30 YEARS ANNIVERSARY ALUMNI EVENT
May 24, 2023
This year, the Technion Excellence Program marks its 30th anniversary and to celebrate this milestone, we are excited to invite you to the 30 Years Anniversary Alumni Event of our Program!
The goal of this special event is to connect with the fellow graduates, listen to fascinating lectures by the program’s alumni, and meet program alumni for socializing, networking, and sharing stories.
The event will take place on May 24, 2023 at the Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion. The lectures will be open to the public, while the event will conclude with a gala dinner for graduates and current students of the program.
ORGANIZERS
- Limor Abas-Or, Campus Leaders Program Coordinator
- Melinda Margulis, Program Manager
- Eitan Yaakobi, Program Head
AGENDA
13:00-13:15 | Opening Remarks:
- Prof. Uri Sivan, President of the Technion
- Prof. Nimrod Moiseyev, Program Founder
- Prof. Eitan Yaakobi, Program Head
13:15-14:35 | Session 1:
- 13:15 – 13:35 | Keynote Speaker – Prof. Ido Kaminer
13:35 – 14:25 | Alumni Session 1:
14:25 – 14:35 | Students Session 1:
14:35-15:00 | Break
15:00-16:15 | Session 2:
- 15:00 – 15:20 | Keynote Speaker – Dr. Yair Wiener
15:20 – 15:55 | Alumni Session 2:
15:55 – 16:15 | Students Session 2:
16:15 – 17:00 | Panel Session: Academia, Industry, and the Defense System
- Participants: Prof. Hagit Messer-Yaron, Aharon Aharon, and Dr. Eyal Hulata
- Moderator: Chen Liberman
17:00 – 18:00 | Break
18:00 – 21:00 | Dinner and Lecture by Adi Altschuler
SPEAKERS
ALUMNI SPEAKERS:
Prof. Ido Kaminer
Associate Professor, Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technion
Head of the Ad Quanta Lab, Technion
Keynote Speaker
Bio: Ido is an Associate Professor at the Technion. In his Ph.D. research, Ido discovered new classes of accelerating beams in nonlinear optics and electromagnetism, for which he received the 2014 American Physical Society (APS) Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in Laser Science. Ido was the first Israeli to win an APS award for his Ph.D. thesis. As a postdoc at MIT, he established the foundations of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics (MQED) for photonic quasiparticles and used it to enable forbidden electronic transitions in atoms. As a faculty member, Ido created a paradigm shift in the understanding of free-electron radiation, connecting it to the field of quantum optics. He performed the first experiment on electron microscopy with quantum light, demonstrating that the quantum statistics of photons can be imprinted on the electron. For his achievements as a faculty member, Ido was recently elected to the Israeli Young Academy, which includes 32 young Israeli faculty members below the age of 45. He has won multiple awards and grants, including the ERC Starting Grant, the Krill Prize, and the 2022 Schmidt Science Polymath Award. Ido is the laureate of the 2021 Blavatnik Award in Physical Sciences & Engineering in Israel, and the recipient of the 2022 Adolph Lomb Medal, the top international award for a young scientist (age 35 or younger) in the field of optics.
Seven Wonders of the Excellence Program
Yoni Akkerman
Istra Research
Bio: Yoni joined the Technion Excellence Program in 2014 and majored in Mathematics and Physics. After finishing his Bachelor’s degree, he went straight on to pursue his Master’s degree in Mathematics under the supervision of Prof. Danny Neftin. Today, Yoni works as a researcher and algorithms developer at Istra Research.
Real Time Linear Scheduling
Dr. Kira Radinsky
CEO and CTO of Diagnostic Robotics
Bio: Dr. Kira Radinsky is the CEO and CTO of Diagnostic Robotics, where the most advanced technologies in the field of artificial intelligence are harnessed to make healthcare better, cheaper, and more widely available. In the past, she co-founded SalesPredict, acquired by eBay in 2016, and served as eBay director of data science and IL chief scientist. One of the up-and-coming voices in the data science community, she is pioneering the field of medical data mining. Dr. Radinsky gained international recognition for her work at Microsoft Research, where she developed predictive algorithms that recognized the early warning signs of globally impactful events, including political riots and disease epidemics. In 2013, she was named to the MIT Technology Review’s 35 Young Innovators Under 35, in 2015 as Forbes 30 under 30 rising stars in enterprise technology, and in 2016 selected as “woman of the year” by Globes. She is a frequent presenter at global tech events, including TEDx, Wired, Strata Data Science, Techcrunch and academic conferences, and she publishes in the Harvard Business Review. Radinsky serves as a board member in: Israel Securities Authority, Maccabi Research Institute, and technology board of HSBC bank. Dr. Radinsky also serves as visiting professor at the Technion, Israel’s leading science and technology institute, where she focuses on the application of predictive data mining in medicine.
