Israel Active

Israel’s Atrinet have launched the Atrinet URL Scanner, an advanced solution designed to combat real-time SMS fraud from SMS phishing (“Smishing”).  It combines an SMS Firewall with URL Scanner, in collaboration with Google, to scan SMS links for malicious content.

The Israel Chemical Society has awarded the Outstanding Young Scientist Awards for 2024 to Prof. Josh Baraban from Ben-Gurion University (see previously) and Dr. Moran Shalev-Benami from the Weizmann Institute. See also Outstanding Scientists and ICS Gold Medal winners.

Israel’s Contel Smart Energy was established as Contel Technologies in 1964. Its projects include at Rambam hospital, Hadera power station, power plants in Spain, and Kibbutz Zeelim’s 120MW PV plant. It has now launched Energynie, an AI-based platform to manage PV, wind energy & storage.

Hebrew University researchers have found that a single gene, PhDEF, previously recognized for its role in petal formation, also plays a key part in activating scent production in later stages of flower development. It has major implications for the fragrance industry.

Israel’s BeeHero (see previously) has expanded its Pollination Insight Platform (PIP) to the apple market. “Apples are very sensitive for on-time pollination,” said Itai Kanot, co-founder and chief growth operator for BeeHero. And bees are sensitive to cold weather.

Google is expanding its chip development operations in Israel. It is currently hiring dozens of employees to develop a new network interface card (NIC) - a basic component for communications between core processors and graphics processors for AI processing.

Israeli and Jewish tech innovators and organizations are developing new AI-powered tools and initiatives to counter misinformation and antisemitism online. They include Generative AI for Good, Bottom Line, Reasonate, Facts Commando, and Atchalta.

Israel’s Cyabra (see previously) a leading AI platform for real-time disinformation detection, has launched Insights. This powerful new AI-feature is designed to transform complex social media disinformation data into clear, actionable answers in seconds.

Following last week’s video about Tel Aviv’s Afeka College (see previously) the college has just graduated a record 720 new engineers. Some 44% of its students, plus faculty and staff, have been serving in the reserves, supported by a hybrid learning program (see link to Afeka’s “AsOne” campaign).

Four years ago, Tel Aviv University scientists engineered a frictionless structure, two atoms thick (see previously). Last week (see ) one TAU team used this discovery to simulate “on-off” switching. Now another team shows how this “superlubricity” vastly enhances microprocessor performance.