technology – Page 7

A healing partnership

Left to right: Bernard Bressler, Bill Barrable, Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, the Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jonathan Miodowski, Dina Wachtel, the Hon. Bruce Ralston and Rick Glumac. (photo from Rick Hansen Institute)

On Aug. 25 in Vancouver, the Rick Hansen Institute (RHI) announced a new partnership with the Hebrew University’s Alexander Grass Centre for Bioengineering. The first of its kind in the world, this partnership will fast-track the development of products designed to improve the lives of people who have been devastated by spinal cord injuries (SCI).

Bioengineering uses scientific concepts and methods to find practical, cost-effective solutions to problems in the life sciences. Researchers investigate ways to regenerate damaged tissue, grow new organs or mimic the systems and processes of the human body with synthetic tools. In the case of individuals with SCI, this means combating the paralysis caused by a serious injury.

According to the RHI, in British Columbia alone, there are 12,000 people living with an SCI. “The economic burden is an estimated $372 million a year for new traumatic spinal cord injuries: this figure includes direct healthcare (59%) as well as indirect morbidity and mortality related (41%) costs,” says the RHI. “Secondary complications such as pressure ulcers, neuropathic pain, urinary tract infections and pneumonia cost an estimated $70 million in direct costs to B.C.’s healthcare system annually.”

The Grass Centre’s Biodesign program teaches researchers, business and bioengineering graduates how to make medical innovations commercially available. Recent innovations at the centre include a device that inserts chest tubes. The device prevents lung collapse in under a minute and saves lives in the battlefield and the emergency room. The centre also has developed pressure-sensing socks that can tell when patients with diabetes are in pain, prevent foot ulcers and communicate health data to smartphones. More than 130 million people suffer from diabetes-related pain worldwide.

Bill Barrable, chief executive officer of the RHI, described Rick Hansen’s long association and warm relationship with Israel. Hansen traveled there on his Man in Motion tour many years ago and he also received an honorary degree from the Hebrew University. Barrable accompanied Hansen on that latter visit.

Barrable spoke of the new partnership as being designed to “grow the next generation of medical research entrepreneurs.” These entrepreneurs will create intellectual property that can be sold commercially within one year, a goal he described as “extraordinary.” In addition to the profound impact it will have on patients, Barrable sees the project as a way to strengthen innovation in British Columbia.

Prof. Yaakov Nahmias is the director of the Grass Centre. After co-founding the Biodesign program at HU with Hadassah Medical Centre and Stanford University, four new medical devices were launched under his leadership – in the program’s first year. Referencing Israel’s reputation as a “start-up nation,” Nahmias touched on the 2009 book Start-up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, which explores how it is that a small, embattled country like Israel has more tech start-ups than any other. Speaking of the student body at the Grass Centre, Nahmias described a population that is mature, self-sufficient and has a rich life experience. Having completed school and their mandatory military service, Israeli grads also have traveled the world and worked while pursuing their undergraduate studies. He described a group that did not want to continue their research work as academics, but as entrepreneurs. The Biodesign program enabled them to do this. Its multi-disciplinary, team-based approach to medical innovation is also unique, according to Nahmias, “because it leverages the diversity we see in Israel.” The program is host to groups led by Palestinians from East Jerusalem and ultra-Orthodox rabbis alike, he said. The program’s success, he added, was owed to the creativity and talent of this diverse group.

In concert with the fiery, boundary-pushing Israelis, Nahmias said Canadian researchers would bring “people with vision, people who would set the course and know how to treat patients and solve problems in everyday life. But we also want to have agitators, people who would rock the bridge and say, ‘that’s not good enough!’ These are the people we have in Israel. And this is why this partnership is unique.”

B.C. Minister of Jobs, Trade and Technology Bruce Ralston spoke highly of Israel’s capacity for innovation. Looking forward to seeing stronger ties develop between the technology sectors of Israel and British Columbia, Ralston said he sees this partnership as a way to “restore and bolster our commitment to research in a way that attracts top-flight talent back to B.C.”

Also joining in the announcement, which was made at the Blusson Spinal Cord Centre, at Vancouver General Hospital was the Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould. In her capacity as federal justice minister, she applauded the new initiative, describing SCI patient care as “a human rights issue.”

Also in attendance was Bernard Bressler, director of the board of Canada-Israel Industrial Research and Development Foundation. Bressler praised the partners for going beyond academic research to make life-altering technologies. “The partnership creates an environment where creative ideas, difficult problems and entrepreneurial mentorship can interact in a structured way,” he said.

Speaking after the event, John Chernesky, RHI’s consumer engagement lead, commented, “What excites me most is the prospect of new devices that allow people with paralysis to complete ordinary tasks, even something as simple as using an arm to manipulate their environment. Spinal cord injuries can affect every part of a person’s body. The implications [of a program like this] are tremendous.”

Dina Wachtel, executive director of Canadian Friends of Hebrew University, Western Region, said the program created “a living bridge upon which a scientist from Canada will spend time in Israel with the start-up nation and, once they trigger the process, as a team, and have the beginning of a device, they can bring it back to B.C. for further development.”

