received the first prize of NIS 50; Second place was won by the GSM code cracker, who developed a wireless phone without a range limit
In the picture: the winners - Yair Koren (right) and Yron Ben Shoshan (left)
Two Technion students who developed an uncrackable defense against software hacking won the first prize in the "BizTech" entrepreneurship competition at the Technion. Second place went to doctoral student Elad Barkan, who developed a wireless phone with no range limit. Third place went to a group that developed a method for focusing the sound waves.
The students Yaron Ben Shoshan and Yair Koren founded the company "Aprotect", which offers software protection. Using their method, it is possible to remove an essential piece of code from the software without harming its performance, and place it on a secure server. According to them, this completely prevents software hacking and copying. The market value of their method is estimated at half a billion dollars, in a global market suffering from the scourge of piracy.
Technion doctoral student Elad Barkan, who became famous at the time when he managed to crack the code of the GSM cellular network, came in second place in the competition. The "Axiopa" company, which he founded together with his father Moti, offers a wireless phone without a range limit. According to the inventors, it will be possible to take the wireless home phone to work and even abroad, and talk from anywhere in the world for the cost of one local call, over the Internet.
Amit Barzilai, David Zlotnik and Dr. Zvi Zlotnik developed a directional transmission and reception system, which will allow, among other things, watching and listening to television by one person, when other people are sitting around him who will not hear anything. This group, "D-Start", came in third place.
The judging committee for the semi-final stage of the competition included senior officials from the business scene in Israel, such as Dr. Ed Malevsky (Gemini), Zohar Gendler (Technion incubator), Moshe Shaf (Vertex), Asif Shtopman (Niyot incubator) and Prof. Uzi DeHaan From the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion.
More than a hundred business plans were submitted to the competition, the first of its kind in Israel, held at the initiative of the students from the Technion "Takia" forum.
