Lockheed Martin in research deal with Israel tech company Yissum

Showing in the picture from Left: Bob Trachtenberg, Shai Arkin, Yaacov Michlin, Menahem Ben-Sasson, Joshua Shani, Karen Duneman, Tamir Huberman

(Reuters) - Lockheed Martin agreed to conduct joint research with Yissum, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has the option to purchase exclusive licenses to products resulting from their research.

The research will focus on material sciences, quantum information science - which combines information science with quantum mechanics - and other areas of joint interest, the companies said on Monday. They did not provide financial details.

"This is another step in Lockheed Martin Israel's long-term plans to develop additional partnerships outside the defense market and partner with the industry and academia in Israel," said Joshua Shani, chief executive of Lockheed Martin Israel.

Lockheed Martin in August set up a separate subsidiary in Israelfocused on technology. It is working with EMC and Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel on joint cyber security research projects.

הסיפור המופלא על הסרטן שנעלם מעצמו

אישה תושבת הצפון סבלה מגידול סרטני אלים ברגלה, והרופאים המליצו על כריתת הרגל כסיכוי כמעט יחיד לשרוד את המחלה. אחרי שהניתוח בוטל 3 פעמים מסיבות שונות, היא החליטה להישאר בבית ולהתפלל. כשהיא באה לביקורת הרופאים נדהמו: הסרטן נעלם

http://mobile.mako.co.il/news-israel/health/Article-698139f89a95341004.htm

שי גל | חדשות 2 | פורסם 03/01/14 22:22 

"אם לי היו מספרים את הסיפור הזה הייתי אומר שהמטופלת והרופא שניהם פסיכופתים, זה לא יכול להיות" - כך אומר רופא בכיר במחלקה האורתופדית-אונקולוגית באיכילוב, ד"ר יעקב ביקלס, על הסיפור שקרה לתרז דאוד, מורה למדעים מחיפה. למורה מהכרמל היה גידול סרטני אלים ברגל, שפשוט נעלם מעצמו, ללא טיפול. "הרגשתי כאבים ברגל, בקרסול, עם נפיחות. בהתחלה התעלמתי", מספרת תרז. "עשו צילום, וגילו שיש שם גידול גדול, בערך בגודל של תפוז, משהו שרואים ממרחק של 10 מטרים", מוסיף ד"ר ביקלס. נקבעה לה מיד ביופסיה, שהראתה כי מדובר בגידול ממאיר ואלים. "זה היה שוק גדול", נזכרת תרז, "באותו רגע לא חשבתי שמדובר עלי". במצב כזה הפתרון שמאפשר ריפוי הוא קטיעה של הרגל. "התחלתי לחשוב על איך יראו החיים שלי בלי רגל. שלחתי צילומים ובדיקות לארה"ב, ושם הרופאים אמרו אותו דבר: קטיעה", אמרה.

הניתוח בוטל שלוש פעמים

לתרז נקבע ניתוח לקטיעת הרגל באיכילוב, אך ביום הניתוח הוא התבטל מסיבות טכניות, שאינן קשורות לחולה, ונקבע לה מועד לניתוח אחר. "לא באו לקחת אותי, ואחרי שעה אמרו שיש מקרים דחופים. אמרתי שאני לא יכולה לחכות עוד ואני הולכת הביתה", משחזרת תרז את יום הניתוח שלא היה.

שלוש פעמים התבטל הניתוח שנקבע לתרז. "מספרים לי שאימה של תרז חלתה סמוך לאשפוז שלה והיא החליטה להיות לידה", סיפר מנהל המחלקה על הניתוח השלישי שלא התקיים. "היא ביטלה את הניתוח, ואמרה שאם שלוש פעמים רצופות הניתוח נדחה זה סימן שהיא לא צריכה ניתוח. היה לי ברור שהיא הולכת למות תוך זמן לא ארוך. היא אישה משכילה וחכמה, שפויה, וכשאדם מקבל כזאת החלטה כשהוא מבין את המשמעות שלה אנחנו מכבדים אותה".