Shula Klinger is an author, illustrator and journalist living in North Vancouver. Find out more at niftyscissors.com.

Implant first in world

Cardiologist Gil Bolotin checks patient Robert MacLachlan, the first in the world to receive the CORolla implant, at Rambam hospital. (photo by Pioter Fliter/RHCC)

A 72-year-old Canadian man has become the world’s first recipient of an Israeli-developed implant to treat diastolic heart failure, a fairly common condition for which there is no effective long-term treatment.

The minimally invasive surgery was performed on July 26 at Rambam Health Care Campus, a medical centre in Haifa, by a multidisciplinary team led by cardiologists Gil Bolotin, director of cardiac surgery, and Arthur Kerner, senior physician in the interventional cardiology unit.

The implant, called CORolla, was developed by Israeli startup CorAssist Cardiovascular of Haifa. The elastic device is implanted inside the left ventricle of the heart and can improve cardiac diastolic function by applying direct expansion force on the ventricle wall to help the heart fill with blood. The CorAssist technology was invented by Dr. Yair Feld, a Rambam cardiologist, with doctors Yotam Reisner and Shay Dubi.

The patient, Robert MacLachlan, explained that he had run out of treatment options in Canada for his diastolic heart failure. His wife had read about the CORolla implant on the internet and contacted Dr. Karen Bitton Worms, head of research in the department of cardiac surgery at Rambam. MacLachlan’s cardiologist encouraged him to apply to have the experimental procedure in Israel.

Bolotin said that, while many potential applicants were interested in the procedure, no one wanted to be first until MacLachlan came along.

“I am proud that Rambam offers treatments to patients not available anywhere else in the world,” said Dr. Rafi Beyar, director and chief executive officer of Rambam.

The hospital did not comment on the condition of the patient, but, in a video released a month after the procedure, MacLachlan said he already feels better and has noticed that his skin colour looks healthy for the first time in a long time.

The Israel Ministry of Health has authorized up to 10 clinical trials at Rambam to test the efficacy of cardiac catheterization for placement of the CORolla implant. The potential market for the device is large. It is estimated that more than 23 million people worldwide suffer from heart failure, a condition in which the heart fails to pump sufficient oxygenated blood to meet the body’s needs. Approximately half of heart failure patients suffer from diastolic heart failure, in which the left ventricle fails to relax and adequately refill with blood, resulting in a high filling pressure, congestion and shortness of breath. This is the condition for which the CORolla device was invented.

To watch the video about the surgery, which includes an interview with MacLachlan, and how the medical procedure works, visit israel21c.org/haifa-hospital-tests-first-implant-for-heart-failure.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Can you hear me now?

The black dial phone in the Jerusalem residence of former prime minister Levi Eshkol. (photo by Sharon Altshul)

Around Rosh Hashanah, some of us do this back-and-forth dance, reflecting on things past while looking ahead. As I live in Israel, I am going “to dance” to what I believe is the most pervasive part of our daily existence – our (some would say obsessive) phone use.

In the days prior to Israel’s becoming a “start-up nation,” telephone service was in pretty sad shape. For many years, most Israelis did not have phones in their homes. So, in the evening, you would wash up, dress up and go outside to use a public telephone. To make your call, you would load your pockets with asimonim, round, grooved, metal tokens. If you were calling someone outside your area code, you would hope that the weight of all the necessary asimonim would not tear your pockets.

photo - In the old days, Israelis would need to gather up their asimonim and head to the public payphone to make a call — In the old days, Israelis would need to gather up their asimonim and head to the public payphone to make a call. *(photo by Hidro for Creative Commons)*

Talking on payphones was fraught with problems. For starters, how would the person at the other end know you wanted to chat? Answer: the call had to be carefully arranged in advance, with both sides knowing the time, location and telephone numbers of the public telephones that were to be used.

It was an event requiring lots of patience. You had to stand in line with your neighbours, who also wanted to use the phone. You had to ignore the pressure from those behind you, telling you to hurry up and let someone else have a turn. Loud “discussions” occasionally broke out. People claimed they had a dahuf (urgent) call to make or receive. (In Israel, the term dahuf is thrown around a lot.) Thus, the beginning of the Israeli telecommunication era is essentially a study in how people function in groups.

Moreover, Israeli payphones seemed to have a mind of their own. You would be talking when, suddenly, in one big gulp, the telephone cruelly swallowed all your tokens. No amount of whacking the sides of the phone box or banging the receiver in its cradle would return the tokens. You were simply finished for the night. Talking on a payphone was such a tricky business, people would resort to sending postcards, as it was an easier way to relay a message.

By and large, Israeli households did not have telephones until the 1960s – as late as 1964, 55,800 Israeli homes were waiting for phones. If someone had acquired a telephone before the sixties, the person was either suspected of, or envied for, his or her protectzia, the fact that s/he “knew” somebody.

