Inaugural Recipients of Crown/IIP-Seed Awards Announced

Northwestern University has selected five innovative science and engineering research projects to receive critical funding as part of its Crown Family/Israel Innovation Project Collaborative Seed Research Fellowships for Northwestern University/Israel (Crown/IIP-Seed).

This new resource, supported by Northwestern Engineering’s Global Initiatives office and the University’s Israel Innovation Project, will advance collaborations between researchers from Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and five Israeli institutions: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. 

“Northwestern University’s global reputation attracts research interest from around the world, but government grants are too restrictive to launch new collaborations,” said Matthew Grayson, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern Engineering and director of Northwestern Engineering Global Initiatives. “It is a privilege for Northwestern to have gift resources like the Crown Family Fund, which can help forge stronger research ties abroad.”

The selected Crown/IIP-Seed projects will foster new research directions between the partner institutions across a variety of disciplines and applications, from additive manufacturing to soft robotics to quantum science. The short-term projects include four quarters of fellowship support from Northwestern PhD students, as well as three months of support for a visiting Israeli postdoc or graduate student to join Northwestern partner’s lab for in-person, joint research.

“IIP’s mission is to advance Northwestern’s technological and scientific partnerships with Israeli academic counterparts through collaborative research, global educational initiatives, innovative business ventures, and public engagement,” said Elie Rekhess, Crown Visiting Professor in Israel Studies in Weinberg and director of the Israel Innovation Project. “Northwestern has a long-standing tradition of joint projects with Israeli universities, particularly with Tel Aviv University, and the present seed-money collaborative venture enhances our efforts significantly.

“We received 21 applications from researchers in six different Israeli universities interested in collaborating with Northwestern scholars,” Rekhess added. “It’s an encouraging sign that Northwestern’s connection to Israel remains strong and mutually beneficial. In the future, we hope to be able to further expand such fruitful cooperative initiatives.”

The principal investigators and their projects are:

Beyond Additive Manufacturing: Multi-Metal and Multi-Process 

Lead PI: Jian Cao, associate vice president for research and Cardiss Collins Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University
Co-PI: Noam Eliaz, professor of materials science and engineering, Tel Aviv University

Additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing) has enabled greater versatility in designing complex geometries and innovative part functionalities. Its current potential, however, is limited for metals due to few material choices, process-induced porosity, and poor surface finish leading to undesired fatigue performance.

Cao and Eliaz will overcome these shortcomings by developing a hybrid manufacturing process combining additive manufacturing with incremental forming, a process inspired by Japanese sword-making. Using AI-accelerated simulations, the team will optimize metals and process parameters. Their work aims to create better-performing, sustainable engine and structural components while also addressing supply chain challenges in manufacturing.

Neuromorphic photo-synapses based on bulk heterojunction architectures 

Lead PI: Jonathan Rivnay, professor of biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering, Northwestern University
Co-PI: Gitti Frey, professor of materials science and engineering, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology

Photonic synapses are optoelectronic devices which replicate the light sensing functions of the retina by integrating memory functions into the sensory coding in order to mimic biological signal processing. Despite recent developments, state-of-the-art photo-synapses show high power consumption and complex memory/writing mechanisms impeding a direct transmission of data to other electronic circuitry.

Rivnay and Frey aim to create the first photonic synapse using a bi-continuous bulk heterojunction (BHJ) architecture for retina-inspired memory functions. By adjusting BHJ structures, they will design photonic synapses with varying memory retention, mimicking biological potentiation. This project paves the way for innovative devices with photo-adaptive synapse-like functions for AI and prosthetics.

Soft Sensorized Robots via 3D Printed Ionogel Composites with Spatially Programmed Ionic and Electronic Conductivity 

Lead PI: Ryan Truby, June and Donald Brewer Junior Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University
Co-PI: Aslan Miriyev, senior lecturer in mechanical engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Recent advances in soft robotics have driven the creation of multifunctional materials for adaptive machines with distributed actuation and sensing. These innovations aim to overcome control challenges and achieve bioinspired behaviors, but progress is hindered by material and manufacturing limitations, as well as assembly and integration strategies.

Truby and Miriyev will collaborate to 3D-print ionogel composites as soft artificial muscles that simultaneously provide proprioceptive feedback through spatially programmed ionic/electronic conductivity. Their work will create the first 3D printable, electrically driven soft actuators with distributed proprioception capabilities. The team’s proposed materials will also pave the way toward sustainable manufacturing of robotics.

Tomographic Imaging of Subcellular Concentration Gradients and Ultrastructure 

Lead PI: Derk Joester, professor of materials science and engineering, Northwestern University
Co-PI: Assaf Gal, associate professor of plant and environmental sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science

Coccolithophores are single-cell marine organisms that produce calcium carbonate scales called coccoliths, which, among many benefits, can sequester carbon in oceans. To understand how coccolithophores do this, scientists must measure specific ion concentrations inside coccolithophore cells. However, current tools aren't precise or sensitive enough to measure multiple ions at once, which makes studying these processes challenging.

Joester and Gal will establish a new method, called Atom Probe Tomography of frozen-hydrated cells at cryogenic temperature (cryoAPT), a quantitative, label-free, and atomic-scale complement to the current state-of-the-art, cryo electron tomography (cryoET). The team envisions that correlative imaging using cryoAPT and cryoET will help researchers visualize, quantify, and engineer biological, bio-inspired, and bio-enabled processes and materials for a variety of applications.

Ultrafast Quantum CISS Effect: The Role of Electronic-Vibrational Couplings 

Lead PI: James D. Gaynor, assistant professor of chemistry, Northwestern University
Co-PI: Yossi Paltiel, professor applied physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The chirality-induced spin selective (CISS) effect enables electrons to transport through chiral molecules with a transmission probability depending on the spin of the electron. The CISS effect is widely observed, but researchers still lack a fundamental understanding of how the effect is produced at the molecular level.

Gaynor and Paltiel will explore this question using a new chiral ultrafast spectroscopy that is directly sensitive to spin-dependent electronic-vibrational couplings to study a chiral CdSe quantum dot platform known to display the CISS effect. Their project will enable new technologies to leverage the CISS effect for applications in spin-selective catalysts, enantio-specific chemical separations, biological recognition, spintronics, and quantum information science.