Aug 19 2008
Dr. Hossam Haick of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has been named by Technology Review as one of the world's 35 top young scientists.
Dr. Haick was selected for inclusion in list known as the "TR35" from more than 300 nominees by a panel of expert judges and editorial staff at Technology Review, M.I.T.'s magazine of innovation. He and the other winners will be featured in the September issue of the magazine and honored at M.I.T.'s EmTech08 Conference to be held September 23-25, 2008.
"The TR35 honors young innovators for accomplishments that are poised to have a dramatic impact on the world as we know it," said Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review. "We celebrate their success and look forward to their continued advancement of technology in their respective fields."
Already the recipient of several prestigious awards and grants, Dr. Haick has garnered broad international recognition for leading the development of an "electronic nose," a device consisting of nano-sized sensors that can detect cancer in a person's breath, which could greatly improve survival rates via critical early diagnoses.
"The preliminary results of this device indicate that it currently detects breast, colon and lung cancer. We hope that in the future it will be a routine screening for all cancers, thereby guaranteeing early treatment," said Dr. Haick.
He is the first Israeli scientist to win the European Union's Marie Curie Excellence Grant, and in March was honored by the president of France with the France-Israel Foundation Prize for Excellence in Science. Among his other academic honors are a Fulbright fellowship and inclusion on the European Union's List of 300 Top Young Scientists.
Born and raised in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Nazareth, Dr. Haick received his doctorate from the Technion and pursued post-doctoral research at the California Institute of Technology. He currently holds the position of senior lecturer in the Technion Faculty of Chemical Engineering and the university's Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute.
Past winners of the TR35 include Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Linus Torvald, the developer and founder of Linux, and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.
Additional information on the TR35 winners and on the judges both for this year and previous years can be found at: http://www.technologyreview.com/tr35/. For additional information on the EmTech08 Conference, please see: http://www.technologyreview.com/emtech/08/index.aspx .