After a long wait – possibly for years – the phone company gave a household a black stationary phone with a short cord. Meaning that, to talk, you had to stay in one place. If you were lucky, nobody’s line would cross yours. If it did, you were stuck listening to their private affairs. People didn’t hang up right away because they didn’t know how long it would take to reconnect with friends. And, while on the subject of talking on the phone, to counter the high cost of doing so, employers with chatty employees or families with talkative children (or adult family members) went to the extreme of putting a lock on their dial phone.

After the implementation of the black telephones, changes came faster. Although the colour choice remained limited, Israelis could choose something other than a phone. They could also order a long phone cord or a press-button phone. Likewise, people could have phones in more than one room. Some advances have gone smoother than others. For example, fax installation and transmission continues to gravely challenge Bezek (the Israeli telephone company, established in 1984) and Bezek users.

In the international sphere, things also changed, albeit unevenly. In the late 1950s, Israel got hooked up to five continents. To place or receive an overseas call, you had to go to the central post office. You sat in a special glassed-in wooden booth while a special operator made the connection.

After a period of time, there were telecartim, or insertable phone cards for public phones. These cards became quite popular and many Israelis became phone card collectors and traders. I remember attending a telecart exhibit in Tel Aviv.

photo - There are a few remaining payphones in Israel — There are a few remaining payphones in Israel. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

What feels like light years later, Israelis started equipping themselves with cellphones and, not long after that, with ear sets. Suddenly, it seemed that many people were experiencing severe mental health problems. In public, flaying arms and shouting at invisible people became rampant. I remember the first time I spotted a person exhibiting this behaviour. Only when he drew near did I see a thin black wire around his jaw and ear. I sighed, “another cellphone casualty.”

Israelis are apparently now making up for lost time by being glued to their mobile phones. They converse everywhere (on dates, in toilets, on trains and buses) about everything.

Some of the usage issues are (pretty close to being) unique to Israel. If you were under the impression that kashrut (kosher) is a food-related concept, think again. In Israel, as well as in a few Western countries, there are kosher cellphones. While they are not edible, they have been a boon to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community. According to Cellular Israel, “a kosher phone is any phone that is approved and certified by vaad harabonim” (the rabbinic committee for matters of communications).

A kosher phone can only make and receive voice calls. Text messaging and emails will not work on a kosher phone. Moreover, for health, security, public services, water and electricity personnel, there is even a kosher phone designed to avoid breaking the laws of Shabbat. Technically, this mobile device may be dialed without connecting. There is even a kosher de-smarted (meaning that it has no web-browsing capability) smartphone.

Not all the changes appear to be positive. While more studies need to be done, Israeli researchers are beginning to think there is a real downside to cellphone use – it might even interfere with the biblical injunction to “be fruitful and multiply.”

As reported in Reproductive BioMedicine Online, there appears to be an association between higher rates of abnormal semen concentration and talking on cellphones for an hour or more a day, and talking on the devices as they are being charged. Among men who reported holding their phones within 50 centimetres of their groin, a higher rate of abnormal sperm concentration was found. Semen concentration was abnormal among 47% of those who stored their phone in their pants pockets, while it was abnormal in only 11% of the general male population. In brief, Israeli men might need to curb their cellphone use.

There might be another advantage to having an alternative to cellphones. Several years ago, when there was a wave of terrorism, having old-fashioned payphones around turned out to be beneficial. When an attack occurred, Jerusalemites whipped out their cellphones “to report in” with their families. With so many people simultaneously calling, the system crashed. It was the city’s remaining public phones that allowed people to reassure worried loved ones.

Admittedly, many of the above changes likewise happened elsewhere in the Western world; the telecommunication revolution has been a global revolution, after all. But, for many in Israel, each change or step of the way was met with a kind of curiosity or wonder that may have been singular to Israel. Today, that innocence has disappeared. For better or for worse, I’m not sure.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Israel joins the fruit-fly fight

Biofeed’s Nimrod Israely, top centre, with mango growers in Karnataka, India. (photo from Biofeed via Israel21c)

Shortly before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel in early July, Indian diplomats in Israel heard about a revolutionary no-spray, environmentally friendly solution against the Oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis) made by Biofeed, a 10-employee ag-tech company. They invited Biofeed to be one of six innovative Israeli companies meeting with Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The company’s founder and chief executive officer, Nimrod Israely, who has a PhD in fruit-fly ecology, told the two leaders that Biofeed’s product can protect Indian farmers against fruit flies like the Iron Dome system protects the people of Israel against missiles. The Oriental fruit fly has been decimating 300 fruit species in India and in 65 other countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas and is considered to be the most destructive, invasive and widespread of all fruit flies.

Biofeed’s lures, hung on trees, contain an organic customized mix of food, feeding stimulants and control or therapeutic agents delivered by a patented gravity-controlled fluid release platform. Attracted by the odour, the fly takes a sip and soon dies – without any chemicals reaching the fruit, air or soil.

The launch of Biofeed’s first-in-class attractant for female Oriental fruit flies results from 15 years of development of the core platform and more than a year of development and testing in Israel and Karnataka, India. Mango farmers on four Indian orchards saw an overall decrease of fruit-fly infestation from 95% to less than five percent.

