This was our staff's year

We researched

Prof. Orit Shefi and doctoral student Neta Ziloni-Hanin of the Faculty of Engineering at Bar Ilan, along with their colleagues, developed a new technology for transporting medicine to the brain. Drugs are injected into a nanometric silicon chip, introduced via a genetic gun, and release an essential protein that may block the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Their research was published in the September issue of Small and featured on its back cover. Continue reading here. Ziloni-Hanin was interviewed on the subject on the channel 13 morning show – click here to watch.

In a January installment of Ha’aretz, Dr. Eli Cohen, head of the Faculty’s quantum engineering program, published an article of the second quantum revolution. This revolution includes government funding of over 1B ILS in developing control of quantum optics – technology which includes precision sensors, ultra-sensitive measurements, fast computing, and simulations – and has a far-reaching impact on communication, inscription, and sensing. Read the full article here.

By February it was clear: COVID is here to stay. The Faculty’s resources were allocated accordingly: Dr. Amos Danieli began working on reducing COVID-19 testing times. The technology uses magnetic particles and has been previously demonstrated on other viruses such as Zika, and had been in a clinical trial at Tel Hashomer hospital even before the COVID outbreak. As the pandemic grew and before Israel went into quarantine, Dr. Danieli began adjusting it to the Coronavirus. He was interviewed by the Jerusalem Post and Ynet, and mentioned on the Brazilian network Record TV (in Portuguese).

Dean of the Faculty, Prof. Ze’ev Zalevsky, was also working on adjusting his technology – based on remote biomedical sensing – to identify the virus. The technology can quickly diagnose those who have already presented with symptoms such as lung murmurs, fever, or low oxygen saturation levels. Operated remotely, the technology is particularly suitable for cases such as COVID, where contact means a high risk of infection. A piece on Zalevsky and his associate, Prof. Havier Garcia from the University of Valencia in Spain, was featured in the country’s second-largest radio station, Ondacero (in Spanish).

Prof. Gur Yaari, on the other hand, is also dedicating his time to developing a passive vaccine. He is trying to detect antibodies by sequencing their repertoire in people who have recovered from the virus: collecting blood samples, finding a common factor, and creating a new antibody that can be used as passive immunization.

Prof. Dror Fixler is working on a solution that would prevent contagion through tainted surfaces: redesigning public surfaces on airplanes and manufacturing them out of nano-engineered materials with antibacterial qualities, drastically reducing their potential to transmit the virus. An article about his research was published in Yediot Aharonot’s Wellness section, and you can read it here.

The Faculty has recently lent Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem the complete Fluidigm BioMark system for COVID-19 testing. The system belongs to the genomics lab and can perform thousands of PRC reactions per day, for instance in profiling kidney tumors in kids – research conducted in collaboration with Sheba medical center. “We believe in collaboration as a way of life, and are happy to have been able to lend our advanced system, which is usually used for cancer research, to help with the COVID-19 crisis,” say, principal researcher, Dr. Tomer Kalisky, and lab manager, Dr. Yishay Yehuda.

All that aside, during the pandemic, Bar-Ilan University launched a Science on the Bar channel with fascinating academic lectures. Our faculty joined the effort, and you can watch all of the lectures at your convenience, quarantined or not, right here.

We started

Several new members have joined the Faculty this past year, two of them from the new industrial engineering and information systems program. The program is headed by Dr. Izack Cohen, who joined our faculty after accumulating three degrees – BSc in Chemical Engineering, MSc in Material Science, and a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion – and acting in numerous technical roles in the military. He continued his academic path during upon leaving service and also worked in project management. He specializes in complex process analysis and claims that creating the new program is a project in itself. For more information on Dr. Cohen and his research fields, click here.

Another new member is Dr. Gonen Singer, formerly Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Afeka College. He joined the Faculty of Engineering at Bar Ilan in March. His work combines machine learning models and operations, research models. He is also the founder of CB4, a company focused on patents in the field of pattern recognition, with 70 employees in three locations worldwide (Herzliya, London, and New York). In addition to the new program, Singer and Cohen joined forces to establish a process-mining and modeling lab where they incorporate mathematical models in performance analysis with machine learning algorithms for the purpose of analyzing complex processes. For more information on Dr. Singer and his research fields, click here.

The computer engineering program had a new addition in Dr. Adi Makmal, a theoretician specializing in quantum computing who is working on channeling the capabilities of quantum computers toward problems in machine learning. Makmal earned her PhD at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) and the department of theoretical physics at Innsbruck University in Austria. Her research covers everything to do with machine learning, on the one hand, quantum mechanics on the other, and the integration of both – for instance, deep quantum learning, or quantum reinforcement. For more information on Dr. Makmal and her research fields, click here.

