Technion Alumnus Receives Prestigious Award from the Eduard Rhein Foundation
Date: 15/10/2012 |
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Technion alumnus Dov Moran received the 2012 Cultural Award of the Eduard Rhein Foundation. The ceremony took place in the Hall of Fame of the Deutsche Museum in Munich on October 13. Moran generously donated the prize money of €20,000 to the European Researchers Night held at Technion on September 24, 2012, attended by some 5,000 individuals.
Moran, who graduated Technion in 1977 with a degree in electrical engineering, received the Award “In recognition of the idea and invention of a small standardized and portable data memory stick, today known as USB-Stick or USB Flash Drive.”
He founded M-Systems Ltd. in1989, later acquired in 2006 by SanDisk for US$1.6 b. At the turn of the millennium, the USB Flash Drive (popularly known as disk-on-key) had capacities of 8, 16, 32 and then 128 MB and was considered revolutionary. Today, capacity for USB drives reach upwards of 256 GB. The USB Flash Drive was listed among Time Magazine's all-time 100 gadgets (2010).
Since selling M-Systems, Dov Moran has been involved in several other ventures. He was the founder and chairman of modu (2007), which developed a modular cellular telephone system. In 2010, Google acquired several modu patents for $4.9 million. Moran recently launched a new educational initiative that distributed interactive tablets, replacing notebooks and textbooks, in Israeli schools.
KeyView, established in 2010, develops a unique keyboard with an embedded display so that users see what they are typing, when they are typing it, right on the keyboard itself. This innovative device eliminates the need to switch eye-focus back-and-forth from screen to keyboard and provides a better and faster typing experience – for the many users who do not touch type.
Moran’s latest business venture (2011) is a new start-up, Comigo, which develops a TV platform that aims to extend viewing options across all types of handheld devices, providing new personalization and interactive socialization capabilities for TV viewers. Comigo is expected to distribute its products at 2H 2012.
Previous Technion winners of the prestigious Eduard Rhein prizes include Distinguished Prof. Jacob Ziv (1998, Basic Research Award) and Distinguished Visiting Professor Andrew Viterbi (1994, Basic Research Award).
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