Learning to Predict the Future of Medicine
Prof. Nadav Cohen
Computer Science at Tel Aviv University, and a Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Imubit
Bio: Nadav Cohen is an Asst. Professor of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University, and a Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Imubit. His academic research revolves around the theoretical and algorithmic foundations of deep learning, while at Imubit he leads the development of deep reinforcement learning systems optimizing industrial manufacturing lines. Nadav earned a BSc in electrical engineering and a BSc in mathematics (both summa cum laude) at the Technion Excellence Program. He obtained his PhD (direct track, summa cum laude) at the Hebrew University, and was subsequently a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. For his contributions to deep learning, Nadav received a number of awards and recognitions, including the Google Doctoral Fellowship in Machine Learning, the Final Prize for Machine Learning Research, the Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Zuckerman Postdoctoral Fellowship, TheMarker’s 40 under 40 list and the Google Research Scholar Award.
Real-World Reinforcement Learning: Challenges and Opportunities
Dr. Dean Leitersdorf
Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore
Bio: Dean Leitersdorf is a postdoctoral fellow at the lab of Prof. Yi-Jun Chang in distributed graph algorithms at NUS, Singapore. Previously, Dean completed his Ph.D. at the Technion, researching distributed sparse matrix multiplication, distance computations, and subgraph detection and listing. His current research interests include theoretical distributed graph algorithms, DNA sequencing, and AI.
Orian Leitersdorf
Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technion
Bio: Orian received his B.Sc. degree from the Technion in 2022 and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Technion. He was a fellow in both the Technion Excellence Program and the Lapidim CS Excellence Program, he previously received the Gutwirth Excellence Scholarship, and he is currently a recipient of the Jacobs Excellence Scholarship. Further, he has received several awards, including the Early Career Researcher Paper Award at the ISITA 2022 conference. His current research aims to advance digital PIM towards fundamental applications (e.g., matrix operations, graph algorithms) while also addressing challenges such as reliability. Further, his research interests also include information theory and constrained coding.
Dr. Yair Wiener
Co-founder and CEO of Jether Energy Research
Bio: Yair Wiener is a co-founder and CEO of Jether Energy Research, an AI startup founded in 2014, by two Technion Excellence program graduates, to develop technology and solutions for efficient energy trading and risk management. Prior to co-founding Jether, Yair was the CTO of RADVISION (NSDQ:RVSN), a leading video conferencing solution provider, which was acquired by Avaya. As part of his technology leadership role, Dr. Wiener also served as a Board member of the unified communications interoperability forum (UCIF), as co-Chair of UCIF H.264 SVC technical working group, and was awarded the 2014 IMTC service award. He holds a B.A. in Physics, a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.
AI, Markets, and the Transition to Sustainable Energy: Saving the Planet One MW at a Time
Dr. Yaniv Altshuler
MIT Researcher
Bio: Dr. Yaniv Altshuler is an MIT researcher, a leading expert in Artificial Intelligence and an experienced entrepreneur. Over the past decade Dr. Altshuler has been using his deep expertise to advise leading financial institutes and government agencies worldwide. Yaniv is the author of 3 books on the topic of AI and has published over 70 scientific papers and filed 17 patents.
Using Artificial Intelligence to Help Cows Go Green
Limor Dori Alon
Unipharm
Bio: Limor Dori Alon is currently the Head of Business Development at Unipharm, an Israeli pharmaceutical company. She has vast experience in pharmaceutical R&D, regulatory affairs, business development, and commercial operations in international markets. Before joining Unipharm, Limor worked at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries during 2005-2017 and at OncoHost, an oncology start-up, during 2017-2019.
Limor was a fellow in the Technion Excellence Program from 1998 until 2001. She holds a B.A. in Molecular Biochemistry from the Technion’s Faculty of Chemistry and a B.Sc. in Science Education in Chemistry from the Technion’s Faculty of Education in Science and Technology. She conducted research for her M.Sc. in Medical Sciences at the Technion’s Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Biochemistry, under the supervision of Nobel Prize Laureate, Prof. Aaron Ciechanover. In 2006 she completed her MBA degree from the Technion’s Faculty of Industrial Engineering.
