Ron Folman, a quantum physicist, was taken aback when a delegation of top officials from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency paid an unexpected visit to his lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) about 15 years ago. “I asked them, ‘Why are you here? You have a thousand times more money, scientists, and space,’” Folman recalls. “The head of the delegation answered, ‘I heard what you guys are doing, and I wanted to see with my own eyes this Israeli chutzpah.’”
