The inventor of the optophone, Prof. Zeev Zalevsky from Bar-Ilan, won the 2012 Young Researcher Award in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the Nano-Israel Conference 2012

The "optophone" is an optical sensing system that can sense various biomedical parameters, such as blood pressure, pulse and blood sugar - from a distance * The second part of Prof. Zalevsky's research deals with the development of nanophotonic components in silicon

Prof. Zeev Zalevsky (41), who currently serves as a full professor at the Faculty of Engineering at Bar-Ilan University, is the first winner of the "2012 Young Researcher in the Field of Nanosciences and Nanotechnology" award. The award was given to Prof. Zalevsky as part of the "Nano-Israel 2012" conference, by the scientific committee of the nano centers in Israel and approved by the co-chairmen of the Nano-Israel conference.

Among the projects in which Prof. Zalevsky was involved: the development of the "Optophone" system, an optical sensing system that can sense various biomedical parameters such as blood pressure, pulse, intraocular pressure, estimate the amount of alcohol and sugar in the blood and all this from a distance. Among the biomedical applications of the system that have successfully passed an initial laboratory trial, are the monitoring of blood glucose levels, heart rate monitoring and continuous blood pressure monitoring. The responses to the development from the defense and medical markets were extremely enthusiastic, and the business potential is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the field of nanophotonics, Prof. Zalevsky's research is devoted to two main parts. The first deals with the development of spatial components, such as a slide, on which nanometric structures are produced. "When these components are illuminated with light, they change the form in which light continues to advance in space after passing through the slide. The change can be as part of different applications. For example, in one of the studies we added nanometric structures to the surface of a contact lens, or cataract lens, to solve a vision problem that comes to all of us with age and which is called presbyopia (the loss of the eye's ability to change the focal length of the eye, which prevents the eye from focusing on objects at different distances)".

The second part of Prof. Zalevsky's research deals with the development of nanophotonic components in silicon as a replacement for existing processing components in microelectronics. "Our development focuses on the realization of photonic chips that include transistors (modulators) and basic logic gates. Some of them include the introduction of nanoparticles whose position control (performed by voltage or by a light source) affects the intensity of the light passing through the nano component. Some of the components include special structures (such as rings in which the light rotates or special nanorods or structures made of different materials and not just silicon), which affect in a controlled way the splitting of the light at the component's exit. The goal in all these developments is to have a basic processing unit that is faster than what is available in microelectronics, that consumes less power and, above all, has less coupling noise between different information conductors that are in physical proximity to each other. Some of the chips developed by us are all-optical (meaning both the information passing through the component and the command signal are optical), some are hybrid, so that either the information is optical, but the control of the component is electrical, or vice versa."

Prof. Zalevsky received a bachelor's degree (B.Sc) and a direct doctorate (Ph.D) in electronic engineering from Tel Aviv University in 1993 and 1996 respectively. He currently serves as a full professor in the Faculty of Engineering at Bar-Ilan University, where he arrived after several years of experience as VP of Development and Technologies and founding entrepreneur in several Israeli start-up companies. Prof. Zalevsky has a research record in research fields that include optical super resolution, nano photonics, biomedical photonics, optical computation and microwave photonics. He published 5 books and edited 3 in international publishing houses, wrote over 25 book chapters, more than 280 articles in leading international newspapers and registered over 25 patents.

In 2007, Zeev received the Krill Prize given by the Wolf Foundation and in 2008 the prize of the International Commission on Optics (ICO Prize) and the medal named after Abe (one of the fathers of optics) for his contribution to the field of optical super resolution. In 2009 he received the Yolodan Award for advancing technologies in medicine and in 2010 he was chosen to be a Fellow of a large optical organization called SPIE for his contribution to the field of super resolution and imaging. In 2011 he received an international award for young researchers on behalf of SAOT (School for Advanced Optical Technologies) in Germany for a significant contribution to the development of technologies in the field of biomedicine and immediately after that the Taubenblatt Award for excellence in biomedical research. In 2012 we will be chosen to be a Fellow of another large optical organization called OSA.

The "Nano-Israel 2012" conference and the related exhibition focus this year on innovations and business opportunities in the fields of energy, water, environment, nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, nanobio and nanomedicine. The event (held between March 26 and 27, 2012 at the David Intercontinental Hotel in Tel Aviv) attracted 1500 participants from Israel and the world, including venture capitalists, private funds, institutional and corporate investors, regulatory, technology and development personnel, government decision makers, as well as officials Academy of scientists and researchers.

"Nano-Israel 2012" was held in collaboration with INNI - the Israeli National Nanotechnology Initiative - and the nanotechnology centers at the various universities and was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Nano Israel conference website