Jacobs Student Interns with Technion Alumnus in Israel

Daniel Levine was always making things.

As a kid, it was houses, boats and giant airplanes made from Popsicle sticks.

This summer, as a connective media student at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, Levine put his creative design skills to work at ReWalk, helping founder and Technion graduate Dr. Amit Goffer develop his renowned robotic exoskeleton, which allows paraplegics to stand and walk.

Spending his summer at the ReWalk headquarters in Yokneam, Israel, while most of his peers are working at U.S.-based companies, Levine said, “the company has a family atmosphere. Everybody likes what they’re doing and has genuine motives.”

“My goal is to create technologies, particularly with medical applications, that have a meaningful impact,” Levine said.

That ambition was influenced by his parents (one is an HIV/AIDS epidemiologist; the other an internist) and by his education at the international school in Atlanta that “made sure you had a strong sense of empathy as you go out into the world.”

As an undergraduate at Cornell University, Daniel worked in the Laboratory for Intelligent Machine Systems and was on the iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machines) team, which uses synthetic biology to tackle world problems. As a Cornell team co-leader, his group placed in the top bracket at an iGEM Competition for designing a bio-sensing device to detect arsenic in river water.

In 2014, after earning his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and computer science, he started at the Jacobs Institute’s two-year Connective Media master’s program.

The courses emphasize real-world applications, and many students are engaged in projects outside of class, he says.

In one such project, Daniel and three other students created an app to give phone-engaged pedestrians a visual “heads-up” when approaching a crosswalk, if they don’t have the right-of-way.

The project won the AT&T Grand Prize for the Pedestrian Safety Competition.

Looking forward to the second year, Levine is ready to work hard. “People here are motivated to make things happen,” Levine said. “We sometimes pull all-nighters, but it’s worth it in the end.”

This article was originally written by American Technion Society writer Jennifer Frey.