The computer engineering program and the university’s cyber center gained a new theoretician: Dr. Or Sheffet, who specializes in differential privacy, a course which he also taught this past year. – has joined the faculty after attaining his BSc from the Hebrew University, an MSc from Weizmann Institute, a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, postdoctoral fellowships in Berkeley and in Harvard, and a faculty position at the University of Alberta in Canada. He was always involved in algorithm design, with a recent emphasis on algorithms that learn how to analyze data while protecting privacy. For more information on Dr. Sheffet and his research fields, click here.

Another new member of the computer engineering program, exploring the applied side of things, is Dr. Itamar Levi. His electronic chip, developed using advanced Onion technology, executes many cryptographic algorithms and provides a known and well-analyzed level of defense at a much lower cost in terms of area, energy consumption, and performance – than anything currently offered on the market. Levi earned his PhD right here in our Faculty, before heading out to do his postdoctoral research at UCLouvain in Belgium. He specializes in data leakage solutions for electronic components from hardware to software. For more information on Dr. Levi and his research fields, click here.

In October, Dr. Shahar Alon joined the electrical engineering program’s bioengineering track. Before joining the faculty, Dr. Alon spent five years at the MIT neuroengineering lab, where he developed a new technology for measuring RNA within the tissue with nanometric precision, without having to extract them. This technology is significant for two fields of research: brain tissue and cancer. Dr. Alon will be heading the neuroengineering track that will open in the upcoming academic year and focus on the interface between engineering and neuroscience. For more information on Dr. Alon and his research fields, click here.

The data science program welcomed Dr. Ethan Fetaya who specializes in remote learning, particularly computer vision. Dr. Fetaya has joined the faculty after completing his BSc and MSc in mathematics, a PhD in from Weizmann Institute, and a post-doctorate from the University of Toronto in Canada. He also worked at General Motors’ autonomous driving department. Since joining the faculty, Dr. Fetaya taught an advanced course on degenerative models and established a computer learning research group. For more information on Dr. Alon and his research fields, click here.

Three new faculty members will be joining us in the upcoming academic year: Dr. Mor Weiss at the computer engineering program; Dr. Ilan Reuven Cohen at the industrial engineering and information systems program; and Dr. Boris Desiatov at the quantum engineering program. Welcome aboard, and good luck!

And lastly, a different kind of start: Last month, Prof. Avi Tzadok was appointed member of a special committee by the National Academy of Sciences, assembled to assess the role of the academic system in supporting decision-making systems in Israel, and expressions at times of a national crisis.

We won

In March, Dr. Adam Teman won the Wolf Foundation for Excellence in Scientific Research’s prestigious Krill Prize, awarded annually to 10 untenured and senior lecturers across Israel based on general academic achievements. One of Teman’s achievements and reasons for winning the prize is his creation of the world’s smallest embedded memory, demonstrated in 16-nanometer technology. In addition, Dr. Teman was awarded the 2019-2020 Rector’s Award for scientific innovation for his achievements in 2018-2019, as well as the title of excelling researcher for 2018-2019. Read more about Dr. Teman here.

Ari Ashkenazy was declared an excelling professor at Bar Ilan University. Ashkenazi has a BSc in electrical engineering, majoring in electro-optics, and an MSc supervised by Prof. Doron Fixler. He teaches BSc students (physics 1, applied quantum mechanics, electromagnetic fields, random signals, and noise) and advanced degrees (quantum computing). Read more about him here.

Prof. Gur Yaari was selected to receive a research grant by the National Science Foundation, as part of the first graduating class of the KillCorona program. Grants totaling 9M ILS are divided between groups of 25 researchers, among whom are Prof. Yaari and his colleague, Prof. Tamir Tuller, who are working on developing a passive vaccine for COVID-19, including future strains and pandemics. Read more about it here.

Dr. Eli Cohen won a scholarship for new faculty members in the fields of science and technology at Bar Ilan. In addition, he was awarded a one-time research grant.

In July, Dr. Ethan Fetaya learned that he won the best article at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) conference - one of two winners out of a pool of 5,000 articles. Read more about it here.

And last but not least, our dean, Prof. Ze’ev Zalevsky, was awarded the Fellow Award by the IEEE, the world’s largest professional engineering organization. Only 0.1% of the organization’s members receive this rank, which was given to Prof. Zalevsky for his research in the field of super-resolution. He was also awarded the Distinguished Lecturer Award by the same organization.

Didn’t we say we have the best faculty staff in Israel?

Read the other sections of our end-of-the-year special right here:

This was our Faculty’s year

This was our students' year