“We were hoping to bring a solution that will replace spraying and increase productivity by 50%,” Israely told Israel21c. “I am excited by the results, demonstrating the future potential for some farmers to bring about 900 times more marketable produce to market.”

photo - A fruit fly feeding in a Biofeed lure — A fruit fly feeding in a Biofeed lure. *(photo from Biofeed via Israel21c)*

One farmer in the Biofeed pilot explained that previously he had used a trap that attracted only male fruit flies, with limited success. “If you cut 25 fruits, we were getting only one good fruit; 24 were infected,” he said.

K. Srinivas Gowda, president of the 70,000-farmer Karnataka Mango Growers Association, wrote in a letter presented to Modi and Netanyahu that he “would like to have this [Biofeed] technology implemented to all the mango farmers through the government of India. This technology can be used to develop pest-free zones in the mango-growing belts in India.”

The pilot project started after Biofeed won a Grand Challenges Israel grant last year from the Israel Innovation Authority and the Foreign Ministry’s international development agency, Mashav.

“We don’t have the Oriental fruit fly in Israel. However, until now there was no solution for this problem. So, we took the challenge and chose to focus on India,” Israely said. The company worked with Kempmann Bioorganics in Bangalore to carry out the trial.

Biofeed’s products are used in many Israeli fruit orchards against the Mediterranean fruit fly and other common pests, including the olive fruit fly and the peach fruit fly (Bactrocera zonata).

“Bactrocera zonata is the number two pest in India. There are three main pests in India, so now we’ve given, within two years, a solution for the two most devastating fruit flies in India and in other parts of the world,” said Israely.

“We are the only company in the world with a solution for those two pests and both solutions are harmless to the environment,” he added. “We estimate the annual market potential of these two pest segments to be well over $1 billion.”

The Biofeed platform is effective with as few as 10 units per hectare and for a period of nearly a year before the dispenser needs replacing.

Biofeed, founded in 2005, also has a formula targeting mosquitoes that bear viruses such as Zika.

“Evolution has given insects an elaborate sense of smell, which they utilize to find mates, food, egg-laying sites and more,” Israely told Israel21c last year. “The company has developed a liquid formula that ‘knows’ how to tie different kinds of smells to other materials, as the need arises. The result is a special ‘decoy’ that draws the target insect through smell. The decoy is slow-released from a device over the course of a year. The insect is drawn to the decoy, feeds off it and dies shortly after.”

Headquartered in Kfar Truman, Biofeed sees the future of agriculture in developing countries such as India and China.

“We want to bring something that is extremely easy to use: you don’t need tractors, you don’t need to remember to spray once a week, you don’t need to put yourself in danger with sprays, there’s no safety equipment. This is something that can make a dramatic change in agriculture and human health,” said Israely.

For more information, visit biofeed.co.il/enhome.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Betalains boost resistance?

Unripe (top) and ripe (bottom) tomatoes. Regular tomatoes (far left) start out green (far left top) and turn red when ripe (far left bottom). In contrast, genetically engineered tomatoes assume different shades of red-violet, depending on whether they produce betalains (the column second from left), pigments called anthocyanins (second from right) or betalains together with anthocyanins (far right). (photo from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)

Colour in the plant kingdom is not merely a joy to the eye. Coloured pigments attract pollinating insects, they protect plants against disease, and they confer health benefits and are used in the food and drug industries. A new study conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, has opened the way to numerous potential uses of betalains, the highly nutritious red-violet and yellow pigments known for their antioxidant properties and commonly used as food dyes.

Betalains are made by cactus fruit, flowers such as bougainvillea and certain edible plants – most notably, beets. They are relatively rare in nature, compared to the two other major groups of plant pigments and, until recently, their synthesis in plants was poorly understood. Prof. Asaph Aharoni of Weizmann’s plant and environmental sciences department and Dr. Guy Polturak, then a research student, along with other team members, used two betalain-producing plants – red beet (Beta vulgaris) and four o’clock flowers (Mirabilis jalapa) – in their analysis. Using next-generation RNA sequencing and other advanced technologies, the researchers identified a previously unknown gene involved in betalain synthesis and revealed which biochemical reactions plants use to convert the amino acid tyrosine into betalains.

To test their findings they genetically engineered yeast to produce betalains. They then tackled the ultimate challenge: reproducing betalain synthesis in edible plants that do not normally make these pigments.

photo - Tomatoes that have been genetically engineered to produce betalains only in the fruit, but not elsewhere in the plant — Tomatoes that have been genetically engineered to produce betalains only in the fruit, but not elsewhere in the plant. *(photo from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)*

The success announced itself in living colour. The researchers produced potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants with red-violet flesh and skin. They also managed to control the exact location of betalain production by, for example, causing the pigment to be made only in the fruit of the tomato plant but not in the leaves or stem.

Using the same approach, the scientists caused white petunias to produce pale violet flowers, and tobacco plants to flower in hues varying from yellow to orange pink. They were able to achieve a desired hue by causing the relevant genes to be expressed in different combinations during the course of betalain synthesis. These findings may be used to create ornamental plants with colours that can be altered on demand.