Pharmaceutical Drug Development, Patents, and Business
Prof. Orr Dunkelman
University of Haifa
Bio: Orr Dunkelman is a professor at the Computer Science Dept. at the University of Haifa. His research focuses on cryptanalysis, cryptography, security, privacy, and biometrics. He won several best paper awards for his works in cryptanalysis, and is known for introducing new cryptanalytic techniques. He served as the program chairs of numerous cryptographic conferences, including the flagship conference EUROCRYPT 2022. He is currently a co-director of the Center for Cyber, Law and Policy (CCLP) as well as the director of the affiliated section of the CCLP dealing with biometrics. Orr served on the board of the International Association for Cryptologic Research, and he is a member of several steering committees. He is a co-founder of Privacy Israel, as well as an Israeli delegate to the ISO committees in cryptography and computer security. Orr obtained his Ph.D. in computer science in 2006 from the Technion and a B.A. in computer science in 2000 from the Technion (as part of the excellence program).
How Breaking Encryption Schemes Taught Me How to Solve Rubik’s Cubes
STUDENT SPEAKERS:
Noa Konforty
MSc. Student at the Faculty of Physics, Technion
Bio: Noa received her B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Physics Cum Laude from the Technion in 2022, and was a fellow in the Technion Excellence Program. During her time as a bachelor’s degree student, Noa received several awards, including the ‘Final’ company award for excellent Math students. During her last year in the Excellence Program, Noa worked on a research project with Distinguished Professor Mordechai (Moti) Segev from the Faculty of Physics, on quantum emission of light into synthetic dimensions. The work was presented at CLEO, a leading conference in optics and photonics, in 2022, and the paper is soon to be published. Today Noa is a MSc. Student at the Technion’s Faculty of Physics, under the supervision of Moti Segev, and has received the ‘KLA’ company award for excellent graduate students in Physics.
Time-Varying Media and Photonic Time-Crystals
Ofir Shorer
MD-PhD Student, Technion
Bio: Ofir pursues his MD-PhD degree after finishing his preclinical studies at the Technion as a fellow of the Technion Excellence Program. Together with Prof. Keren Yizhak, Ofir focuses on the metabolic interactions between tumor cells and immune cells in order better target patients and predict their response to treatment. His work was recently presented in Germany as part of the German-Israeli cooperation in cancer research and is publicly available.
Metabolic Predictors of Response to Immune Checkpoint Blockade Therapy
Yuval Shapira
Fellow in the Technion Excellence Program
Bio: Yuval grew up in Nahalal and is currently finishing his B.Sc. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics at the Technion as a fellow in the Technion Excellence Program. Between 2015 and 2018 Yuval served as a software developer in the IDF and then continued to work in software at Taboola between 2018-2019. In 2021, Yuval started a research project on Neural Network Robustness Verification as part of his work with Dr. Dana Drachsler-Cohen’s group together with Eran Avneri. They have recently published their paper “Deep Learning Robustness Verification for Few-Pixel Attacks” in Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages.
Deep Learning Robustness Verification for Few-Pixel Attacks
Eran Avneri
Fellow in the Technion Excellenc Program
Bio: Eran Avneri is currently finishing his B.Sc. degree in Data Science and Engineering and Mathematics at the Technion as a fellow in the Technion Excellence Program. Between 2016 and 2019 Eran served as an HR recruitment coordinator in the IDF, where he analyzed and reported statistical data in the field of human resources. In 2018, he received the excellence award from the head of the Meitav unit. In 2021, Eran started a research project on Neural Network Robustness Verification as part of his work with Dr. Dana Drachsler-Cohen’s group together with Yuval Sahpira. They have recently published their paper “Deep Learning Robustness Verification for Few-Pixel Attacks” in Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages.
Deep Learning Robustness Verification for Few-Pixel Attacks
Sahar Sagy
Fellow in the Technion Excellence Program
Bio: Sahar is currently finishing her B.Sc in Computer Science and Chemistry at the Technion, as part of the Technion Excellence Program. Between 2016 and 2019 Sahar served in the IDF Intelligence corps as a data analyst and then continued in a similar role at SAM Seamless Networks during 2019. In 2021 Sahar started a research project in the field of Computational Chemistry as part of the Poranne Research Group where she is working on connecting structural properties to aromaticity.
Understanding Aromaticity for the Future of Semiconductors
Ido Patish
Fellow in the Technion Excellence Program
Bio: Ido is a third-year undergraduate student in the Technion Excellence Program, majoring in Physics and Mathematics. At the end of his first year at the Technion, he started his research in the field of neuroscience under the guidance of Prof. Yoed Kenett using a theoretical model from network control theory to analyze intelligence. Then he started another project focusing on Statistical Mechanics out of equilibrium with Prof. Dov Levine as his advisor in characterizing systems outside of equilibrium using information theory. Ido was intrigued by exploring essential and foundational aspects of nature and how we perceive it, using tools and methods taken from different disciplines and approaches.
A Network Control Theory Analysis of the Neural Dynamics that Drive Intelligence across the Lifespan
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In Collaboration with the Technion Alumni Association
