Miniaturized medical devices, green technology, advanced radar systems, and new methods in artificial intelligence are just some of the technologies developed by Prof. Yonina Eldar of the Weizmann Institute of Science, recipient of the Israel Prize in Engineering Research and one of the world’s leading researchers in signal processing.
"It's an incredibly moving and humbling experience to be part of such a distinguished group of individuals whose contributions are so significant in their respective fields," said Prof. Yonina Eldar in an interview with the Davidson Institute website, following the recent announcement that she will receive the Israel Prize in Engineering Sciences this year. "It is very exciting to receive recognition for the work we do in the lab and for the importance of signal processing as a field and its contribution to advancing science and technology. Particularly meaningful to me is the recognition that scientists in Israel are leading groundbreaking research in so many areas, especially during these challenging times."
A meaningful recognition, especially in challenging times. Prof. Eldar hosts school students in her lab | Photo: Esti Cohen, courtesy of the Eldar Lab.
Taking It All the Way
Eldar, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, will receive the prestigious award for her research in "developing algorithms for signal and information processing and artificial intelligence," as stated in the prize committee's announcement. In practical terms, Eldar and her lab develop a wide range of sensors capable of detecting diverse signals—such as visible light, radio waves, and sound—alongside innovative methods for capturing and processing this information.
“Our guiding principle is to extract as much information as possible from signals in the most efficient and resource-conscious way,” Eldar told the Davidson Institute website. “That’s why some of our developments enable technologies to be miniaturized and applied in new ways.”
Her team’s innovations include a miniaturized ultrasound device with diagnostic capabilities that exceed those of a conventional ultrasound machine, as well as a compact medical radar that can be mounted on a wall to monitor the vital signs of individuals in a room.
Unlike most academic research labs, Eldar's lab doesn’t stop at developing theoretical methods—it carries ideas through the entire process. From the initial physical or mathematical concept aimed at improving signal reception and data quality, through advanced data processing methods—often involving artificial intelligence—all the way to engineering functional products that put the technology into practice. “It’s a unique lab that conducts fundamental research in physics, mathematics, and engineering, while also focusing on real-world applications,” Eldar explains. “We collaborate with hospitals and companies on product development and testing. That’s why our team includes engineers, computer scientists, clinicians, and more. Our students’ research projects are integrated into this framework. It’s important to me to create an impact that improves people’s lives.”
A lab that sees ideas through the entire process —from concept to engineering implementation. A SAMPL Lab system in development | Photo: Ohad Herches, courtesy of the Eldar Lab
Seizing the Opportunity
Yonina Eldar (née Breglass) was born in 1973 in Toronto, Canada, the third of eight children to Rabbi Meir Breglass, the community rabbi, and his wife Vicky (née Schoenfeld). Her grandfather, Rabbi Mordechai Schoenfeld, had been a community rabbi in the United States and a leader with a Zionist vision. Both of her parents were dedicated educators who dreamed of Zionism and peace. “The name Yonina reflects that longing—it means ‘little dove’ in Hebrew,” she says with a smile.
When she was six, her parents fulfilled their dream of making aliyah, moving the family to Israel. They initially settled in Petah Tikva before moving to Ginot Shomron. Eldar attended a religious girls' high school in Tel Aviv and later completed her national service with the Bnei Akiva youth movement, which at the time, in addition to its regular activities, was deeply involved in helping new immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia.
After her service, Eldar enrolled at Tel Aviv University to pursue a dual degree in physics and electrical engineering. “My parents always placed great importance on education and knowledge, and they were also very active in the community in various fields,” she recalls. “It was important to me that my studies combine both—deep theoretical knowledge with practical work that impacts society, pure science alongside applied science that involves working with people and improving lives. I was accepted into an honors program that allowed me to pursue a double degree, but at the time, such a structured program didn’t yet exist. I had to navigate a lot of bureaucracy and overlapping courses.” she says. After I completed both degrees, the deans sat with me and designed an integrated physics and engineering program”
Eldar went on to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering under the supervision of Prof. Ehud Weinstein. Not long after, Weinstein’s close friend, Prof. Alan Oppenheim of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—a pioneer in signal processing—visited Israel. “He encouraged me to apply to MIT and continue my studies with him, and so I did—even though it hadn’t been my plan,” Eldar says. “Sometimes, you have to leave space in life for opportunities, and when the opportunity came, I took it.”
