256 innovations from Bar-Ilan University, available for licensing, co-investment, or spin-out through BIRAD.
Magnezi Racheli
We have developed a model designed to predict re hospitalization in premature infants on the day of their discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The model's objective is to identify preterm infants who are likely to be readmitted during their first year of life from NICU discharge. This early identification enables a reduction in the multiple hospitalization days associated with these infants, estimated at a total of $3.3 million annually for a single hospital. The model aims to reduce the economic burden and focus on preventive medicine in Israel. The uniqueness of this model lies in its ability to present approximately 20 new parameters that have not been previously shown in parallel models in the literature. The predictive capability of the developed model has an accuracy of 0.79.
Cohen Haim
Aging is associated with detrimental changes in chromatin structure and gene expression, contributing to inflammation, metabolic decline and tissue dysfunction. SIRT6, a histone deacetylase, plays a key role in maintaining chromatin integrity and promoting longevity. Here, we characterized age-related changes in chromatin accessibility in the murine liver. We found that aging leads to increased chromatin accessibility. These changes were accompanied by upregulation of inflammation-related pathways and downregulation of metabolic pathways. Remarkably, SIRT6 overexpression reversed these changes, reducing inflammation and enhancing metabolic function. Notably, ETS family members were enriched in regions with increased accessibility during aging, while liver-enriched transcription factors (LETFs) were enriched in regions with reduced accessibility. H3K9ac and H3K56ac ChIP-seq analyses showed that H3K9ac, but not H3K56ac, is associated with increased accessibility during aging and that SIRT6 can reverse this effect. Furthermore, an viral system of AAV-mediated SIRT6 overexpression experiment in aged mice demonstrated that SIRT6 not only slows age-related chromatin changes but can also reverse them, rejuvenating chromatin accessibility to a youthful state. This highlights the potential of SIRT6 based therapy to rejuvenate aged tissues and mitigate age-related dysfunction.
Zalevsky Zeev
Intraocular pressure (IOP) measurements comprise an essential tool in modern medicine for the early diagnosis of glaucoma, the second leading cause of human blindness. The world's highest prevalence of glaucoma is in low-income countries. Current diagnostic methods require experience in running expensive equipment as well as the use of anesthetic eye drops. We present herein a remote photonic IOP biomonitoring method based on deep learning of secondary speckle patterns, captured by a fast camera, that are reflected from eye sclera stimulated by an external sound wave. By combining speckle pattern analysis with deep learning, high precision measurements are possible. The method was tested under artificially varying eye pressures on a series of 24 pig eyeballs, found to be similar to human eyes. As a low-cost procedure, it has the potential to meet clinical needs in low- and middle-income countries and at points of care everywhere.
Strelniker Yakov
We predicted that the negative permittivity can be used for attraction of like charged particles instead of repulsion. This can lead to creation of electron-electron pairs similar to Cooper pairs (with possibilities to reach superconductivity at room temperature). This phenomenon can be used also for nucleus-nucleus pairing with possibilities of low energy nuclear fusion. Negative values of permittivity we propose to achieve due to the localized surface plasmon resonances in metamaterials. These resonance frequencies can be varied over a wide range by application of static magnetic or electric fields.
Byk Gerardo
Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a leading cause of incurable genetic blindness. Currently retinal gene therapies are mostly based on adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors that are: i) limited in cargo size, limiting the delivery of large genes (e.g. MYO7A, a common cause for Usher 1B syndromic RP); ii) induce immune responses that may damage the retina, lower gene expression and preclude repeated treatment; iii) injected subretinally, treating a limited area, and associated with risks of retinal detachment and chorioretinal atrophy. Transient transfection in primary human non-dividing cells remains inefficient due to poor nuclear uptake and transient gene expression, typically lasting only 24–96 hours. Conventional methods like lipofection and electroporation often cause cytotoxicity and immune activation, reducing cell viability and reproducibility. Improved delivery systems are needed to overcome these barriers and achieve safe, targeted, and sustained transgene expression. We developed biodegradable nanohydrogels (NHGs) that form complexes with DNA. The new NHGs and their DNA complexes are devoid of cell toxicity, which, together with their tuned sizes, makes them potential tools for gene delivery and foreign protein expression. We demonstrate that these NHGs can be utilized to deliver genes to express foreign proteins in non-dividing human iPSC-retinal pigment epithelium cells, which are notoriously difficult to transfect. Controlling for DNA:NHG ratio, we can control for timing, duration, and levels of gene expression in human cells. Long duration of gene expression is easily achieved with protein expressed for at least 30 days post NHG treatment. Moreover, we developed a novel suprachoroidal delivery method that resulted in injected material distribution covering 80% of the retina in rats, rabbits, and monkeys. Thus, this invention includes: (1) a novel system for retinal gene therapy delivery for patients with retinal/macular degeneration; (2) a novel platform for sustained gene expression in human/other hard-to-transfect non-dividing primary cells that may be used for studying gene expression, disease etiology, etc.
Singer Gonen
Transformers play a central role in modern artificial intelligence, yet their susceptibility to adversarial perturbations raises serious reliability concerns. Current defenses, such as adversarial training, are often computationally expensive and tailored to specific attack vectors, while formal verification methods remain difficult to scale. In this work, we propose RAHP (Robustness-Aware Head Pruning), a framework that enhances the intrinsic robustness of Transformers by selectively removing attention heads that contribute to model adversarial vulnerability. Unlike standard pruning, which often degrades robustness, RAHP guides the pruning process using a composite score of two complementary signals: (i) Fisher Information, which preserves task accuracy, and (ii) CLEVER, a sensitivity-based proxy derived from the local Lipschitz constant that estimates the model’s vulnerability to perturbations. By pruning attention heads that exhibit high adversarial sensitivity, RAHP steers the model toward a more stable decision boundary without the need for costly adversarial retraining. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RAHP yields compact models that are not only efficient but also more resistant to a wide variety of attacks compared to standard pruning and regularization baselines. These results suggest that incorporating local stability criteria into the pruning process provides a scalable and attack-agnostic pathway toward robust and efficient Transformer models.
