Israel Active

I reported previously on Israel’s Seakura which is growing 100 tons of seaweed a year on land in purified seawater pools. Yossi Tal, Seakura’s Chief Technology Officer sees the 30% protein seaweed as the future of low cost, sustainable, environmentally friendly farming.

Israel’s NRGene, in partnership with Toyota’s environmentally-friendly DNA analysis initiative, has decoded the strawberry genome – one of the most complex in nature. It will help farmers in Japan breed local strawberry varieties. Japan is among the world’s highest raw strawberry consumer.

I reported previously on Israel’s Arbe Robotics and its ultra-high-resolution 4D imaging radar. Arbe has just launched Phoenix - its automotive 4D product. The images are 100 times more detailed than other top industry radars and it separates stationary and moving objects in real time.

Israel’s Foretellix develops a vehicle verification system for testing autonomous vehicles against a common standard. It includes millions of potential safety scenarios, even as unlikely as what to do if the car encounters a tsunami. Foretellix has just raised $14 million of funds.

Israeli startup TinyTap is a social platform where families, teachers and students can create personalized educational apps. They can also play thousands of new games shared daily by a global community of educators and students.

Israeli startup InZiv produces inspection equipment that identifies defects in the pixels of high-resolution screen displays. InZiv has just raised $2.5 million of funds to develop its tools for the new generation of advanced flat panel displays.

There were seven winners of the prestigious Wolf Prize in the fields of medicine, architecture, agriculture, chemistry and mathematics. They included Haifa-born architect Moshe Safdie, and Jerusalem-born Prof. David Zilberman who is an expert in agricultural and resource economics.

Israeli startup Wiliot has developed a Bluetooth-enabled sensor that harvests energy from radio waves. It provides power to internet-of-things (IoT) devices, without the need of batteries or mains (wired) electricity.

Brazil’s Santos Lab is to use drones (UAVs) and advanced analytics from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for large scale agricultural applications. IAI’s BirdEye 650D UAV includes a hyper-spectral wide coverage imager, uniquely developed for the precision agriculture market.

Israeli-founded startup ClimaCell (renamed Tomorrow.ai) develops a highly accurate weather forecasting system, capable of predicting the weather on a minute-by-minute basis. It uses data from weather databases as well as from wireless networks, internet-of-things (IoT) devices, and cellular networks.