Believes in seizing opportunities—and in creating them. Committed to promoting gender, sectoral, and social diversity in the lab. Eldar with her research group team | Photo: Weizmann Institute of Science.
Getting Processed
And so, Eldar found herself—a young mother to an eight-week-old baby—beginning her PhD at MIT in Boston, where she delved into the quantum aspects of signal processing. “In my research, we applied physical principles from quantum mechanics to develop innovative methods for processing classical signals,” she explains. “The second direction went the other way—using signal processing algorithms to manage quantum information. In both areas, we reached fascinating insights, and the principles and methods we developed are in use today. But beyond the science, I learned a great deal from working with Oppenheim. He runs a truly unique research group, encourages out-of-the-box thinking, and challenges students to stretch their creativity and intellectual boundaries to the limit."
Eldar turned down offers to remain in the United States and work at MIT or Stanford University in California. Instead, she chose to return to Israel, where she established the SAMPL Lab at the Technion—dedicated to sampling, sensing, and signal processing. “We founded a first-of-its-kind signal processing lab that takes a comprehensive, end-to-end approach,” she explains. “From physical sensing, through the hardware that converts data into digital information, to the algorithms that decode it for specific applications—and even the user interface.”
In 2019, after 17 years at the Technion, Eldar moved her lab to the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she now also heads the Biomedical Engineering Center. "The institute is a great fit for our group because it's highly interdisciplinary, with a wide range of people enthusiastic about cross-disciplinary collaboration," Eldar said. "This gives us the momentum to pursue the best science, free from rigid classifications, and also opens up many opportunities for students."
Encouraging students to push their creative thinking to the limit. Alan V. Oppenheim | Photo: MIT EECS, Flickr.
Changing the Rules of the Game
Eldar is a world-renowned expert in radar applications, a field where her breakthroughs in signal sensing and processing have been widely implemented. The technologies she has developed are extensively used in security and defense systems and, in recent years, in autonomous vehicles, which rely on rapidly detecting and processing vast amounts of environmental data.
Another area where these developments are applied is non-contact vital signs monitoring (NCVSM) radar technology—a groundbreaking development in which she is one of the world’s leading experts. “One of our developments is a radar system that can remotely detect extremely subtle movements, such as the rise and fall of a person’s chest ”during breathing," she explains. "What makes our technology unique is the algorithm, which enables precise monitoring of heart rate and respiration—even for multiple individuals simultaneously in crowded environments. This system combines accuracy, scalability, and versatility."
Such radar-based systems open the door to a wide range of applications. Their potential is not limited to healthcare, such as pandemic monitoring or tracking the well-being of elderly individuals, but also extends to industrial safety, ecological systems, and other monitoring applications.
A radar system that enables contactless monitoring of multiple individuals’ vital signs in a room - suitable for a wide range of applications. | Screenshot from a SAMPL Lab video
Another key focus of Eldar’s lab in the medical field is the development of a miniaturized ultrasound device. Ultrasound technology has been used for nearly seventy years, relying on high-frequency sound waves that travel at different speeds through various tissues and fluids. The reflected wave patterns are then used to construct images of the body’s internal structures they passed through, enabling non-invasive medical diagnosis.
“The idea is to take a large, bulky device and miniaturize the sensing—in this case, sound waves—replacing it with a simple transducer that connects to a smartphone,” Eldar explains. “In conventional ultrasound, the sound wave data is translated into an image for doctors to interpret. Our approach uses advanced signal sampling techniques to tap into additional layers of digital information. We’re not only able to produce higher-quality images, but also extract additional diagnostic parameters beyond what is included in traditional ultrasound imaging,” Eldar said. “It’s a treasure trove of data that was previously inaccessible. By combining advanced signal processing with artificial intelligence, we can obtain insights from a compact device that are currently unattainable with conventional ultrasound.”
