The Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering was launched in 2006. Mr. Lokey’s monumental gift to the Technion , and the vision behind this- stewarded by Nobel Laureate Prof. Aaron Ciechanover has made possible the establishment of the The Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering.
Engineers and scientists can create scientific advances to the extent or in proportion to the amount and sophistication of their tools. Traditionally scientists explored and experimented and engineers created designed and built tools but these two fields are merging and there are many promising tools coming out of multidisciplinary projects. It was long recognized by Technion management that engineering principles and technologies would eventually be applied to the life sciences. Over the past several decades, the merging of engineering and life sciences has led to new ways of looking at old problems and life sciences have also influenced engineering.
The center was organized in a manner that gradually progressed build from developing a mutual foundation of understanding of different disciplines,( e.g. engineering, physics, computer science, medicine, biology, chemistry) to sharing current research and brainstorming about new opportunities, to identifying the necessary “action items”, or developmental steps, required to mature this field. This convergence has led to the emergence of new disciplines in the center such as Biomedical Optics and Imaging, Systems Biology, Synthetic Biology, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Metabolomics, Nano-Optics, among others, which are a reflection of how convergence is a serious and increasingly important development in science. In September 2016 Prof. Roy Kishony took up his appointment as managing director of the Lokey center.
