BAR-ILAN INSTITUTE OF NANOTECHNOLOGY & ADVANCED MATERIALS | 2019 ANNUAL REPORT

4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Building an active, productive and innovative community of scientists, including both young researchers and well-known, established researchers from a variety of disciplines (engineering, physics, chemistry, life sciences and computer science) is both the essence of our existence and the product of the strategic planning of the Bar-Ilan Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA). At the basis of all of BINA’s activities and continued success is its devotion to excellence at every stage. The strategy for sustainability continues to focus on three points: • Receiving a fixed annual budget from Bar-Ilan University • Increasing revenues from the equipment center • Receiving grants from research and educational programs This past year, we put emphasis on increasing revenue generated by the equipment center and by grants. In order to increase revenue from the equipment center: • We invested in our most important resource—the heart and engine of the Institute—BINA’s unique team. We have increased the number of team members to 24 and reorganized the managerial structure of the core equipment facility under four units: Fabrication, headed by Dr. Yossi Abulafia; Surface Analysis, headed by Dr. Olga Girshevitz; Charged-Particle Microscopy, headed by Dr. Yafit Fleger; and Administration, headed by Ms. Zehavit Titebom. • We have expanded training for students as well as training for employees from companies that work with BINA, which increases the usability of the various instruments. • Strategic purchases of equipment which will serve to update and improve the existing services, while also allowing us to enter new areas, as in the case of the purchase of cryogenic sample preparation equipment: Leica EM AFS2 freeze substitution system, Leica EM ICE high-pressure freezer, Leica EM FC7 cryoultramicrotome, Leica EM Cryo CLEM correlative light and electron microscopy. Following the installation, BINA’s client base for scientific services is expected to further expand in the coming year. In line with the policy set forth by the head of the institute, we have become proactive in finding grants for which we can apply. Increasing grant-based revenue is accomplished in three ways: • As part of the restructuring, Dr. Yael Goldfinger took over the management of this effort and is actively looking for grants that are appropriate for the Institute. She has already succeeded in establishing a large consortium with a budget of up to € 19 million, as part of Horizon 2020 for Photonic Innovation Hubs , which she will be coordinating. • We encourage our professional team to find collaborations within the industry. • We are also applying for new types of grants. This year, for the first time, we applied for and were awarded two grants as a part of Eurostars . The first one, NanoScale , with the collaboration of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, is supporting the design and creation of a prototype for Nanopatterned Attachments for Nanometric Optical Standardization, Calibration and Length