תרז חזרה לביתה בעוספיא, ושלושה חודשים לאחר מכן היא נכנסה שוב לחדר של ד"ר ביקלס. "שאלתי אותה מה קרה, היא חייכה חיוך רחב וגדול ואומרת 'התפללתי'. שלחתי אותה לצילום והגידול הצטמצם בצורה דרמטית. אין דבר כזה, גידול כזה זה חסר תקדים, אני לא ראיתי דבר כזה ולא שמעתי על דבר כזה. אני לא מכיר סרטן שנסוג מהסוג הזה".

"זאת תופעה בלתי סבירה ובלתי מתועדת"

הבדיקה הראתה - אין סרטן

צילום׃ חדשות 2

תרז נשלחה לביופסיה נוספת על פי בקשתה, וראש המחלקה אורתופדית-אונקולוגית עשה את הבדיקה בעצמו. התשובה היתה: אין ברגל שום דבר סרטני. "הייתי בהלם ששמעתי את התוצאה, לא האמנתי. שאלתי את הרופא אם זאת טעות", היא מספרת על תוצאות הבדיקה. "זאת תופעה בלתי סבירה ובלתי מתועדת", מדגיש ד"ר ביקלס.

"לא הרגשתי שאני חולה. שידרתי לכולם שאני לא חולה", היא מספרת לרופא כשהוא ומשפחתו באו אליה לביתה שבכרמל. היה ברור שאין בבית חומר שמרפא סרטן - ולנס הזה אין תשובה, גם לא לתרז. "כל פעם שהתפללתי הרגשתי שלווה וביטחון. היה לי פחד, אבל גם שלווה", היא מוסיפה.

"תחום השפעת הדברים שקורים בנפשו של אדם על דברים שקורים בגופו זה דבר שאנחנו לא מבינים בו כמעט כלום. לדעתי זה הסיפור של תרז", ד"ר ביקלס אומר. "אני איש פרקטי. אני מנתח סרטן, אני לא מחפש פתרונות מהשמיים, אבל כל מה שעשינו בשביל תרז זה לחכות. היא למעשה לא טופלה. אני איש מדעי, אבל אם יש משהו שהוא לא מדעי זה אנשים".

IMPROVED IMAGE BLUR REMOVAL

The Technology below is available for License. Contact Tamir Huberman at Yissum for more information on the technology

Technology Summary

Fattal Raanan, HUJI, School of Computer Science and Engineering, CS - Computer Vision

Fast method eliminates need for repeated reconstructions of latent image

Categories	Computer Science & Engineering, Imaging/Computer Graphics
Development Stage	Completed
Patent Status	Patent application filed in the United States

Highlights

• In many practical scenarios, such as hand-held cameras or ones mounted on a moving vehicle, it is difficult to eliminate camera shake. Sensor movement during exposure leads to unwanted blur in the acquired image.
• Current approaches are based on repeated reconstructions of the latent image, which makes them slow. Furthermore, many methods rely on explicit assumptions that do not always hold and thus undermine the accuracy of the estimated kernel and deblurred image.
• There is therefore a need for a faster, more accurate method for removing blur in digital images.

Our Innovation

Purely statistical approach to recover blur kernel in motion-blurred natural images by extracting a set of statistics from the input image and using them to recover the blur.

Figure: Kernels estimated by different methods and the resulting deblurred images

Key Features

• More robust and accurate recovery of blur kernel.
• Able to cope well with images containing under-resolved texture and foliage clutter in outdoor scenes.
• Input image only accessed once to extract small set of statistics, so the technique depends mostly on blur kernel size and does not scale with the image dimensions.
• Method achieves highly accurate results in scenarios that challenge other approaches, at fast running times.
• Method does not rely on the presence or detection of well-defined step edges at multiple orientations as required by other methods.

Development Milestones

• Seeking licensing opportunities

The Opportunity

• By 2016, the digital photography market should reach $82.5 billion.
• Market researchers have predicted that by 2013, nearly 70% of handsets sold in the United States will come equipped with a camera of 2-megapixels or more and that consumers will respond to this trend by making greater use of mobile imaging software, including photo-editing.