But a change in colour was not the only outcome. Healthy antioxidant activity was 60% higher in betalain-producing tomatoes than in average ones. “Our findings may in the future be used to fortify a wide variety of crops with betalains in order to increase their nutritional value,” said Aharoni.

An additional benefit is that the researchers discovered that betalains protect plants against grey mold, Botrytis cinerea, which annually causes losses of agricultural crops worth billions of dollars. The study showed that resistance to grey mold rose by a whopping 90% in plants engineered to make betalains.

The scientists produced versions of betalain that do not exist in nature. “Some of these new pigments may potentially prove more stable than the naturally occurring betalains,” said Polturak. “This can be of major significance in the food industry, which makes extensive use of betalains as natural food dyes, for example, in strawberry yogurts.”

Furthermore, the findings of the study may be used by the drug industry. When plants start manufacturing betalains, the first step is conversion of tyrosine into an intermediate product, the chemical called L-dopa. Not only is this chemical itself used as a drug, it also serves as a starting material in the manufacture of additional drugs, particularly opiates such as morphine. Plants and microbes engineered to convert tyrosine into L-dopa may, therefore, serve as a source of this valuable material.

The research team included Noam Grossman, Dr. Yonghui Dong, Margarita Pliner and Dr. Ilana Rogachev of Weizmann’s plant and environmental sciences department, and Dr. Maggie Levy, Dr. David Vela-Corcia and Adi Nudel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Aharoni’s research is supported by the John and Vera Schwartz Centre for Metabolomics, which he heads; the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust; the Adelis Foundation; the Lerner Family Plant Science Research Fund; the Monroe and Marjorie Burk Fund for Alternative Energy Studies; the Sheri and David E. Stone Fund for Microbiota Research; Dana and Yossie Hollander, Israel; the AMN Fund for the Promotion of Science, Culture and Arts in Israel; and the Tom and Sondra Rykoff Family Foundation. Aharoni is the recipient of the André Deloro Prize, and the incumbent of the Peter J. Cohn Professorial Chair.

For more on the research being conducted at the Weizmann Institute, visit wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il.

“Hacking” community

Kara Mintzberg, left, and Dana Troster at the Community Hackathon. (photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)

On a sunny Sunday, June 25, 40 Jewish young adults gave up a day at the beach and devoted themselves to building a better community. And three teams within this group saw their ideas chosen to be developed and piloted.

Led by Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s young adult program Axis, the goal of the Community Hackathon is a more connected community whose members design the programs and services they wish to see. This is the second phase of the project, which began in January, when a core group of Jewish young adults convened for a pre-Hackathon workshop focused on improving the Jewish experience for young adults and young parents.

“Jewish Federation has demonstrated that they are committed to engaging the next generation of Jewish leaders,” said Bryan Hack, chair of the Axis steering committee. “We’ve seen that in how they’ve included young adult engagement as a key element of their 2020 Strategic Priorities and in creating opportunities like the Community Hackathon, that are platforms for the involvement and leadership of young Jewish adults.”

Jewish Federation is one of only three organizations in North America to host a Community Hackathon. They received a grant from the PresenTense Group and the Covenant Foundation to facilitate the program and to fund the ideas generated through it.

The Community Hackathon was a full-day event at the Museum of Vancouver. Participants used design thinking to generate and prototype project ideas to tackle this challenge: “How to identify what people find meaningful in Jewish connection and then respond with appropriate experiences, infrastructure and communication.” Using this question as a framework, participants worked collaboratively in smaller teams to come up with tangible and sustainable solutions. They were led through the process by a facilitator from UpStart, an organization committed to being an engine for Jewish innovation.

Three of the teams will see their ideas piloted, using seed grants of $2,500 US each plus training and mentorship from UpStart and local coaches over the months to follow. The selected proposals were:

Shabbat Share (Adina Goldberg, Elliot Cheng, Jonathan Polak, Rebecca Denham, Bryan Hack and others), with the idea to create crowdsourced Shabbat dinners;

Shmooz (Rebecca Shaw, Gabby Switzer, Ali De Levie, Courtney Cohen, Kathleen Muir and Tamir Barzelai), which proposes the creation of a personalized interface that represents current events in the community, along with opportunities and a directory in a consolidated format with map and calendar capabilities; and

Treehouse Mentorship (Simone Landa, Lia Hershkovitz, Shayna Goldberg, Genna Cohen, Noah Kass and Dave Elezam), which will connect established Jewish mentors and community leaders with young professionals and newcomers to Vancouver to build a stronger community.

For more about Axis and to become involved, visit axisvancouver.com.

Israel’s human capital

Some of the attendees at the July 16 event, left to right: Daniel Wosk, Julia Goudkova, Shai Josopov, Sigal Kleynerman and Daniel Milner. (photo from CFHU Vancouver)

Israel’s best “natural resource” is its people. On July 16, at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, four speakers, representing diverse segments of Israeli society, gave TED Talk-style presentations before a sold-out crowd at the Jerusalem: City of Gold and Tech event. The common denominator of the speakers was their connection to Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Presented by Canadian Friends of Hebrew University (CFHU) in conjunction with the Jerusalem Foundation and the JCCGV, the evening presented the many ways in which Israel is using its human capital to leverage its place in the world and continue to be the innovative nation for which it has become renowned.

