2017 PRESIDENT’S REPORT REPORT PRESIDENT’S TECHNION PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2017 First thing’s first… … Technion enjoys over 300 DAYS OF SUNSHINE (and 74.3% of daylight hours in Haifa are sunny) Connect to Technion presidentsreport.technion.ac.il Cover Illustration: Natalie Waksman Shenker Technion of Things ---------- Technion is all about CONNECTIVITY. No laboratory works alone, no scientist stands alone and no big idea is born alone. Connectivity is the channel for progress; expanding and enriching the future for us all. ---------- P R E S I D E N T’S RE P O R T ----------2017 ---------- The Technion of Things is a Technion of interconnected points of light. From pure science through to application, through to global impact, Technion is a luminous cluster of connections, generating the ideas, knowledge and knowhow that make our world a better place. © Annie Tritt CONNECT to TECHNION: We offer you a website dedicated to this report - complete with interviews, videos, hyperlinks and all the other great stuff the net has to offer… presidentsreport.technion.ac.il Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie Prof. Peretz Lavie, Technion President PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2017 3 From the President Welcome to the 2017 President’s Report Connectivity is the prerequisite of progress. To this end, we are working on recruiting which is offered under the theme: No scientist is an island. No researcher dozens of outstanding new faculty Technion of Things. will progress far without drawing on the members every year and expanding our vast, connected wellsprings of knowledge, academic and international research Many of you will have heard of the concurrent research and connected activities. A recent example is the Internet of Things (IoT): it’s the disciplines. Every mind needs to open to launch of a groundbreaking partnership term used to refer to systems of the known and the unknown in order for between Technion and the New York interconnected computing devices, genius to flow. This openness means that Genome Center. Through this structure mechanical and digital machines, we can both send and receive data, without we will intensify medical research, objects, animals or people that are compromising the treasure of individual advance genomics and accelerate clinical provided with unique identifiers and the perspective. It’s what makes Technion application. It is through powerful global ability to transfer data over a network part of the global whole. Whether through alliances such as these that global impact without requiring human-to-human our global partnerships from New York to flows, and the Technion of Things - the or human-to-computer interaction. China, through to a myriad of academic global network of connected expertise Today’s rule for future technology is institutions across the world, through our and resources is expanding rapidly for the that anything that can be connected, will outreach programs, through the ability to benefit of the whole. be connected. The analyst firm Gartner unite under the torch of progress, Technion says that by 2020 there will be over 26 is evolving rapidly with multidisciplinary In this report we will open some windows billion connected devices. structures that support the connectivity into the tremendously exciting ‘things’ needed to co-create our future. which are happening at Technion. These At Technion, the template for this evolution are snapshots into the world of tomorrow, of technology is deeper than electronics. In 2016, Technion became the only Israeli into the Technion daily endeavor, and It’s about the nature of evolution, and the representative in the Nature Index of above all into the connectedness that wisdom of connectivity behind all scientific Rising Stars. This prestigious ranking is empowering all progress. Within this and technological progress. It was Isaac affirmed a 40 percent increase in Technion unfolding, connected map, our readers, Newton who enshrined this insight when publications in leading scientific journals. friends, colleagues and supporters are he famously said: “If I have seen further it Putting Technion in 26th place worldwide, an indispensable part of the whole, is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” the list includes 100 institutions – virtually and as such, let’s take some time Our position as a world-class center of all of them universities – around the world. together to celebrate and enjoy education and innovation depends on The index is further evidence of Technion’s today’s Technion of Things. the great scientists and visionaries academic excellence, the incessant that went before us; it depends on our improvement in the achievements of its colleagues and collaborations around the researchers and our constant progress in world; and it depends on the promise of realizing Technion’s vision: to be one of the tomorrow as embodied in each unique world’s ten leading science and technology Technion student. research universities. P.L. : things like space Summer 2016 and Technion City “T o d a y , I consider myself a opened its eyes to the