventions. Most preceded the COVID-era.

In September we held a 3-day conference on innovative cardial sensory examinations for troponins and other bio-markers. It was presided by Dr. Amos Danieli and attended by dozens of laboratory heads, cardiologists, internists, clinical chemists, and biomedical engineers. The conference was hosted by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, and sponsored by leading companies in the industry. You can read more about it here.

In early November, the Faculty held a technology innovation forum hosted by TSMC, the world’s largest chip manufacturer, and EnICS labs. “Because of the connection and location of the lab at the heart of Israeli innovation in the field of chips, they proposed to hold an Open Innovation Platform,” said Prof. Alex Fish in an interview to CHIPORTAL. It was an experiment – to the best of my knowledge, no other event like that had ever taken place. At the end of the day, it was such a success that the president of TSMC Europe, Maria Marced, spoke right here on stage at our humble Faculty and said that she would like to hold this an event every year,” Click here for the full interview. You can find photos from the event here.

One day later, the Faculty held the GSA entrepreneurship conference, bringing together executives from private companies, financial and strategic investors, and partners from the semiconductor industry from all over the world. Participants attended discussions on innovative companies and collaboration opportunities in and outside Israel. Panels discussed entrepreneurship from three different perspectives: startups, strategic investors, and VC funds. Chip manufacturer Marvell Israel sponsored the conference, and you can find the photo gallery right here.

On December 10^th the faculty held the HiPer (High-Performance System-on-Chip) Consortium. The consortium operated for 6 years as a magnet project of the Innovation Authority, bringing together leading companies in the chip industry and researchers in the field of integrated circuits, in an attempt to develop methods for designing high-performance systems-on-chip. The consortium has made significant achievements over the years, namely the SOC lab at Bar Ilan which produced two complex testing chips. Establishing the lab and providing system-on-chip capabilities to a central entity at the consortium allowed the application of all members’ research efforts into demonstration chips which were sent for advanced-process manufacturing, and are now operating at the Bar Ilan lab. At the final day of the consortium, all of HiPer’s achievements were presented, including a first-time demonstration of the second chip designed by the consortium, created using 16-nanometer technology and combining many groundbreaking technological demonstrations.

Between December 16 and 18, the Faculty held the international QUEST 2 conference on quantum science and technology. The conference, organized in part by our very own Dr. Eli Cohen, was attended by renowned researchers from Israel and abroad. Among the topics covered: quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum optics, entanglement, nonlocality, and light-matter interactions. “There was much interest in the conference, in and outside the university. We’re looking forward to expanding our activity in all of these fields and hold the third QUEST conference,” says Dr. Cohen.

A hackathon on the subject of RISC-V, an open-source computer architecture, was held at the Faculty in late December, sponsored by international companies Western Digital and Mellanox. In preparation for the hackathon, members of the EnICS lab at the Faculty of Engineering gave public lectures on the RISC-V architecture and the PulpEnIX platform developed at the lab, which was one of the programing platforms used at the hackathon. In fact, over 50% of the hackathon participants chose to use it. After two intensive days, the winning team was declared: a team that used Bar Ilan’s platform under the supervision of Yehuda Kra, an EnICS architect. In the prestigious third place came a team comprised entirely of BSc students at our faculty, who also used the PulpEnIX platform. We’re proud of you!

We then had to go on an extended COVID-break, and all of the events and conferences were canceled. But we still managed to hold one event: another hackathon held in June, the final project of the principles of digital system planning course, supervised by Dr. Adam Teman. Read more about it here.

Want to read more? The other sections of our end-of-the-year special can be found right here:

This was our staff’s year

This was our students' year