Lior Schillat is the head of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research (JIPR), an organization that collects data on multiple aspects of Jerusalem. Although statistics don’t tell the whole story, the data collected by Schillat’s institute shed a great deal of light on how people in Jerusalem live, work and play. He explained that the city is constantly faced with a power struggle between three groups with very different worldviews: ultra-Orthodox Jews, Arabs and “the general public.” These groups have not only diverse needs and interests but also huge variances in almost every part of daily life. JIPR attempts to use the data they collect to influence lawmakers to try to minimize conflicts and use the city’s diversity to empower everyone, said Schillat, “instead of the zero-sum game we used to play, where we win and the others lose. We want to turn Jerusalem into a win-win for everyone.”

Schillat’s optimism was shared by the second presenter, Maya Halevy, director of the Bloomfield Museum of Science in Jerusalem. Although her goal is to promote an interest in and love of science, her ultimate objective is to ensure that Israel has a workforce equipped for the future. She explained the programs in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) that her museum provides to all segments of Jerusalem’s population.

“We need to make connections with families and students,” she said. “Over 200,000 Arab and ultra-Orthodox visitors use our museum. We serve all communities with STEM literacy.”

Halevy said that, while it is easier to attract ultra-Orthodox families to the museum, Arab families as a whole stay away but they send their children through school programs. Her message, similar to Schillat’s, was that Israel will thrive when all segments of the population are educated and have equal chances to be successful.

Meanwhile, Yonatan Avraham is living his dream of becoming a physicist and an entrepreneur. He is an example of someone who is thriving because of the education he is receiving at Hebrew U. He is also the beneficiary of Toronto philanthropist Seymour Schulich’s scholarship program. Avraham expressed his gratitude regarding the place where he is studying.

“I am at the intersection of three unique resources that are ecosystems for innovation: the academic knowledge at Hebrew U, Jerusalem as a municipality supportive of start-up companies and a young, dynamic student atmosphere,” he said. “The combination has produced many innovators who are able to take their ideas to market and grow the Israeli economy.”

Helping smart people turn their ideas into companies that make money is how the final speaker of the night fit in. Tamir Huberman serves in several capacities at Yissum, Hebrew U’s technology transfer company. He works with researchers who are constantly asking the question, “How can I make this better?” What “this” is depends on the scientist, he said, but, with Israeli chutzpah, tachlis (getting to the point quickly), problem-solving ability and the pressure of existential threats fueling the process, Huberman explained that Israel is producing many great companies. Yissum is the exclusive owner of all intellectual property produced at Hebrew U and has created 120 spin-off companies since its creation in 1964. Profitable for the university, Yissum helps monetize the brain-power Halevy nurtures, Schillat influences and Avraham exemplifies.

Bridging STEM gender gap

LeadWith’s leadership team at one of the organization’s events, left to right: co-founders Shira Weinberg and Dalit Heldenberg and managing director Aviv Ziv. (photo by Hadas Eldar Photography)

STEM-related women’s groups are popping up all over the world – and Israel is no exception. In fact, the country is a leader in this area.

Shira Weinberg and Dalit Heldenberg co-started LeadWith, a group for women like them – women interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and seeking camaraderie.

Weinberg, a senior product manager at Microsoft, started out as a software developer while in the Israel Defence Forces’ marine core, and then worked and studied as a software engineer for five years. She’s been with Microsoft for nine years, first as an engineer and then as a product manager.

“As a woman in the industry, I always felt like there aren’t many women,” said Weinberg. “At the beginning, I got used to it and I figured that’s how it is in this area and that’s OK. But, after a few years in the industry, I realized it doesn’t have to be like that.

“That’s one of the reasons I started LeadWith, and I’m also doing some other stuff related to promoting girls and women in the tech industry.”

Raised by a father who worked in the industry in Herzliya, Weinberg was much more familiar with computers than were most of her friends. She went into computer science in high school, which paved the way to her position in the IDF.

Like Weinberg, Heldenberg also started her career as a software engineer. “As a kid, I was always attracted to computers more than the others,” said Heldenberg. “I knew that this is what I wanted to learn, computer science.”

Both young women feel strongly that there is no reason the gender gap should be as big as it is today.

“As you look higher and higher in management positions, there are fewer women,” said Weinberg. “This is something we want to change. And this is one of the main reasons I wanted to lead this change.”

Heldenberg added, “Even when I studied computer science, I’d always see too few women in this field. When I was learning high school physics and when I studied computer science, I was always missing women. We want to see more women wanting to be in management roles.”

Weinberg and Heldenberg understand that, in order to create this change, they need to provide mentorship to other women. They now have bi-monthly get-togethers that include networking and education sessions.

“We found a lot of demand from women for these kinds of events,” said Heldenberg. “At the first event, we weren’t sure how many women would come. We planned for about 50, but ended up with 200 attendees.

