Distinguished Emeritus Prof. Daniel Weihs, of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering and Head of the Technion Autonomous Systems Program, received the Toren prize awarded by the head of research and development in the Ministry of Defense, General Ophir Shoham.
The prize is named after General Yaakov (Kobi) Toren (deceased), who was director general of the ministry of defense, and CEO and chair of several defense oriented industries.
The prize has been awarded annually for the last 20 years to teams who made significant, groundbreaking contributions to defense R&D. Recently, the scope of the prize was broadened, to include an award to an academic “who has made an outstanding contribution to the defense of Israel”.
The prize was awarded to Prof. Weihs “for his long-standing contributions to unique academic research highly important for the defense community”. As the subjects are all classified and sensitive, the ceremony was limited to invitees and no details were given, except to mention that Prof. Weihs was involved in the first development of Israel’s mini-RPVs, and applied insights from Nature.
In addition to the individual prize awarded to Prof. Weihs, two prizes and two honorable mentions were given to teams of developers from the ministry of defense, the Prime minister’s office, the navy, the intelligence command, the Givati brigade, and defense industries. In the citations General Shoham said “Each of the teams and winners developed outstanding systems and game-changing projects unique in our geographical area, and possibly in the whole world”.