Contact Tamir Huberman (LinkedIn Profile)

CONTENT-SPECIFIC IMAGE ENHANCEMENT

The Technology below is available for License. Contact Tamir Huberman at Yissum for more information on the technology

Technology Summary

Lischinski Daniel, HUJI, School of Computer Science and Engineering, CS - Computer Vision

Automatically enhances parts of image according to context

Categories	Computer Science & Engineering  Imaging / Computer Graphics
Development Stage	Research complete
Patent Status	Patent application filed in the United States

Highlights

• Digital images captured by non-professional photographers requires effective automatic photo enhancement.
• Most current systems manipulate tone and color over the whole image without understanding and accounting for the content of the image.

Our Innovation

Photo enhancement method that automatically improves the quality of specific image elements such as the sky, human faces, and underexposed salient regions by intelligently taking into account local and global semantics.

Figure 1: Comparison of original on left and results of new method on right

Figure 2: Input images (first left) are compared with our results (second), Photoshop Elements (third), Microsoft Office Picture Manager (fourth) and Google’s Picasa (fifth) 

Key Features

• Intelligently combines a variety of local tone mapping and color correction operations while taking into account image content.
• Using existing robust detectors of sky and people, image areas containing human faces, skin, blue sky and clouds, as well as salient underexposed parts of the scene are subjected to customized enhancement operators.
• Consistently significantly improves the majority of images
• Outperforms the automatic enhancement operators available in several popular products

Development Milestones

• Seeking cooperation for licensing and commercialization

The Opportunity

• Currently, 30 billion images a year are uploaded to Facebook
• Automatic photograph enhancement tools are included in such popular commercial software packages as Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office Picture Manager, Google Picasa, and others.

Contact Tamir Huberman (LinkedIn Profile)

Director of one of the World’s leading tech transfer firm’s, Yissum, visits ACE

Mr. Tamir Huberman visited ACE, Tekes and Finnish ICT companies 19th-20th September.

Mr. Huberman is VP Business Development in the field of computer science and Director of IT at

Yissum, Technology Transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In addition, he is also

the IT Director of ITTN; the Israeli Technology Transfer Organization. Prior to joining Yissum in 2004,

Mr. Huberman was the co-founder of Artigon, served as part of the R&D team at Orgenics (AMEX:

IMA) and as the Head of IP and R&D at MedisEl (NASDAQ: MDTL). He holds a MSc. in structural

biology and a BSc. in biology from the Hebrew University, a diploma in computer & electronics and

has continued his MBA studies at the Hebrew University.

As a part of the visit Tamir held a workshop titled “Commercialization of the University’s Intellectual

Property – Technology Transfer Practices”. The seminar gathered an audience from the major

players of the technology transfer field in Finland.

During the seminar Tamir shared his wide knowledge in how tech transfer organizations can vastly

increase their productivity and results, focusing on the modernization of market-facing

functions. Some of the topics were as follows:

• Use of External Databases for locating potential licensees. Snapshot of modern proactive

marketing & commercialization of patents and know-how

• Use of Social Networks for active marketing

• Demonstration of the TTM (Technology Transfer Management) Software. The software that

was developed for Technology Transfer Management at Yissum and is currently also installed

at 5 additional technology transfer companies in Israel.

• Demonstration of the ITTN (Israel Technology Transfer organization) website portal

The presentations were followed with the panel discussion on "Moving the Needle on Tech Transfer in

Finland – how to Leapfrog Towards World Class", moderated by Will Cardwell.

Panelists were:

- Tamir Hubermann, YISSUM

- Pauli Laitinen, Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship

- Timo Pulli, VTT

- Harry Santamaki, KoppiCatch Inc

- Jari Strandman, IP Finland Ltd

"I am proud that Hebrew University’s technology transfer was given the opportunity to take part in

these important meetings and hope to collaborate with Aalto University in the near future. I believe

that both organizations have a lot to gain from such collaboration on several fields of mutual interest."-

said Mr. Huberman.

Mr. Tamir Huberman was invited by Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship and the TEKES Tuliprogramme.

For more information about Yissum Technology Transfer visithttp://www.yissum.co.il

Text: Zaira Mammadova

Photo: courtesy of www.ittn.org.il

Tamir Huberman - Recent uploads from the Computer Science Department of the Hebrew University

LinkedIN – Does it Truly Deliver? (2nd - Has anything improved??)

Following a lot of Feedback on the first article I wrote on LinkedIn I thought it would be a good time to check on what has changed since...

