In a small lab, squeezed into the corner of a skyscraper in down-town Tel Aviv, Yossi Yamin is proudly holding what he calls “a little James Bond-style suitcase factory, powered by the sun”.
As with many of 007’s finest contraptions, initial impressions are inauspicious. But in the past four years, these little metal boxes, coated in solar panels, have repeatedly blasted into orbit on the back of a SpaceX rocket, bringing groundbreaking insights ranging from the behaviour of leukaemia cells to the best ways of generating lab-grown steak back to Earth.
As chief executive of SpacePharma – a company that works with clients around the world, from children’s hospitals to big pharma – Yamin has helped to pioneer a new industry. Using technology developed at the Technion, Israel’s oldest
