The year 2022 marked the recovery from the Covid pandemic. The Technion substantially increased the number of new research grants with a record total of $109M. We also continued our strong performance in tech-transfer. The School of Continuing Education increased its activity in each of its sectors of operation.
Funded Research
Research contracts signed in 2021/22 by the Research Authority amounted to a record $109M. This constitutes a sharp increase from $95M in 2020/21 and it is, even, above the excellent result of $108M of 2019/20. The increase is across almost all sectors of activity, particularly in the EU competitions. The performance in the prestigious ERC competition was outstanding.
Technion researchers submitted to the ISF 198 proposals in 2021/22 and won 67 grants – compared to 216 proposals to the ISF and 73 grants in 2020/21, 180 submissions and 69 grants in 2019/20, and 192 submissions and 82 grants in 2018/19. Overall, the success rate of Technion researchers in ISF competitions continues to be higher than the national rate. In addition, we won 1 out of the 4 new prestigious Mapatz grants of the ISF in science and technology.
We continued in 2021/22 to enhance our contacts with industry. We signed a multi-year strategic partnership with Pfizer concentrating on AI methods for drug development. In addition, we signed multi-year contracts with Google and its subsidiary Verily, and with the Israel Aviation Industry.
The Technion continued to invest heavily in providing new faculty with optimal research infrastructure. Thus, we invested 81M NIS in new faculty research allocations in 2021/22, compared to 74.5M NIS in 2020/21 and 70.5M NIS in 2019/20.
Challenges:
2021/22 was a very good year for us in EU competitions. We can already state that 2022/23 is going to be even better. However, the political crisis in Israel might pose risks regarding our future standing at the EU.
External Aid for Research
In addition to the external funding mentioned above, in 2021/22 the Technion received a total of $18.2M in contributions from donors for specific individual researchers or for the creation of research infrastructures – compared to $22.8M in 2020/21, $12M in 2019/20, and $13M in 2018/19.
Challenges:
Donation grants tend to be focused on a specific field (health care) and are not available to the general population of PIs. To address this the Technion Research Directory was constructed in 2018, which is a searchable data base of brief proposals (in layman’s terms) submitted by Technion faculty and used to help donors find topics of interest.
International Collaborations
Expanding scientific collaborations with institutes abroad is an important goal for the Technion. A major instance of such collaboration is our membership in Eurotech – an alliance of six leading European technological schools that in addition to the Technion, includes: TUM (Munich); EPFL (Lausanne); DTU (Copenhagen); Ecole Polytechnique (Paris); and TU/e (Eindhoven). The Eurotech alliance significantly increased its activity in 2021/22, including a new faculty exchange program.
We have joint projects with the University of Michigan (together with the Weizmann Institute) and the University of Waterloo. Furthermore, we continued our long-term partnership with the Universities of Aachen and Julich. Joint research projects with Tokoshima University in Japan (along with Nichia Corp. who supported this collaboration) were successfully completed and this program is expected to double in the coming years. We are also starting collaboration with the Albert Einstein Hospital (Sao Paulo, Brazil) and the Cincinnati Children Hospital.
Industrial Collaborations
We attribute great importance to collaboration with industry. We believe that industrial contracts contribute to both sides. The Technion enjoys support for research, better education for students and help in providing our faculty with up-to-date knowledge of emerging needs. On the other side the Technion is committed to help Israeli industry and the country’s economy in general. In addition to the strategic partnerships mentioned above, total industrial contracts in 2021/22 amounted to $11.8M, compared to $12.3M in 2020/21 and $9.5M in 2019/20. Obtaining industrial contracts requires continuous proactivity of our staff, approaching potential companies. In 2021/22 we started a new project to connect us to traditional industry, including food and pharma.
Translation of Research
The general topic of knowledge translation is handled by the Technion Technology Transfer (T3) Office, which is a division of the Technion Research and Development Foundation (TRDF). TRDF is a for-profit company owned by the Technion, with the Technion Executive Vice President for Research serving as the CEO of TRDF. Income from licenses and royalties plays an important role in supporting research at the Technion, including the purchase of research infrastructure. We emphasize the commercialization of scientific discoveries also to foster an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship at the campus. Furthermore, the Technion sees such translation as an important contribution to the State of Israel.
The new commercialization models that were launched by us three years ago continue to help expand the Technion’s deal flow. In fact, we reached a state whereby Technion faculty are now founding one out of every thirty startups in Israel!
The Technion was ranked first in Europe in granted US patents in 2020/21. This parameter is considered a main indicator of entrepreneurship and innovation. Our patent portfolio increased in 2021/22 to 745 –compared to 740 patent families in 2020/21, 715 in 2019/20, and 635 in 2018/19.
Sixty-two new commercialization contracts were signed during 2021/22, compared to 57 in 2020/21. We launched 15 new spinoff companies last year – compared to 12 in 2020/21, 14 spinoffs in 2019/20, 6 in 2018/19 and a similar number in 2017/18.
The significant increase in our deal flow is now reflected in the total holdings of the Technion, reaching over 130 companies in diverse areas. For instance, our private spinoffs include Aleph Farms (foodtech), Xact Robotics (medical devices), Starkware (software), H2Pro (energy), Tabnine (software), Qedma (quantum computing), Cytoreason (bioinformatics), Deci.AI (software), Speedata (chip design), Luminiscent Power (energy), Mana.bio (drug delivery), Mealiways (foodtech), Tamar Robotics (medical devices), and many more.
The TRDF recognizes the importance of investments in research infrastructure. Therefore, in 2019/20, we established a new internal fund for this purpose. We invested 10M NIS in this fund in 2021/22, compared to 8M NIS in 2020/21 and 6M NIS in 2019/20. The fund was used to match outside grants (VATAT and ISF), to support the pre-clinical authority and the Technion’s Martin and Grace Druan Rosman High Performance Computer Data Center, and to aid certain specific projects of groups of faculty members. This fund is fully financed by our success in commercializing Technion technologies.
We took important steps in 2021/22 to further strengthen the innovation and entrepreneurship eco-system on our campus. We joined the NGT incubator as partners, supported by the Israel Innovation Authority. NGT is a Jewish-Arab incubator, operating in northern Israel, specializing in med-tech. We also won a contract with the Israel Ministry of Science to launch T-Start. Each year, this operation identifies a few promising ideas at various Technion labs and helps the lab staff, advance the technology, along with providing them with courses on business and innovation, including creating business plan for their invention.