The miniaturized ultrasound device, which is also designed for wearable use to enable continuous medical monitoring, is currently being adapted for commercial production, with plans underway to establish a company to manufacture and market it. Several other innovations from Eldar's lab are at similar stages of commercialization following patent registration, including the medical radar system for real-time monitoring of hospitalized patients, as well as developments in defense, safety, communication, autonomous vehicles and more.
The applied aspect of the work goes hand in hand with scientific activity, which includes more than a thousand scientific papers co-authored by Eldar, 11 books—including a leading textbook in the field of signal processing—and dozens of book chapters.
“It’s important to me that our developments harness technology for the benefit of humanity and serve applications that enhance life and quality of life,” Eldar emphasizes. “What excites me—beyond the applications themselves—is the guiding principle: we don’t start with the application, but with the fundamental principles and the physical or mathematical constraints of signal acquisition and processing—accuracy, efficiency, compression, and so on. In these areas, we are changing the rules of the game, paving the way for a wide range of future applications."
The applied aspect of the work is backed by extensive scientific publications. A selection of books authored and edited by Prof. Eldar | Photo: Itai Nevo.
Sampling Less, Gaining More
The game-changing breakthrough led by Eldar—and which she continues to advance—was described by the Israel Prize committee as a “challenge to the classical sampling theorem.”
The sampling theorem is a fundamental concept in signal processing and lies at the core of sampling theory. It establishes the principles and constraints for converting any signal—whether light, sound, radio waves, brain activity, or other waveforms—into a sequence of numbers that can be digitally processed. Known as the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, it was developed nearly a century ago and defines the relationship between a signal’s frequency and the minimum sampling rate needed to accurately represent it and avoid distortion. For example, if a signal oscillates at 50 Hz but is sampled only 20 times per second, essential information is lost, making it impossible to reconstruct the original signal accurately—resulting in processing errors.
A familiar illustration of this effect appears in movies or TV: when a camera films a moving car, the wheels may seem to spin backward even as the car moves forward. This visual illusion occurs because the frame rate of the camera (the number of frames it captures per second) is lower than the actual speed of the wheel’s rotation.
High-frequency sampling requires specialized equipment that is not always easy to obtain or manufacture. Even when such equipment exists, using it comes with trade-offs that make the technology cumbersome. Higher sampling rates consume more energy, reducing battery life, and demand greater computational power to process the data. That’s why signal processing researchers strive to extract maximum information using as few samples as possible—precisely where Eldar’s innovation comes in.
"We demonstrated that it is possible to bypass these limitations and accurately represent many types of signals even at lower sampling rates,” she explains. "This is achieved by leveraging additional information embedded in the signal or by applying prior knowledge about its characteristics.”
“The Nyquist theorem still holds,” she adds, “but when you tailor your approach to the signal’s properties and the application's needs, you can work around it. You can achieve the same level of accuracy—or sometimes even better—while sampling at a lower rate, which consumes fewer resources.”
It’s possible to push past physical limits and extract more information with fewer resources. Prototype of the advanced medical ultrasound system | Photo courtesy of the Eldar Lab.
Green Sampling
In recent years, low-energy sampling techniques have given rise to a specialized subfield within signal processing known as Green Data Acquisition or "green sampling." These methods not only reduce energy consumption during signal acquisition but also lower the demands of data processing and storage by generating significantly smaller volumes of data
Extending the lifespan of devices and batteries through lower power consumption can be critically important—for instance, in pacemakers implanted in the body, which require surgical replacement every few years. Energy efficiency is also crucial in Internet of Things (IoT) applications, where sensors embedded in products report on their status, and it is even more vital in AI chips and systems, which consume vast amounts of power due to the massive amounts of data they process.