“We are currently doing three types of activities. One, the meet-ups, where we usually have 100 to 200 women come.

“We also have the mentoring program, where we hold events also every two months. The mentoring events are smaller in terms of size, but we have our team of mentors all volunteering and joining in for the events. We hold sessions of one-on-one mentoring conversations for around 30 minutes…. For each mentoring event, we have about 25 mentees.”

The third activity is an accelerator program for women entrepreneurs who are at the end stages of launching their start-up. In the first program, they had 13 entrepreneurs. It involved nine full days of sessions over nine weeks, with each day focused on different tools relevant to entrepreneurs.

“At the end, we had a big demo day with important people in the industry,” said Heldenberg.

With more than 1,600 people now involved with LeadWith, it is clear that they are filling a previous void and that their approach is working.

“At the events, we put a lot of focus on networking,” said Weinberg. “We usually have a short networking session before the main session begins. We make sure every woman will talk with one or two women she hasn’t met before … that really helps them know more women in the industry and creates more conversations.

“Always after these kinds of events, you hear good stories about things that happen because of the networking and the new connections. Of course, you get to know other women in the industry.

“Also, at the time when a woman wants to change roles, she can draw upon the extensive connections she has gained at our events. You can never know what will come out of this kind of connection. We always hear great stories.”

LeadWith’s focus is both on connecting women who are already in the industry, as well as those who studied computer science or technology but, for one reason or another, did not go on to work in the field. The organization hopes to draw these latter women back into the field.

“A month ago, we did a hackathon in collaboration with another organization, called Cyber Girls,” which brings computer science to those around 16 and 17-years old, said Weinberg. “They brought the girls and we brought the women, and we divided into teams that included both women from the industry and the girls. It was a few hours. There were multiple teams. Each team had a big mission and a lot of tasks along the way – quizzes and such – to figure out solutions that involve writing code.

“What was amazing was that each team in this hackathon was … 10 teenaged girls and a woman from our community, and the quizzes they had to do were really tough. The young girls were very ambitious, they couldn’t get the answers from us. It was really good to see that. They are very smart.”

LeadWith is a nonprofit organization and volunteers are an integral part in whatever they do, said Heldenberg. “We get some help in posting events in certain offices, [donations of] snacks and drinks for events, those kinds of things, from Microsoft, Google and Wix.”

Both Heldenberg and Weinberg think there are multiple reasons for the lack of women in STEM fields, from how children are raised, the educational system and society as a whole. They also are concerned that, if they spread themselves too thin, they will achieve less. As such, they have opted to focus, for now, on industry women in their 20s to 40s. For more information, visit leadwith.org.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

The future of Jewish learning

A picture from Smart Money, a study intended to help the Jewish community navigate the high-tech world. (photo by Lewis Kassel courtesy of Moishe House)

By day, Liora Brosbe is the family engagement officer for the Jewish Federation of the East Bay in Berkeley, Calif., where she reaches out to the community with a menu of opportunities for “connecting to Jewish life and each other.” But when she’s not at work, Brosbe’s main job is raising three kids, ages 2, 6 and 8. Their home? A laboratory for Jewish learning strategies.

“Yes, they’re little Petri dishes,” their mom, who is also a psychotherapist, said with a laugh. “Like most families, screen time is a huge issue at our house, both for time and content, but I tell families it’s also an amazing opportunity for low-barrier Jewish engagement.”

With the avalanche of new technologies – many of them being tapped for Jewish learning – educators, funders and parents are often befuddled about where to invest their money and their kids’ or students’ time. A recent report on the implications of the wave of educational technology and digital engagement is designed to guide the Jewish community through this complex space.

Sponsored by the Jim Joseph Foundation and the William Davidson Foundation, Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy examines many of these innovations and provides suggestions for navigating the high-tech world. The study’s recommendations include using virtual and augmented reality (a user could, for example, experience the splitting of the Red Sea); creating games based on alternative scenarios for “Jewish futures,” such as rebuilding Jewish life after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple; offering opportunities for students to learn coding and other technological skills, which can foster connectedness among Jewish youths and introduce them to Israeli high-tech companies; and increasingly using video, music, podcasting and other platforms.

The report is garnering far more attention than expected, according to the sponsors.

“We did not originally intend for this to be a public report,” said Barry Finestone, president and chief executive officer of the Jim Joseph Foundation, “but the substance of the findings and recommendations really challenge us, as funders, to think strategically, creatively and collaboratively about how we can utilize educational technology and digital engagement to advance our Jewish educational missions.”

For the report, Lewis J. Bernstein and Associates interviewed 50 experts, investors and educators from both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds to create the recommendations.

“It’s a huge media marketplace out there and most Jews are exposed to the same information as the rest of the world,” said Lewis J. Bernstein, a former producer of Sesame Street and the report’s lead researcher. “Parents and educators have difficult choices to make, and Jewish learning and wisdom compete with the secular world.”

