Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand, head of the Scojen Institute for Synthetic Biology at Reichman University, begins each morning by greeting the plants in his laboratory. "I can ask a plant, ‘How are you? Did you sleep well? Are you thirsty? Has anyone been bothering you?’" he tells "Globes," and he does this using sensor chips that integrate chemical compounds, antibodies, and even living cells.
These chips are essentially miniature laboratories packed with vast numbers of sensors distributed across a tiny surface. They can be used not only to monitor plants, but also to reveal what is happening inside the human body, the brain, our drinking water, even on the battlefield. "If we look only at the field of wearable medical sensors, we’re already talking about a market worth roughly $20 billion," says Shacham-Diamand, highlighting the technology’s potential. "Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are micro-sensors very similar to the ones we specialize in. That market alone is worth $7-8 billion, and people wear them almost as a status symbol."
Recently, Shacham-Diamand received the Global Industry Leader Award at ChipEx 2026, Israel’s premier annual conference for the semiconductor and AI industries. Considered one of the field's highest honors, the award is presented to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the industry. Previous recipients include Prof. Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm, and Dr. Henry Samueli, co-founder of Broadcom.
According to the judges, the award recognized "his vision and leadership in reshaping the semiconductor industry." Yet the scope of his achievements is so broad that even Shacham-Diamand himself is not entirely certain which accomplishment ultimately tipped the scales in his favor.
"There are many extraordinary people in our field, and I genuinely asked myself, ‘Why me?’" he says modestly. "Perhaps it was because of my role in the development of advanced volatile-memory technologies at Zoran. Or maybe because of the work I was involved in during my years at Cornell University, together with many others, developing a method for communication between transistors on a chip - a technology that is now used throughout the computer industry and accounts, for example, for roughly 20% of Applied Materials’ business. I also served on the government committee that oversaw Intel’s entry into Israel, and one of the conditions attached to the incentives package was that the company invest in education and academia in Israel. Or perhaps it’s because I introduced the semiconductor industry to the potential of biology. People began to realize that it could become an enormous market."
The vision: "A Research Park - A kind of mini MIT"
Shacham-Diamand is currently focused on that vision as director of the Scojen Institute for Synthetic Biology at Reichman University, which was launched in 2023. He joined the institute after retiring from Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and he sees his current role as a mission: transforming Israel into a global leader in biochip technology.
The biochips being developed at the institute have applications ranging from medicine to biodefense, but Shacham-Diamand’s true passion is plant sensing. His work in this field has led to close collaborations with the Indian government on food-security planning. "Farmers in India irrigate their crops extensively because the structure of farming subsidies there makes water almost free," he explains. "Like farmers elsewhere, they also use large quantities of fertilizers and pesticides. The result is not only waste, but pollution. There are already places, even in the US, where water is no longer fit for drinking because of these practices. We can provide farmers with a precise understanding of exactly what a plant needs and when it needs it.
"Governments are interested in aggregating all this information into a national food-security dashboard. Today, that remains a major blind spot. The data is also extremely valuable to agricultural insurance companies, helping them forecast and price weather-related risks. Climate change is making it increasingly difficult to predict weather patterns even a single season in advance."
Even with AI?
"Everyone talks about AI," he says, "but if the future no longer resembles the past, you cannot rely on historical data to predict it. You need current, real-time information."
This principle underlies Shacham-Diamand’s broader view of AI. "AI is only as good as the data it is built on. It requires vast amounts of accurate, up-to-date information; otherwise, even the best model will be of little value," he says. Therefore, as AI becomes more important, so too do biochips. "So in the end, Sam Altman may be the one who makes money from it all, and that’s perfectly fine, as long as he’s making the right decisions."
Shacham-Diamand himself never founded a company based on these technologies, but his daughter-in-law, Shely Aronov - a Stanford graduate and serial entrepreneur in California - did. "She heard about our developments in plant sensing over a Friday night dinner and went on to found InnerPlant in California, a company that develops AI-driven solutions for agriculture."
It appears that the Scojen Institute itself has no intention of remaining solely within the confines of academia.
"Our vision is to create a research and industrial park around the institute - a kind of mini MIT in Herzliya. The municipality is very interested in the idea. Our goal is both to attract companies in the field and to launch new ones ourselves. We already have several startups in development, although it’s still too early to discuss them publicly."
"They’re already using our technology in Germany"
Can you give some examples of the projects currently underway at the institute?
"Take Dr. Oren Moscovitz, for example. He is developing new approaches for diagnosing and treating disease using antibodies and therapies targeted at unique sugar molecules on human cells. I provide him with chips that allow him to observe what is happening inside the cell.
"In the field of biodefense, our goal is to develop a chip that mimics the biological functions of a living human body. When placed in water, it can detect and warn of substances that interfere with biological processes.
"US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq were particularly concerned about the contamination of drinking-water sources because, in desert environments, such resources are scarce and highly vulnerable. But the threat is not limited to deliberate poisoning. Disease outbreaks or industrial spills can also render water unsafe. In Germany, our technology is already being used to monitor rivers. These technologies have not yet been commercialized through a dedicated company, which may be a missed opportunity on our part. Still, seeing them deployed in real-world applications is a source of tremendous pride."
Another application Shacham-Diamand highlights is a potential alternative to MRI technology that could assist in the treatment of wounded soldiers in the field. "Dr. Liat Rahamim-Ben Navi and Prof. Ofir Zmira from Hillel Yaffe Medical Center are using magnetic sensors designed to map injuries to the peripheral nervous system. Together, we’re developing a field-deployable diagnostic system that could be used by the defense establishment to determine the location and extent of nerve damage. For example, it could guide a medic, helping them determine where an amputation should be performed to minimize further nerve damage."
