Hossam Haick said he was repeatedly humiliated at Ben-Gurion Airport because he was an Arab scientist working on sensors. Later, he received a “good Arab” certificate for expedited passport control. During the Gaza war, he said, he received threats to his life after moving some exams from the Technion to its Tel Aviv campus because missile fire hit the north.
Haick, a professor of chemical engineering and nanotechnology at the Technion, grew up in Nazareth in a Christian family. He said people threatened and harassed him because he was “an Arab working on sensors, a technology that can be used in missiles.” While serving as dean, he said, callers told him: “We'll slaughter you if you don't change your decision.”
Threats and access
In some years, Haick took 53 flights. He said airport staff repeatedly humiliated him before he received the fast-track passport control certificate issued by the Israel Airports Authority. The account gives no details about the incidents or identifies who threatened him during the Gaza war.
A Nature article co-authored by Haick reported that Arab student numbers at the Technion had risen by 200% since 2004. Arab women students had increased by 350%, while outstanding Arab students rose by 1,800%. The article said the dropout rate fell by 67%.
Haick served as assistant to the Technion's senior vice president, responsible for equal opportunities. He said he opposed affirmative action and instead invested in staff and student support. “I believe in excellence, and advancement on that basis alone,” he said.
One admissions route lets applicants enroll with a high school matriculation certificate, even one with low grades. Their first-semester performance determines whether they continue. About 200 students enter through the route each year, Haick said, and about a quarter meet the requirements to continue. He said students who stay have higher average grades than those admitted through the regular route, and receive a mentor throughout their degree. Some also take part in a summer program focused on speaking and listening to Hebrew.
Research and access to care
Haick is developing a low-cost skin patch designed to monitor health signals and detect disease. A four-centimeter-by-four-centimeter version contains six sensors. They measure substances released through skin and send data to a phone app. Laboratory engineer Walaa Saliba said the patch compares readings with statistical databases and sends an alert if it detects a shift toward illness.
The patch first diagnosed tuberculosis. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, researchers tested it on about 2,000 people in India, South Africa and Latvia. Haick said it achieved approximately 90% accuracy in detecting active tuberculosis compared with a control group, and similar results for latent tuberculosis. It costs a little over a dollar to manufacture and works for months. But it still needs testing in real-world conditions to show that it can reliably identify disease.
Haick said he expects the patch to reach commercial use within two or three years. At first, it would monitor a small number of diseases; later, he envisions detecting more illnesses early and delivering personalized treatment. His team produced a separate version for tuberculosis for $1.50, after Haick initially promised Bill Gates a $1 manufacturing cost.
His team is also developing an electronic nose that analyzes volatile organic compounds in breath. Haick said the latest device is about the size of a hand and about 88% accurate. It can identify 17 diseases, he said, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted it Breakthrough Device designation for lung cancer and advanced liver fibrosis unrelated to alcohol consumption. Hospitals around the world are using it experimentally to diagnose those conditions.
Regional AI initiatives
In Lebanon, the “One Million Lebanese AI Experts” initiative aims to familiarize up to one million people with generative AI. The UAE supports the project, announced during talks in New York between Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. Minister of the Displaced and Minister of State for Technology Affairs Kamal Sehahdeh said the developing project plans three-hour training sessions in four modules. The digital rights advocacy group SMEX has raised concerns about the initiative.
In Abu Dhabi, Insilico Medicine researchers developed LongevityBench, a benchmark for assessing AI reasoning across biological data related to aging. Published in Cell in September 2026, it covers 17 tasks using clinical, epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic and genetic data. Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, said specialized models matched or exceeded most tested frontier systems. He also said the benchmark can't settle how biological aging should be defined or measured, and proposed targets still require experimental validation.