"One way to reduce energy consumption is indeed to sample at a lower frequency, but we are also developing additional methods," Eldar emphasizes. "For example, we created a technique to convert analog signals into digital ones without requiring a clock—currently a key component in nearly every digital system, which consumes a significant portion of its power. To achieve this, we needed to rethink how we approach data acquisition. Instead of sampling at a fixed rate, we sample only when the signal surpasses a certain threshold. We discovered that from the data collected using this method, we can reconstruct all the information about the sampled signal."
Over the years, Eldar’s scientific contributions have earned her numerous prestigious honors, including the Krill Prize (2005), the Weizmann Prize for Exact Sciences (2011), the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Technical Achievement Award (2013), the Taub Award for Academic Excellence (2015), and the Landau Prize for Science and Research (2023).
Energy-efficient systems. Prototype of an advanced dynamic system for environmentally friendly analog-to-digital signal processing | Photo courtesy of the Eldar Lab.
The Social Lab
Alongside her scientific achievements, Prof. Yonina Eldar has long been committed to advancing the participation of women in science. In recent years, she has taken on this mission in an official capacity, serving as Chair of the Gender Equity Committee of the Council for Higher Education, where she works to increase the representation of women in academia.
“The committee’s goal is to systematically promote the integration of women in academia, backed by dedicated funding,” Eldar explains. "We launched the ‘Equal Horizon’ program, which supports women at every stage—from students to senior researchers—and rewards institutions that meet gender equity targets. We also made sure that every academic institution appoints a gender equality advisor to the president, responsible for implementing the program and serving as a point of contact for women on campus. This kind of change is needed not only in academia, but across all sectors—and I hope that both women and men who move on from academia to other sectors will carry these principles with them.”
As one of the youngest professors ever appointed in Israel, Eldar knows firsthand the challenge of balancing a demanding academic career with raising a family. She is the mother of five: Yonatan (26), Moriah (22), Tal (19), Noa (13), and Roi (10).
"Balancing an academic career with raising a family is an ongoing challenge. Too often, talented scientists—especially mothers—are forced to make difficult choices that limit their professional growth. That’s why I, along with many colleagues who care deeply about this issue, work to create an ecosystem that enables female scientists to be both mothers and pursue outstanding research careers—even within my own lab."
Eldar ensures that her lab is diverse and inclusive, with a strong representation of women, while maintaining a mixed-gender environment. "Diversity is very important to me—not just in gender, but also in sector, geography, and political backgrounds. It benefits the lab, fosters creativity, and helps instill teamwork, mutual understanding, and shared contribution. I hope that beyond the scientific work, this experience will shape their identity as citizens who recognize that collaboration is possible despite differences."
"Of course, I never compromise on the professional level of my students," she adds, "but it's important to remember that not everyone expresses their abilities in the same way. Sometimes, you need to give them the opportunity to do so differently. Many female students, for example, may lack confidence in presenting their work publicly, but that doesn’t mean they have less knowledge or capability."
Committed to volunteering—not only in science—as a way to foster social responsibility. Eldar’s research group taking part in agricultural volunteer work | Photo courtesy of the Eldar Lab.
Eldar’s lab also regularly hosts high school students from a wide range of backgrounds. "Many groups of female students visit us, and we work to encourage them to choose STEM fields and show them that they are capable. We also welcome students from geographic and social peripheries, as well as gifted students. We strive to reach everyone, highlight the importance of science and technology education, and show them that success is possible," Eldar emphasizes.
Lab members also volunteer to lead educational activities in schools in underprivileged areas. "As a lab, we also engage in non-scientific volunteer work, such as agricultural projects in the south or working with people with disabilities. I believe that those who come to my lab should develop a sense of social responsibility, and we aim to make a societal impact."
Over the years, Eldar has mentored hundreds of research students, a role she considers central to her life’s work. “I’ve had the privilege of teaching—and hopefully guiding—many talented young people,” she reflects, “and that is deeply important to me. I don’t know if my scientific discoveries will change humanity, or to what extent, but I hope to be a stepping stone for young, talented individuals who will go on to research, influence, and create change. That impact is even more meaningful than the discoveries themselves."