Galilee as a food-tech hub

Former chief scientist of Israel Avi Hasson, left, and MK Dr. Erel Margalit. (photo from Noa Yaar)

Having the Upper Galilee be the world’s food-tech hub is the dream of Israeli Member of Knesset Erel Margalit, who recently announced he will run for leadership of the Labour party. And the work has started in the form of Israel Initiative 2020 (ii2020).

Leading the establishment and development of the food-tech hub in Kiryat Shmona is Michal Drayman, a partner and chief financial officer of Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP). She has 11 years of high-tech experience and 14 years’ experience in the agro-bio medical activity area of investment.

For Drayman, ii2020 is her volunteer job, and she describes her role as “vice-chairman.” The initiative started up nearly four years ago, focusing much of its work in Israel’s upper north and south.

“We decided to focus on agri-food development in the Eastern Galilee, which is made up of a group of 22 municipalities, from Tiberius in the south, up to Metula in the north and the Golan Heights in the east,” she told the Independent.

They began working with the region in January 2014, holding brainstorm sessions and doing about six months of research with 10 leaders from the region to pinpoint a focus, which became agriculture.

“Anything that can be grown on earth can be grown in the Eastern Galilee,” said Drayman. “Because of the difference in height, climate, water and land, it allows them to grow anything from tropical things to cherries, apples and everything in between.

“We also discovered that the area already has a lot of activity when it comes to agro-bio research – in particular, with Migal, a foundation founded in the early ’70s that has about 115 employees, 65 PhDs and about 50 laboratories developing food and agro-bio activity.”

With Tel-Hai College to develop the academic focus – most of its 5,000 students are studying agriculture, bio-technology, food and nutrition – the region is well-positioned in the field.

As Drayman and team sought an even more specific focus, they decided on medical food, which means any food promoting health and preventing illness. “With this, we’re taking into consideration modified food, functional food, macro-bio activities, and how it will affect us concerning nutrition going forward,” said Drayman.

While work in this field is being done on a large scale by the Volcani Centre, as well as by other institutions throughout Israel, it has rarely reached the market. It took Drayman only six months to get consensus from area municipalities that medical food would be their focus, after which she began on the year-long process of writing up a plan.

“Bio-technology and health, there’s so much to do that, with the right investment, we see the potential of growing something significant in that area,” she said. “In food tech, there’s a lot of innovation and research, but not a lot of invested money. Much of the work that is done is void of being able to monetize it. That’s true of the world, not just in Israel.”

Looking at how food companies impact health by what they put into the food they make – ingredients such as sugar and salt, for example – Drayman and team are working with the industry to change regulations, especially food labeling. The goal is to give customers clear information about the nutrition content in the product they are buying.

“The idea is that companies cannot just [add] sugar whenever they don’t have another ingredient and want to fill [the product] with something very cheap,” said Drayman. “We’re going to show … a red stop light on food. If it has too much salt or sugar, it will be identified on the wrapping.

“The food industry is going through significant change,” she added. “Regulations, GDP talks, and the fact that people are more educated and understanding about what we’re eating, will affect how we’ll be when we get older. If we’re going to make sure we’re eating proper nutrition, then probably we’re going to affect a lot of the illnesses and reduce the amount of obesity.”

Exactly three years from the initiation of the project, with the 22 municipalities participating, the government approved about 80% of Drayman and team’s submitted budget. Next, they will speak with various multinational companies to see if they will invest in research and development in the area.

“One of the things that’s already in process is the movement of the Volcani Centre that is currently in the Tel Aviv area to the Galilee,” said Drayman. “It was declared, but I’m less optimistic about how fast it will happen. But it was declared it will happen, which is huge, because we’re talking about 5,000 scientific people doing research. So, moving that kind of activity would be significant.”

The municipality of Kiryat Shmona has allocated a building to house the new food innovation centre and funds are being collected to allow for the renovations, with Jewish National Fund picking up half of the $6 million tab.

“Basically, we want it to be an iconic building in the centre of Kiryat Shmona, something that will be visible from the road,” said Drayman. “It will have an accelerator for food-tech activities and activities with kids and education – trying to have two percent of top-tier students working together with the accelerator, incubator and entrepreneurship … being part of a success story.

“We’re going to also have music, because we don’t want to have it only as a high-tech building. We want to make sure we have regular people being part of it, living the scene, and not isolating this kind of activity.”

To raise the remainder of the needed funds, Drayman is working to create a consortium of five multinational companies that would run the accelerator and, subsequently, create and run an incubator.

“The accelerator, as opposed to regular accelerators that only do mentoring and primarily help when you’ve started to build a theme … we want to do proof of concept with our accelerator,” said Drayman. “We’d like to invest money, not only time and support, from high-tech people. We want to actually invest money and run the project for four to 12 months to identify an actual R&D project or research and bring it to commercialization.

“Assuming it’s able to be commercialized, then we’d like to take it into the space of an incubator and invest larger amounts of money to be able to run the project until an actual company is created.”

As of press time, IBM was considering providing data analytics.

For more information or to get involved with ii2020, contact Noa Yaar at noa@ii2020.org or 1-781-530-8025.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.