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 benefit of humanity.
Dec 15, 2011...
Baseball produces a welter of data, from which correlations can be drawn – for example between the number of hits and a player’s salary. Donald Miralle / Getty Images
The US humorist Evan Esar once called statistics the science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures. An innovative technique now promises to make those facts a whole lot more dependable.
Brothers David Reshef of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Yakir Reshef, now at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and their coworkers have devised a method to extract from complex sets of data relationships and trends that are invisible to other types of statistical analysis. They describe their approach in Science today.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-november-2015/
Nov 24, 2015...
Capturing a single photon from a pulse of light: Devices based on the Weizmann Institute model may be the backbone of future quantum communications systems
At the Weizmann Institute of Science, researchers have managed to “pluck” a single photon – one particle of light – out of a pulse of light. The findings of this research, which appeared November 24 in Nature Photonics, bear both fundamental and practical significance: Light is the workhorse of today’s communication systems, and single photons are likely to be the backbone of future quantum communication systems. In addition, say the scientists, the apparatus they have devised will spur further research into the fundamental particle nature of light.
Dec 10, 2019...
A “river” of electrons flowing in a graphene channel. The viscosity generated by the repulsion between electrons (red balls) causes them to flow with a parabolic current density, illustrated here as a white foam wave-front
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—December 10, 2019—We often speak of electrons “flowing” through materials, but in fact, they do not normally move like a liquid. However, such “hydrodynamic” electron flow had long been predicted – and now, Weizmann Institute of Science physicists have managed, with the help of a unique technique, to image electrons flowing similarly to how water moves through a pipe. This is the first time such “liquid electron flow” has been visualized, and it has vital implications for future electronic devices.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/beresheet-lunar-landing-site-revealed/
Mar 17, 2019...
The Beresheet landing site
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—March 17, 2019—The main scientific instrument on board the Israeli Beresheet spacecraft, the SpaceIL Magnetometer (SILMAG), has now been successfully turned on in space and data returned to Earth. After its successful launch, Beresheet is circling Earth on its journey to the Moon. Prof. Oded Aharonson of the Weizmann Institute of Science is heading the team that is currently analyzing the SILMAG information to evaluate the health and accuracy of the instrument in space, as well as recording the magnetic signature of the spacecraft itself, which will then be subtracted from the measurements made on the Moon.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/algo-vision-a-glimpse-into-the-future/
Jun 15, 2017...
For humans, seeing really is believing. That’s probably because sight is the most sophisticated of all the senses. So sophisticated, in fact, that 40 per cent of our brain is devoted to processing visual data.
If scientists could find a way to create artificial seeing systems with human-like capabilities, it would represent a major technological breakthrough. Computers would be able to replace human eyes, both in the performance of labour-intensive tasks and in more complex processes such as identifying individual cancer cells among normal tissue. Such systems could even help visually-impaired people to “see.”
Oct 10, 2017...
Shafi Goldwasser, the new director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (Photo by Ronen Goldman).
Turing Award-winning computer scientist Shafi Goldwasser will become the new director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at the University of California, Berkeley, on January 1, 2018.
The Simons Institute is the world’s leading venue for collaborative research in theoretical computer science. Established on July 1, 2012, with a grant of $60 million from the Simons Foundation, the institute is housed in Calvin Lab, where leading researchers in theoretical computer science and related fields, as well as the next generation of young scholars, explore deep unsolved problems about the nature and limits of computation.
Mar 10, 2013...
The commercial arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science has signed an agreement with an agrochemicals firm to commercialize a new technology that impedes the permeation of toxic pesticides into groundwater, the companies have announced.
As enormous amounts of pesticides continue to be used around the world in an effort to increase the global demand for food, the durable toxic chemicals can often seep into the soil and remain there for years, thereby contaminating the groundwater, the firms explained. Aiming to reduce the risks of such environmental contamination, Prof. Brian Berkowitz and Dr. Ishai Dror developed a system at the Rehovot school’s department of environmental sciences and energy research that is designed to safely eradicate the toxins.
Jun 08, 2013...
Israel is now one of the world's tech powerhouses, second only to Silicon Valley as a hub for startups, but it wasn't always this way. Today, in honour of the 84th birthday of Professor Aviezri Fraenkel, we're delighted to share a short film sharing his story of working on the WEIZAC, Israel's first computer.
Short film produced with support from Google as part of our ongoing computing heritage series
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/israeli-eyes-on-jupiter-orbiter/
Jun 30, 2016...
Image: NASA
On July 4, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will be entering orbit around Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System. Its extended trip – more than 2 billion kilometers over nearly five years – will be over, but its work will just be beginning. Following some intricate maneuvers, the spacecraft will go into a unique 14-day orbit that will allow it to get as close as 4000 km above the cloud tops of the planet – much closer than any mission ever before flown.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/ethiopia-adopts-israeli-day-night-power-system/
Dec 02, 2014...
An AORA Tulip System (Photo credit: Courtesy)
Solar energy is an ideal solution for the power needs of the developing world – except for one problem: It stops working when the sun goes down, at precisely the time power is needed to turn the lights on. The solution, according to Zev Rosenzweig, CEO of Israeli energy technology company AORA, is a hybrid system – one that utilizes solar to the fullest, and supplements it with a “backup” system to keep the power flowing when the sun is not high in the sky, using scant resources, with an operating cost of next to nothing.