Prof. Jacob Rubinstein

Executive Vice President for Research; CEO of Technion R&D Foundation

 

The academic year 2019/20 was marked by the worst pandemic the world experienced over the last 100 years. In spite of the pandemic and the long periods of lockdowns, Technion’s research activity maintained a strong momentum.

Sponsored research
Research contracts signed in 2019/20 by the Research Authority amounted to $108.4 million – a record high. In the previous two years the Technion’s research contracts totalled $90 million in 2017/18 and $101.5M in 2018/19. The main increase in income was from competitive grants in Israel, mostly the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and also government contracts. We performed fairly well in winning European grants. On the negative side we saw a decline in contracts from industry, including the Innovation Authority, due to the pandemic.

In 2019/20 Technion researchers submitted 180 proposals to the ISF and won 69 grants (39% success rate). This is compared to 192 submissions and 82 grants in 2018/19 and 64 grants out of 179 submissions in 2017/18. Overall, the success rate of Technion researchers for ISF funding continues to be higher than the national rate.

A highlight of 2019/20 was wining an unprecedented number of 4 European FET grants. This is one of the most prestigious and competitive grant programs of the EU. To win, the proposal must articulate a radical new vision with strong potential for technological breakthrough.

Technion continued to invest heavily in research infrastructure for new faculty. In 2019/20 we invested NIS 70.5M in new faculty research allocations, compared to NIS 74M in 2018/19 and NIS 63.5M in 2017/18.

Challenge:
The main challenge we now face is Israel’s position vis-a-vis the EU grant agencies. The EU is starting the new Horizon Europe program this year and Israel is not yet a partner. This is already impacting our ability to apply for Horizon Europe-related grants. In addition, the EU recently announced that associated countries (for example Britain and Israel) are excluded from certain programs, including space and quantum technology. Even when Israel joins Horizon Europe, new restrictions may limit the grants available to Israeli scientists.

External Research Funding
In addition to the external funding mentioned above, Technion received contributions from donors for individual researchers or for the creation of research infrastructures in the sum of $12M, the same amount in 2018/19, and $17.4M in 2017/18.

Challenge:
Donations tend to be focused on specific fields (e.g., healthcare). To address this issue, the Technion Research Directory was established in 2018, which is a searchable database of proposal abstracts to help donors find topics of interest.

COVID- 19 Research
Immediately at the outset of the pandemic in Israel, about 50 Technion labs turned their attention to research to combat the disease. Some of these labs achieved significant results. For example, Prof. Eyal Zussman’s lab developed a face mask sticker that greatly enhances effectivity; Prof. Naama Geva-Zatorsky’s lab developed a novel, fast and low-cost COVID-19 diagnostic kit; Prof. Friedler developed a method to detect the virus and track its proliferation through the sewage system. The technology developed by Friedler’s group was deployed successfully at Technion and enabled us to curb the chain of infection in the dormitories.

International Collaboration 
Expanding scientific collaboration with institutes abroad is an important goal for Technion. A significant example of such collaboration is our membership in Eurotech – an alliance of six leading European technological schools: Technion, TUM (Munich), EPFL (Lausanne), DTU (Copenhagen), Ecole Polytechnique (Paris) and TU/e (Eindhoven). We are also members of CESAER, the leading association of European universities of technology.

We have joint projects with University of Michigan (together with the Weizmann Institute) and University of Waterloo. We maintain our long-term partnership with the Universities of Aachen and Julich. New ties were established in 2020 with the Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo, Tokushima University in Japan, and the Ingham Institute in Australia.

