About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the future of humanity.
Jun 24, 2019... Technology can make our lives easier, but it also leaves us vulnerable to hackers. In the sixth episode of Weizmann in Focus, CEO Dave Doneson explores how Weizmann scientists are leading the way in cybersecurity. In a recent breakthrough, renowned cryptographer Prof. Adi Shamir exposed a major weakness in the “Internet of Things,” the growing world of smart devices that connect online. His groundbreaking work could result in better methods for keeping our private information safe.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/america-2025-precision-rx/
May 02, 2005...
In medicine's DNA age, doctors will make pre-emptive, targeted strikes on disease.
In one way, medicine hasn't changed much over the millennia: Doctors still wait for patients to feel sick before beginning treatment of an illness. Genomics promises to change that. By analyzing an individual's genetic makeup, physicians will be able to intervene early − and more precisely. "Generic treatments for certain diseases will be a thing of the past," says Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health. A malady can look the same in two patients, but be caused by a different series of physiological missteps, he explains. "Treatments will be tailored to your particular genomic background."
Feb 17, 2016...
The ability of computers to recognise faces, text and objects has opened up a range of new technologies from smart CCTV to self-driving cars.
But the machines still have some way to go before they will be able to rival human eyes.
Researchers have shown that when it comes to spotting detail, we still have the edge that may prevent computers from taking over from us entirely.
Scientists have found that despite great leaps in artificial intelligence and learning, computer vision is still no match for human eyes when it comes to recognising objects from a tiny part of an image. The pictures above are some of the examples used in the study - are you able to identify the objects in the images above?
May 16, 2016... Between shadowy hackers and powerful government agencies, keeping electronic communication private can sometimes feel like a losing battle. Now chemists have come up with a clever alternative that's a little old-fashioned. They describe in Nature Communications a way to encrypt and send short messages on paper using everyday chemicals as keys, although they admit its usefulness probably has limits.
Jul 25, 2016...
No Glasses Needed. In the future, movie screens could be equipped for 3D movies without any need for glasses. Christine Daniloff/MIT
It's summer blockbuster season, where there are ample choices of what movies to see and how to see them. Do you just go for the regular viewing experience, or spring for 3D? Or do you stay home and watch Netflix?
There are no right answers. But soon, the annoyance of wearing 3D glasses at the movies may not factor into your decision. (Unlike the price for a 3D movie ticket, which is likely to remain high.) Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science are presenting a paper this week at the SIGGRAPH computer-graphics conference that shows a prototype for how to create a cinema-sized movie screen that won't require patrons to wear those awful glasses.
Apr 01, 2016...
Academic hackers used a telescope, cheap computer and laptop to collect signals coming from a compromised connected lightbulb.
It’s now a given: the Internet of Things is horribly broken.
Connected lightbulbs, though one of the few possibly-justifiable products in the gross melange that is the IoT market, are sometimes contributors to that rank unsecurity. And now researchers have shown just how evil attacks on lightbulbs can be, claiming their hacks can cause epileptic fits and steal information from segregated, supposedly-secure networks in startling sub rosa fashion. All they needed was to subtly modulate light pulses in two bulbs on the market to convey data to a telescope up to 100 meters away, or have them create a strobe effect to bring on seizures. Both attacks were possible because authentication on the lightbulbs – a Philips Hue and a LimitlessLED – were found wanting, allowing anyone who could locate the devices to send commands.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/light-exchange/
Sep 04, 2018...
Prof. Barak Dayan and his quantum optics lab group. From l-r: Gabi Guendelman, Dor Korn, Niv Drucker, Tal Ohana, Prof. Dayan, Moran Netser, Ziva Aqua, Ori Mor, and Dr. Adrien Borne
The quantum computers of the future will be able to perform computations that cannot be done on today’s computers. These may likely include the ability to crack the encryption that is currently used for secure electronic transactions, as well as the means to efficiently solve unwieldy problems in which the number of possible solutions increases exponentially. Research in the quantum optics lab of Prof. Barak Dayan at the Weizmann Institute of Science may be bringing such computers one step closer by providing the “quantum gates” required for communication within and between such quantum computers.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/nobel-prize-in-chemistry-2013/
Oct 09, 2013...
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—October 9, 2013—The Weizmann Institute of Science extends its hearty congratulations to the new winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2013. Two of the three new laureates have strong ties to the Weizmann Institute, and their work on the use of computers to map chemical reactions of large molecules such as enzymes on the atomic scale was first developed at Weizmann.
Profs. Arieh Warshel and Michael Levitt began their scientific collaboration in the 1960s at the Weizmann Institute, where Prof. Warshel was a doctoral student. The two of them worked with the late Prof. Shneior Lifson in the Department of Chemical Physics. Together, they developed a computer program that ran on the Institute’s Golem computer – a powerful device in those days – to model molecules. This program had special relevance for large biological molecules.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/gut-reactions/
Jul 28, 2015...
Daniel Segrè, associate professor of bioinformatics, biomedical engineering and biology, uses mathematical modeling to understand the microbiome. Photo by Cydney Scott
Daniel Segrè studies very unusual microbes. They don’t live in petri dishes, guts, or on dirty kitchen countertops. In fact, they don’t live in the real world at all. They live in a simulated world on Segrè’s computer.
Genetically identical to their living counterparts, these digital organisms look like a bunch of red, blue, and green blobs on a computer screen, and they feed on virtual nutrients, grow, excrete waste, and die just as they would in the real world. Segrè also works with living microbes, but the advantage of virtual organisms is that he can monitor how nutrients and energy flow among species – something that’s difficult to do in the real world.
Mar 02, 2020...
The concept of time crystals comes from the realm of counterintuitive mind-melding physics ideas that may actually turn out to have real-world applications. Now comes news that a paper proposes merging time crystals with topological superconductors for applications in error-free quantum computing, extremely precise timekeeping and more.
Time crystals were first proposed as hypothetical structures by the Nobel-Prize winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek and MIT physicists in 2012. The remarkable feature of time crystals is that they would would move without using energy. As such they would appear to break the fundamental physics law of time-translation symmetry. They would move while staying in their ground states, when they are at their lowest energy, appearing to be in a kind of perpetual motion. Wilczek offered mathematical proof that showed how atoms of crystallizing matter could regularly form repeating lattices in time, while not consuming or producing any energy.
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