The next frontier may be direct brain-computer interfaces - the direction being pursued by companies such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink and its competitors. Yet Shacham-Diamand is particularly intrigued by a different question: how such technologies might benefit computers rather than people.
"AI is going to become extraordinarily expensive. At some point, someone has to recoup the enormous investments being made in it. We’re aiming for AI that is cheaper and more accessible. How? Today, everyone’s building AI on silicon chips designed to imitate neurons. Why not use actual neurons instead? Perhaps a kind of miniature brain. Perhaps networks of interconnected brains. Perhaps systems connected directly to the human brain. That’s the question we’re all asking."
Another branch of the institute, not directly related to chips, focuses on the ability of genetically engineered bacteria to produce an enormous range of materials. Among the targets: oil. "After all, petroleum is essentially organic matter that has undergone geological processing over the course of 100 million years," he says. "Why wait? Let’s get bacteria to produce oil now."
"They told me Silicon was passé"
Shacham-Diamand began his career in Israel’s semiconductor industry while pursuing his doctorate in electrical engineering at the Technion in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At the time, he worked with Intel, when the company still had only a modest presence in Israel. He later moved to the University of California, Berkeley, for postdoctoral research, where he made one of the most consequential decisions of his career: to focus on silicon chips - a choice that was far from fashionable at the time.
"People told me silicon was passé," he recalls. "And on paper, some of its characteristics were indeed inferior to those of other semiconductor materials. But I respected my advisor, and I believed the field had a future. In the end, what succeeds is what the market wants, not what professors want. Silicon chips can be manufactured at scale, with high quality and exceptional reproducibility - that is, every chip can be made as close to identical as possible."
From Berkeley, he moved to Cornell University, where he held a position in nanotechnology research. It was there that he conducted the research that would eventually help earn him the Global Industry Leader Award: the development of on-chip communication technologies between transistors. In 1997, after nearly a decade at Cornell, he decided to return to Israel. "The children were already school-age, so it felt like the right time to come back," he says. He returned with an ambitious goal: to help build Israel’s semiconductor and nanotechnology industries.
"My motto was, ‘We are not a Third World country. We need the best research centers in the world.’" That conviction led him to champion the establishment of a microfabrication center - a facility dedicated to ultra-small-scale manufacturing that would serve researchers throughout the Faculty of Engineering. "We wanted to make better use of each researcher’s budget to build infrastructure befitting a tech powerhouse. We told ourselves that if we thought like a powerhouse, we would become one. Later, a group of us at Tel Aviv University founded the university’s Nanotechnology Center, guided by the same philosophy. We knew we could never compete with the US in funding, but we could compete through ideas, determination, and collaboration."
Collaboration is a recurring theme throughout the conversation with Shacham-Diamand. It is also a principle he applies at the Scojen Institute at Reichman University. The model he has developed allows researchers to pursue their individual areas of expertise while working within a shared laboratory. Researchers are seconded to other projects or provide support to them as needed and are compensated for their contributions. Every student works under the guidance of more than one researcher.
"We’re building an organization designed for the 21st century," he says. "Not at the expense of disciplinary expertise - we will always need specialists. But I would like to see about 10% of researchers and engineers receive interdisciplinary training.
"I watched the semiconductor industry grow from virtually nothing into a sector responsible for roughly 6% of Israel’s exports, producing billions of dollars for the economy and employing a vast number of people - all because Israel made a handful of sound strategic decisions. We can do the same thing in synthetic biology.
"We missed the opportunity presented by traditional biotechnology. But now we’ve been given a second chance - with a few advantages built in. The AI revolution allows us to achieve more with ingenuity, agility, and fewer people. After all, with all due respect, we are only 10 million people."
That is one of the reasons Shacham-Diamand serves as the driving entrepreneurial force and de facto chief scientist behind the Israeli Biochip Center, established by the Israel Innovation Authority in partnership with Reichman University and several commercial companies, with an investment of NIS 113 million.
"Everyone else Is a physician - I’m the black sheep"
Shacham-Diamand says he first discovered the life sciences at the turn of the millennium. "In my family, everyone is a physician, and I’m the black sheep," he jokes. Yet he traces the turning point in his career to a sabbatical in Japan. "At the time, I was debating whether to spend my sabbatical in Australia or Japan. Then Prof. Tetsuya Osaka, head of the Nanotechnology Institute at Waseda University in Tokyo, contacted me. He had heard me speak at a lecture there and simply told me, ‘You’re coming to Japan.’ While I was still deciding, he had already sent all the visa paperwork to my office and invited my wife and me on a two-week visit to Tokyo to see whether we liked it. My wife fell in love with the place - and so did I." To this day, Shacham-Diamand remains a visiting researcher at Waseda University.
During his sabbatical, he helped found an R&D institute focused on micro- and nanotechnologies for medicine and healthcare. "My time in Japan exposed me to new approaches that were critical to the development of biochips, and I brought those methods back with me to Israel."
That was when he began applying chip technologies to biology, a field that would eventually become his primary area of expertise and ultimately lead him to his current role. "Biology enables us to understand life, while engineering enables us to design," he says. "When you combine the two, you get what we call bioconvergence: engineering based on a genuine understanding of living systems." It is an idea to which he returns repeatedly throughout the conversation.
He has one more, somewhat radical, proposal for turning Israel into a global leader in the field: "Israel’s universities are so geographically close to one another that they can almost be viewed as branches of the same university. We need to collaborate without ego - at least in the field of bioconvergence - so that we can overcome our weaknesses and fully leverage our strengths."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 1, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.