Israel Active

Lockheed Martin and Israel’s Ministry of Education are to build a program in the Israeli education system to increase the number of Israeli teachers in computer science and cyber security. Lockheed Martin will also sponsor a nationwide high-school cyber security competition.  

I featured the Augmented Reality (AR) ski goggles from Israel’s RideOn in February, but this article includes a video that shows you what you see when you wear them.

MUV Interactive (featured in this newsletter in ) was one of Israel’s innovative technology companies starring at the recent AIPAC Conference in Washington. MUV’s $200 “Bird” sits on your finger to control and design interactive presentations, just by pointing. Shipping starts in a few months.

Israeli startup Keewee uses natural language processing, machine learning and social graphs to provide you with relevant stories. Over 60 brands and publishers use its service, including the New York Times. It has just raised $9.1 million of funds, including from the NYT and Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt.

Israel’s Intelescope Solutions utilizes drone and satellite imagery to produce an accurate inventory of a forest. Forestry companies in the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, India, and China utilize services from Intelescope, which just raised $8.3 million of funds.

Israel’s CyberGym has signed a NIS 45 million deal with the Portuguese electricity company Energias de Portugal (EDP) to plan, build, and maintain a cyber-defense training facility. CyberGym is jointly owned by the Israel Electric Company and Israeli IT company Liacom Systems.

Francis Maude, UK's Minister for the Cabinet Office responsible for cyber security, announced 3 UK-Israel academic collaboration ventures that will receive cyber research funding. They link UK’s universities of Bristol, Kent and UCL with Israel’s Bar Ilan and Haifa.

Twelve teenagers won the top prizes in the Intel-Israel Young Scientists Competition in Jerusalem. Their projects covered medicine, mathematics, linguistics, music, anthropology and satellite technology. The twelve will travel to finals in Pittsburgh and Milan and receive academic scholarships.

Hundreds of Israeli middle and high schools are participating in the biggest programming contest in Israeli history, with prizes totaling NIS 100,000. Israel’s Center for Educational Technology wants students to learn to write code, using - an Israeli interactive computer game.

The winning project at this year’s in Tel Aviv, , used a Neurosteer Brain Computer Interface device to interpret another person’s emotions based on their brain activity. So no need anymore to see facial expression or hear voice tone.