New Worlds: Technion chosen as HP research partner

Institute is one of only 33 universities in the world to receive a 2008 HP Labs Innovation Research Award.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
technion 88 (photo credit: )
technion 88
(photo credit: )
The Technion-Israel Institute is one of only 33 universities in the world to receive a 2008 HP Labs Innovation Research Award, intended to encourage open collaboration with HP Labs resulting in high-impact research. The Technion will collaborate with HP Labs, HP's central research arm, on a research initiative focused on the detection of meaningful patterns in time-oriented event data from a wide variety of sources, such as traces of computing systems, transmissions in a communication network, biomedical measurements of patients and expression levels of proteins in metabolic pathways. Prof. Ron Pinter, author of the winning proposal titled "An integrated framework for the knowledge-based and graph-theoretical analysis of time-oriented event sequences" and a professor in the computer science department, will lead the collaboration project with HP Labs, along with Prof. Yuval Shahar of Ben-Gurion University's medical informatics research center. "As Israel's leading technological university, the Technion places emphasis on research at the interface between life sciences and engineering," said Prof. Moshe Eizenberg, its executive vice president for research. "Pinter's initiative is an excellent demonstration of such an interdisciplinary activity. The collaboration with HP is extremely important to us, since we are encouraging interaction with global companies. The strong ties between the Technion and HP are further demonstrated by the fact that HP Labs Israel chose our campus for their site," he said. "Around the world, HP partners with the best and brightest in industry and academia to drive innovation and set the agenda for breakthrough technologies designed to change the world," said Prith Banerjee, HP vice president of research and director of HP Labs. The selection in Israel, he said, demonstrates the Technion's outstanding achievement and will help accelerate HP Labs' global research agenda. HP reviewed more than 450 proposals from 200 universities in 28 countries. A key element of each award will be on-campus support for one graduate student researcher, who can apply to the HP Labs internship program in 2009. FEEDING THE POOR Scientists have learned how to fortify the cassava plant - a staple root crop in many developing countries - with enough vitamins, minerals and protein to provide a day's worth of nutrition in a single meal. The international research team has further engineered the cassava plant so it can resist the most damaging viral threats, and are refining methods to reduce the level of cyanogens - substances that yield cyanide if not properly removed from the food before consumption. The reduction of cyanogens also can shorten the time it takes to process the plant, typically three to six days. Studies also are under way to extend the plant's shelf life so it can be stored or shipped. The product is expected to be field tested in at least two African nations by 2010. Funded by more than $12.1 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the research is led by plant biologist Prof. Richard Sayre at Ohio State University. Cassava is the primary source of calories for an estimated 800 million people worldwide, including 250 million in sub-Saharan Africa. But the plentiful crop has several drawbacks. It is composed almost entirely of carbohydrates so it doesn't provide complete nutrition. The roots can be banked in the ground for up to three years, but the plant must undergo time-consuming processing to remove compounds that generate cyanide. Unprocessed roots also deteriorate within 48 hours after harvest. And a plant disease caused by the geminivirus reduces yields by up to 50% in many areas. The next step will be to combine some or all of the bioengineered traits into a single, farmer-preferred cultivar, with the goal of developing cassava varieties that carry all the improvements. "We've begun field trials in Puerto Rico to make sure the plants perform as well outside as they do in greenhouses, and hope to start field trials in Nigeria and Kenya by 2009," Sayre said.