Singapore To Invest 20 Million Singapore Dollars in
Tissue Engineering Research at the Technion

Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF) and Ministry of Education announced on Friday, February 20, 2009, that they will invest 20 million Singapore dollars (about US$ 15 million) in tissue engineering research at the Technion. The research will be a joint project of Technion and Singapore researchers. In total, they will invest 40 million dollars over five years in support for the Technion and the Weizmann Institute, which will work to advance cooperation between the two states.

Representing the Technion at the signing ceremony was Technion Senior Executive Vice President, Prof. Paul Feigin; and Dr. Dror Seliktar of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering (who will lead the project on behalf of the Technion).

The research centre, which will be set up in Singapore, will serve the Technion researchers as well as those from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the National Technological University of Singapore (NTU).

The NRF heads said that despite the economic depression, their government will invest a considerable sum in its fourth Research Centre of Excellence in order to preserve its economic competitiveness.

Technion Executive Vice President for Research, Prof. Oded Shmueli, said that it is anticipated that research results in this field will influence the development of advanced therapies for heart disease.
 
The NRF stressed that Singapore’s investments in its Research Centres of Excellence are for the long-term and that these investments are important because, in light of developing markets such China and India, which are also devoting similar attention to research and development, it is important for Singapore to differentiate itself in specific research fields.
 
The new Research Centre of Excellence in Tissue Regeneration will employ some 25 researchers and staff. In addition, it will employ seven Technion researchers – Prof. Havazelet Bianco-Peled, Prof. Lior Gepstein, Prof. Eyal Zussman, Dr. Dvir Yellin, Dr. Shulamit Levenberg, Prof. Marcelle Machluf and Dr. Dror Seliktar – who will be researching various areas of tissue engineering.

NUS President, Prof. Tan Chorh Chuan, speaking about the NRF investments, said: "We believe that the synergies between the researchers will lead to very interesting discoveries, that, in my opinion, in the long run, will assist us in finding new solutions for our patients. We hope that in building these scientific and technological capabilities, we will strengthen the infrastructure of scientific research and will train personnel who will be able to lead research in these very important fields. If we will do this, over time, we can build up Singapore as a center for scientific research and development. It is incumbent upon us to do this in Singapore because we are a small nation. In light of China and India, who are becoming leading commercial players on the international scene, Singapore must differentiate itself and it can do this through long-term investments such as these. Thus Singapore can become a hothouse for innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Technion spokesman, Amos Levav: 052-4524873

Images imprinted on light rays and propagating in free space lose their sharpness after a short distance – a phenomenon called diffraction. Researchers from the Technion and the Weizmann Institute discover a method of eliminating this phenomenon in a special thermal atomic medium

Researchers from the Technion and the Weizmann Institute have found a way to eliminate the phenomenon of diffraction, which causes images carried by light rays to lose their sharpness. Their work was recently published in the scientific journal “Physical Review Letters.”

“We are at the height of an information revolution and an enormous effort is being invested in improving technology for processing, transmitting and storing information,” the researchers explain. “One of the most fascinating research areas is all-optical data processing, in which researchers explore systems that process optical data without having to convert it to electronic or digital data. These systems are expected to dramatically speed up data processing. In particular, there is a lot of interest in transmission and processing of images. One of the difficulties in implementing all-optical systems for image processing is the distortion that occurs to the images during their movement through open space due to diffraction. The more data the image stores and the higher its resolution, the faster the distortion is. In imaging systems, such as a camera or the eye, lenses are used in order to recover the original image, but such recovery depends on the quality and size of the lens and cannot be used in many cases.”

In the recently-published work, the Technion researchers – doctoral student Ofer Firstenberg, Dr. Moshe Shuker and Prof. Amiram Ron, plus Prof. Nir Davidson of the Weizmann Institute – present a special atomic medium, in which the optical diffraction is completely eliminated. The medium, called “electromagnetically induced transparency medium,” contains a dilute vapor of atoms at room temperature. In this medium, it is possible to cause the image to travel at a speed that is 100,000 times slower than the speed of light and to utilize the thermal movement of the atoms in order to “drag” or “push” the light moving through them. The researchers discovered that by fine tuning of the interaction between atoms and light, it is possible to cause the atoms to push the diffracted light rays back to their original path. Every image which enters this medium will move through it and emerge on the other side without distortion.

Many future applications can utilize this method. Optical correlation between two images can enable rapid, automatic identification of patterns, such as objects or people, in images. For this purpose, it is necessary to slow down the image movement and prevent distortion caused by diffraction. In addition, by this means, it is possible to trap light rays in a small area inside the atomic vapor. For optical microscopes, diffraction is one of the main limitations and preventing it will enable the improvement of the microscopes under certain conditions.

Pictured: An explanation of the process