Three faculty members from the Hebrew University will receive Kay Awards for successful research that has resulted in commercial applications around the world
Three faculty members from the Hebrew University won this year's Kay Award for Innovative Developments for long-term research that resulted in very successful commercial applications abroad.
Prof. Haim Rabinovitch from the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the Hebrew University was announced as the first place winner among the faculty members. Rabinovitch, the former rector of the university, is recognized for his innovative developments in genetics and breeding technologies. During the last 25 years, Prof. Rabinovitch's breeding team invested many efforts that resulted in the development of a profitable seed industry in Israel. The export of tomato, onion and chive seeds developed by Prof. Rabinovitch and the research team generates annual revenues of approximately fifty million dollars for leading seed companies in Israel and the world, which pay substantial royalties to the Hebrew University.
Today, Prof. Rabinovitch leads the development of a special project for growing garlic, as well as the development of plant improvement technology that will allow seed producers to easily adapt any plant variety to changing conditions. Both projects were recently sold by the Hebrew University's technological commercialization arm, to start-up companies founded on the basis of these technologies.
Second place among the Hebrew University faculty members this year was awarded to Prof. Dan Gazit, head of the Skeletal Biotechnology Laboratory at the Hebrew University's Medical Campus for bringing about a breakthrough in the field of tissue engineering, which focused on the regeneration of skeletal tissues using adult stem cells isolated from bone marrow or fat tissue. This breakthrough is the result of many years of research that may bring a solution to many patients suffering from severe skeletal injuries. TheraCell, a biotechnology start-up from California, bought the rights to commercialize the stem cell technology from the application.
Dr. Raanan Fatal from the School of Engineering and Computer Science will receive the third prize for developing a method for image enhancement based on the second generation of Wavelets. This promising technology for improving sharpness was bought by Adobe and is already integrated into the company's leading Photoshop software.
Kay awards are given every year as part of the events of the Board of Trustees of the Hebrew University. The ceremony will be held on Tuesday, June 21. The awards were first presented in 1994 by Isaac Kay from England, a prominent industrialist in the pharmaceutical industry, with the aim of encouraging faculty members, staff and students of the university to develop innovative methods and developments with commercial potential that would generate profit for the university and society.
Efission is the leading technology commercialization company in the world with products worth over two billion dollars that were developed at the Hebrew University and are sold around the world every year by companies. Since it was established in 1964, Prassom has registered over 7000 patents covering more than 2000 developments that emerged at the Hebrew University.