Industrial Collaboration 
We attribute great importance to collaboration with industry. We believe that industrial contracts are a win-win situation. Technion benefits from research support, student ties, and providing our faculty with up-to-date knowledge of emerging needs. Industry benefits from Technion’s commitment to help Israeli industry and the country’s economy. A recurring obstacle in recent years has been the issue of IP ownership. We resolved this problem by creating flexible models for industrial contracts. Each company is encouraged to select its preferred model. Indeed, several new contracts were signed and several more are in progress. Some contracts are pending because of the pandemic. New industrial contracts in 2019/20 amounted to $8.3M compared to $8.8M in 2018/19. We expect a considerable number of new such contracts in 2020/21. One of our goals is to make Technion a hub for traditional industries, including food and pharma.

Pre-Clinical Research
The pre-clinical research authority provides animal research facilities for faculty members at Technion, affiliated hospitals, and companies. The facilities are in two separate locations, one in the Medical School and one on the main Technion campus.

In 2019/20, the authority started to implement its development plan that was drafted the previous year. This plan includes a revised budget structure, new infrastructure, and improved services for commercial entities. In addition, we started preparations for upgrading our facility to conform with the AAALAC standards.

Challenge:
Maintaining a high level pre-clinical facility is crucial for conducting first-rate research in the life sciences. Such a facility is extremely expensive to operate as new equipment is continuously needed. We invested heavily in this facility in 2020/21 and have allocated funds for 2021/22.

Translational Research
The translation of knowledge is handled by the Technion Technology Transfer (T3) Office, a division of the Technion Research and Development Foundation (TRDF), Ltd. TRDF is a for-profit company, owned by Technion and the Executive Vice President for Research serves as its CEO. Income from licenses and royalties plays an important role in supporting Technion research infrastructure. We also emphasize commercialization of scientific discoveries to foster an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship on campus. The Technion considers translational research an important contribution to the State of Israel.

The T3 unit underwent a complete restructuring that started in 2018/19 and was completed in 2019/20. A new director was hired; the business staff was replaced; and the management of the patent portfolio was outsourced to a specialist law firm.

New models for commercialization were developed during 2020, with the understanding that different approaches are needed for different disciplines. The results are impressive. For instance, 14 spinoff companies were launched in 2019/20 compared to 6 companies in 2018/19 and a similar number in 2017/18.

These 14 spinoff companies offer various technological solutions such as a non-invasive blood count device; rapid and simple detection of pathogens; attention evaluation; solar electricity generation; spinal cord injury; zero-knowledge proof system for blockchains; lung disorders; biological and genomic informatics solutions; fintech software; assessment of fatigue during radiotherapy for breast cancer with/without homeopathy treatment; chemotherapy-induced cell activation to improve tissue regeneration; structural optimization using nonlinear dynamics; minimally-invasive continuous clinical monitoring of small molecules; and naturally targeted drugs and a gene delivery system.

A total of 71 new agreements (licenses, industrial and innovation authority contracts) were signed in 2019/20 compared to 41 in 2018/19 and 47 in 2017/18.

We now have a patent portfolio of 715 families, compared to 635 in 2018/19 and to 550 families in 2017/18. New software installed in 2019/20 enables better management and recovery of uncollected patent royalties.

During 2019/20, we streamlined our monitoring process of spinoff companies based on Technion inventions. A new user-friendly database with detailed information of these companies was created. We maintain the right to make additional investments both to support these companies and to minimize dilution of our holdings when new investments are raised. Prominent private spinoff companies founded by faculty include Aleph Farms (cultured meat), Xact Robotics (medical robotic navigation), Starkware (blockchain software), H2Pro (hydrogen manufacturing), Codota (software), Qedma (quantum computation), Canasoul (cannabis), Cytoreason (bioinformatics) and many more. We are particularly proud of earlier Technion spinoff companies traded on NASDAQ, including Novocure, currently the highest-valued Israeli company on NASDAQ.

The TRDF recognizes the importance of investment in research infrastructure. To this end, we established a new internal fund in 2019/20 with an initial budget of NIS 6M. The fund was used to match outside grants (VATAT and ISF), for a Technion-wide safety project, for the pre-clinical authority and more. We expect to grow this fund which is fully financed by our success in commercializing Technion technologies.