Anyhow, we all know that LinkedIn went public and indeed the main difference since is that they are doing less modifications and slower than before being purchased. While there have been some GUI modifications and more changes to the Profile are planned in the near future it would seem that not a lot has changed. Let's first take a look at the points I have raised the last time I wrote and see if LinkedIn made any modifications.

Here are some of the points that LinkedIN should consider modifying:

1. In the “Groups” module it is not clear why there is no option to export those contacts at least as the owner of the group.
I am afraid that there is still no way to export contacts in a group

2. In the “Groups” module there is no way to connect data such as files, movies and other material content other than links. Even a simple embedding is not an option.

I am afraid that there is still no change here as well

3. Not clear why I cannot determine the title of the Link I am supplying in the News and why I cannot add pictures or any other materials to news items.
I am happy to say that LinkedIn has improved the link attachment mechanism.

4. In the invitation option in groups it is once again not clear why I can’t use the saved profiles, tags and other search capabilities for adding exactly those contacts that I want.

I am afraid that there is still no change here as well

5. Did you ever find a way to search contacts according to something written in the notes? What if like me you have tons of connections and all you remember is that you wrote a note that you met someone at an exhibition?
I am afraid that there is still no change here as well

6. What about sending mail to more than 50 contacts? Why not have the options like in any normal mailing tool to add those contacts in BCC?
I am afraid that there is still no change here as well

7. How about the exporting option that will include the notes you have written?

I am afraid that there is still no change here as well

8. The “Groups” module should also definitely have an option to have more graphic capabilities in the body of the overview page. It should also allow connection to other company names the same is on the company module.
Again, LinkedIn has changed the GUI and now allows better networking but still no dramatic changes.

So most of the points I have written have not been modified or addressed. I am about to raise some additional points and maybe LinkedIn will have a better answer next time I write:

1. The "Answers" tool is a very powerful tool which if used correctly could provide important leads for any Business Development professional. The only option that should be added here is a better filtration of the contact that are chosen. On the one hand LinkedIn allows 200 contacts to be chosen and on the other there are only 2 very crude filters to choose them which does not make any sense since those are personal 1st degree contacts  Would be better off to have the same filter screen as for any contact which would dramatically improve this tool.

2. Contact with people from Groups that are shared - Now here is something that LinkedIn changed very close to when it went public which has true negative effect. Seems that in the past people that were part of the Group I share could be contacted from the main Contact search. Today the only way to get in touch is to search for them again in the Group member page which is not logical and a major hassle!

3. Attachments - While I can understand that LinkedIn is not interested in people upload of material they are losing out on the fact that they do not allow some sort of Upload. The ability to upload various certificates to the profile could provide much more comprehensive look which is what LinkedIn is interested and hopefully they will find a way to allow such an option in the future.

4. Get More Applications - It is not clear to me why LinkedIn did not open the market for new applications to be developed on the Application part. This has almost stayed constant for so long which makes you wonder... in times where there are huge platforms for application development it is only logical that this portion will have at least hundreds of new applications so where are they??

5. Skills - This is a very important feature that LinkedIn entered and now allow endorsement. The only thing that is not clear is why LinkedIn does not allow search according to Skills as well!

6. Company Pages - I think that LinkedIn tried to develop new functionality to the Company pages which is very helpful although the content is somewhat disappointing  I would guess that adding content to the company pages should be more easily updated from the Profile Page.

7. Matching between Employees and Employers - Now if you want something big I guess that this is the biggest option that I truly hope LinkedIn will take seriously. Today there is not automatic non-biased way to match between employers to employees. We all know the reasons for this:

a) Employees will tend to change their profiles to make themselves more attractive to a particular job of interest.
b) Employers do not give the true factors that are important for them in an employee.
c) The job description is not sufficient in order to make the matching

Taking the above into consideration there is a great need to find ways to try and match between Employers needs and Employees needs in a no biased way. Systems such as MBCD developed by Prof. Itamar Gati from the Hebrew University are a good example for such a methodology which could later be adapted to match between Employers and Employees automatically.

If LinkedIn will take this challenge it could become the best source for job matching on the globe so let's hope they take a hint....

Tamir