Yaakov Benenson, a graduate of the Technion excellence progaram and now a doctoral student at the Weizmann Institute of Science, has been named to the 2004 list of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT's Magazine of Innovation.
Benenson co-invented the world's smallest biological computing device – a bio-molecular finite-state automaton made from DNA strands and DNA-manipulating enzymes. The automaton was listed in the 2004 Guinness 
Book of World Records as the smallest biological computing device – it is about a trillionth the size of a drop of water. Recently, this device was enhanced to detect and diagnose molecular symptoms of cancer in vitro and, in response, to release a drug to treat the cancer.