stars, global spokesman for space.” hosting the International Space - Dr Buzz Aldrin, at Technion SSP University (ISU), the first ever in the Middle East. SELFIE from it SPACE Over 100 participants from the moon), Jeff Hoffman, and 24 countries paraded their Jessica Meir; Rona Ramon, national flags, many wearing (widow of Israeli astronaut Ilan national costumes to initiate an Ramon); Canadian astronomer Out of orb academic festival of lectures, David Levy, who discovered distinguished guests and Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9; space innovation. and aerospace engineer and science-fiction writer Eric Choi. Technion hosted the 29th annual Space Studies Program Events included a robotics (SSP16) for an intense nine-week competition, a rocket launch graduate level program which at Kibbutz Gal’ed, and the first offers the participants a unique SpaceUp Unconference in and comprehensive professional the Middle East. The energy development experience charged summer even included covering all aspects of space a ‘Selfie’ of SSP participants at programs and enterprises. the heart of Technion campus, taken by satellite. Guests included US astronauts Buzz Aldrin (second man on SAY CHEESE PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2017 5 Earthlings formed the letters ISU on the great lawn at the heart of the campus for a selfie from space! : things that aren’t even things The secrets of entanglement untangled Hailed as a breakthrough in quantum computing, a knitting machine to supply entangled photons on demand has been introduced by researchers at the Faculty of Physics. “In effect, we demonstrated how to develop a device that “shoots” entangled photonic pairs on demand.” get in on “spooky action” a t t h e Gershoni lab. Prof. David Gershoni, Faculty of Physics PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2017 7 Technion brings you the quantum raygun T he tremendous power of The researchers used various quantum computing can optical and electrical means to only be unlocked through cause the emission of photons knowhow within the field of at specified times. Gershoni’s quantum entanglement. Called on demand,” explains Prof. breakthrough is in effect the by Einstein ‘Spooky action at a Gershoni. “This discovery first device that emits many distance’, entanglement is the is an important milestone entangled photons on demand. means through which physical bridging current classical entities relate to each other technology and future For some, Quantum Computing irrespective of the distance quantum technologies.” could still seem the stuff between them. Entangled The conceptual idea of a of science fiction, but Prof. entities cannot be defined quantum knitting machine , Gershoni takes the fiction out separately. For example, two or a quantum “machine gun” of science. “I believe that our particles can be arranged in to ensure supply-on-demand discovery will advance the an entangled state such that of entangled photons was field of quantum information if particle A spins one way, first suggested by Lindner processing,” he says, “and particle B (even if it is vastly (originally a student of Prof. that in the near future we separated in time and space) Asher Peres) and Prof. Terry will be able to see genuine will spin the other way. Rudolf of Imperial College applications of quantum London in 2009. technologies in broad use.” The global challenge has been how to make entanglement “Our demonstration presents Quantum computers could work to our advantage in the a breakthrough in quantum quickly calculate way beyond revolutionary field of quantum technology... it may have the limits of today’s fastest computing. Now, Prof. David revolutionary prospects for supercomputers. Billions of Gershoni and doctoral students technological applications as dollars are being invested Ido Schwartz, Dan Cogan, and well as to our fundamental globally in the field of quantum Prof. Netanel Lindner, have understanding of quantum information by corporations developed and demonstrated a systems,” announces the such as IBM, Apple, Google, novel way to generate clusters paper’s abstract. The device at NSA and various other of entangled photons on the core of their experiment is government agencies. demand. Their results were a “quantum dot”, several tens published in Science. of nanometers in size, and Prof. David Gershoni holds the comprised of a semiconductor Joseph and Bessie Feinberg “In effect, we demonstrated embedded in another type of Academic Chair. how to develop a device that semiconductor. “shoots” entangled photons : things like B L A C K H O L E S entangled phonons phonon phonon sonic black An analogous sonic black hole hole confirms Hawking radiation S t e p “This entanglement h e verifies an important n H a element in the w k i n discussion of the g information paradox as well as the firewall controversy,” ---------- Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech ---------- PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2017 9 black hole. One of the phonons travels away from the black hole as Hawking radiation, and the other partner phonon falls into the black hole.