President Obama Interacts with BGU Technologies at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem
President Obama Interacts with BGU Technologies at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem
March 21, 2013
Medical Research, Robotics & High-Tech
President Barack Obama’s visit to the Israel Museum today included a walk through of the “Israeli Technology for a Better World” exhibition accompanied by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The two leaders clearly enjoyed interacting with technologies developed at BGU.
“Uh-oh, who’s this guy?” Obama said as he shook hands with a scientist wearing what looked like a fishnet skullcap with tiny light bulbs.
The man, BGU Prof. Amir Geva, was wearing the latest brain scanner from ElMindA, an Israeli start-up company he founded.
ElMindA makes brain scanners for detecting diseases and head injuries—and has even worked with the Pittsburgh Steelers to better help detect, predict and prevent concussions.
As Prof. Geva explained the product, Obama nodded and called it “a great idea.”
Obama and Netanyahu also visited what the Daily Beast/Newsweek called “the star of the technology show,” a prototype of a thought controlled computer system, called MinDesktop, developed by BGU students under the supervision of Prof. Rami Puzis of the Department of Information Systems Engineering.
Wearing a cap that reads brainwaves, one of the students showed that as he thought about different items—such as a car, his favorite song or a flower—a cursor moved to different colors on a computer screen that controlled what the user wanted to do.
Obama, who was observing this with Netanyahu quipped, “These guys have deeper thoughts probably than the two of us.”
Read more on The Daily Beast/Newsweek >>
Watch this CBS News video of President Obama viewing these technologies>>
ElMindA is at :48 seconds
MinDesktop is at 2:01
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