Teman Adam
This invention proposes a scalable and variation-aware algorithm for skew balancing of digital circuits. The skew balancing has two main objectives: the application of clockless wave-propagated pipelining (CWPP) and the reduction of dynamic glitch power. The algorithm achieves the balancing of the maximum and minimum delays through all internal gates of a combanatorial block by iteratively applying delays to the faster paths, while overcoming variation by using a skew balanced strobe signal for output capture.
Adi Makmal
Graph analysis constitutes a foundational framework across modern data science, infrastructure engineering, and computational modeling, serving as the core mathematical architecture for mapping complex relational dependencies in real-world systems The present invention introduces a novel, scalable quantum computational framework and algorithmic process designed to generate exponentially large, non-trivial mathematical graphs that are directly mapped into highly compact quantum physical operators. This is in contrast to conventional techniques that yield complex, unmanageable operator expressions requiring an exponential number of terms relative to the number of system qubits. The process operates by first constructing a highly symmetric, spectrally-solvable structural backbone known as a 'Skeleton Laplacian Hamiltonian' utilizing a restricted Pauli operator subset (consisting purely of tensor products of Identity and Pauli-X operators, excluding the all-identity string). This structural backbone maps an unweighted d-regular skeleton graph using an extremely sparse allocation of only (d + 1) Pauli string terms, thereby completely decoupling the physical description length from the overall network size. To bypass structural and spectral triviality while retaining strict logarithmic scaling, the invention establishes a localized embedding process. Small graphs are encoded through a standard basis element outer-product structure and directly injected as localized structural modifications into specified coordinates of the global Skeleton backbone. This mechanism disrupts the macro-level structural symmetries of the skeleton network in a controlled manner, successfully creating complex and highly scalable graph architectures. Consequently, the complete global graph matrix Laplacian operator is accurately expressed on real physical quantum hardware utilizing a strictly constrained allocation of only q = log(n) qubits and an efficient polylogarithmic O(polylog(n)) number of physical Pauli string operators. This method unlocks the ability to analyze exponentially large graphs on quantum hardware of exponentially large graphs using quantum algorithms, extending the reach of quantum algorithms into scale where classical tools are no longer applicable, with applications in optimization processes and large scale data analysis.
Tischler Yaakov Raphael
Mapping tip-enhanced near-field optical signals by modulating the tip-sample distance at multiple frequencies simultaneously and observing the near-field heterodyne beating signal, between the two near field modulated “light-fields”. This heterodyne beat signal only occurs from the near-field interaction and therefore it provides a means of detecting the near-field, without background signals from the incident light excitation interacting in the far-field with the sample or with the AFM probe.
Cohen Cyrille
In this project we have generated novel targeting chimeric receptors based on the extra cellular domain of two members of the SIGLEC family: SIGLEC7 and SIGLEC9. These targeting moieties were fused to different signalling domains and expressed in primary human T-cells. We identified for each SIGLEC receptor the optimal molecules and went on and performed multiple functional assays. We observed enhanced cytokines secretion and recognition of multiple tumors (ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer) mediated by SIGLEC chimeras. We also demonstrate that these receptors can upregulate the activation marker 41BB as well as display significant anti-tumor cytotoxicity, upon co-culture with tumor cells. Overall, we propose that engineering T-cells with a SIGLEC-based chimeric receptors bears important implications for the improvement of T cell-based immunotherapy.
Zitoun David
A rechargeable sodium-bromine battery with optimized cathode has high energy density. The cathode includes conductive porous carbon, sodium-bromine and bromine complexing agent (BCA). The bromine is used as an alternative sodium redox couple in the cathode. The electrolyte is based on sodium salts, dissolved in organic carbonates. During the charge, bromides oxidized to bromine, which safely complexed in the BCA. Sodium ions are crossing the electrolyte and reduced to sodium at the anode. The opposite reactions occur during the discharge mode. The present disclosure reveals a coin cell level battery with capacity in the range of 196 to 202 mAh/g at a discharge rate of 0.7C and 280 to 290 mAh/g at a discharge rate of 0.63C and has a capacity retention in the range of 92 to 99% at discharge rate of 0.7C.
alon shahar
We present a method for multiplexed RNA and protein detection in intact, thick organoids. Organoid thickness represents a major barrier to in situ molecular analysis. Our approach extends Expansion Sequencing (ExSeq)—previously limited to tissue sections up to ~50 µm—to organoids ranging from 100 µm to 300 µm in diameter. Importantly, organoids exceeding 300–500 µm frequently develop necrotic cores due to restricted oxygen and reagent diffusion, making 300 µm a practical upper limit for intact, physiologically relevant analysis. A key innovation of this method is delayed hydrogel polymerization, which enables uniform diffusion of gel monomers throughout the tissue prior to crosslinking. Additional challenges, including limited surface area, enzyme penetration, and imaging depth, were addressed through automated pipetting, glass-slide embedding, and protocol optimizations (Table). By physically expanding whole brain organoids within a hydrogel matrix, this method enhances spatial resolution by up to ~10× and allows iterative rounds of antibody staining and in situ RNA sequencing in the same sample. While demonstrated in neurodevelopmental organoid models such as STXBP1 encephalopathy, this platform is broadly applicable to diverse organoid systems for 3D multimodal molecular profiling.
