Moran Bercovici

Moran Bercovici heads the Microfluidic Technologies Laboratory in the Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. He is also affiliated with the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute and the Technion Integrated Cancer Center. He is best known for his lab-on-a-chip research, which he is adapting to create a rapid test for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Associate Professor Moran Bercovici established the multidisciplinary Microfluidic Technologies Laboratory in the Technion, which combines experimental, theoretical, and computational tools to study problems at the microscale. His acclaimed lab-on-a-chip research integrates several analyses usually done in the laboratory for applications to various fields at the point of testing. He was recognized in 2019 with the prestigious Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists for creating such a super-sensitive microfluidic chip that could detect health conditions, including heart disease and cancer.

Prof. Moran is refashioning that work to develop a test kit for the rapid and early detection of the coronavirus from samples of a throat swab. While existing tests are processed in a central laboratory and take days to get the results, his test could detect the coronavirus in five to 10 minutes.

The Technion has been Prof. Bercovici’s home for more than two decades. He earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering in 2001 at the age of 18 and completed his master’s degree at the Technion in the same field. He earned his doctoral degree and conducted postdoctoral work at Stanford University before joining the Technion in 2011.