Spotlight on...
THE PORTER SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Prof. Yehuda Benayahu and his team are using an innovative approach to monitor the effects of global warming on the marine environment using artificial reefs. TAU's Porter School of Environmental Studies is unique in Israel — the first and only school offering interdisciplinary MA and MSc degrees in environmental studies. And Porter is one of only a few schools in the world to unite researchers from different fields under one "green" umbrella.
Leading a Scientific Revolution
To find real-world solutions for this century's environmental challenges, Porter's research combines hard sciences such as engineering, zoology, and earth sciences with humanistic fields such as philosophy, law, sociology and the arts. Unconventional partnerships and workshops are the norm, building green bridges among departments to find creative solutions for environmental dilemmas.
Whether building clean technologies or defining "green law," this multidisciplinary approach has advanced innovative fields of study, revolutionizing environmental thinking and practice — locally and globally — and is shaping public policy everywhere.
"The composition of our academic team is the very definition of environmental efficiency," says Prof. Pinhas Alpert, the geophysicist who heads the school. "We don’t employ additional faculty members — we fuel our research by drawing from TAU’s existing academic firepower."
Hybrid Hi-Tech
Prof. Pinhas Alpert, Geophysicist and Head of the Porter School of Environmental Studies (at center), discusses joint research with Prof. Hagit Messer-Yaron, Electrical Engineer and currently President of the Open University (at left). This cross-discipline synergy can produce extraordinary results. A recent — and most unlikely — pairing of TAU's former Vice-President for Research and Development Prof. Hagit Messer-Yaron, an engineer, with Prof. Pinhas Alpert along with their jointly supervised PhD student Artem Zinevich, generated a research finding that cellphone signals can forecast weather patterns better than any meteorological method available today. It was published in Science.
Says Prof. Yehuda Benayahu, marine biologist and former head of the school, who helped engineer the successful pairing, "On campus, they had never met before, but by stepping into each other's labs, they invented an ingenious way to understand climate change."
Founded in 2000, Porter reaches out to young minds already accomplished in their field and partners them with Tel Aviv University's top researchers.
Local community impact
Porter's influence on the community beyond TAU is undeniable. Consider the comprehensive town-planning assistance Porter provided for Bedouin towns in the Negev. Working with Jordanian researchers, the project emphasized human rights and helped raise residents' quality of life.
Another example of the school's outreach is its Environmental Justice Clinic, which Porter created with TAU's Buchmann Faculty of Law to uphold the environmental rights of disempowered local communities. Successful suits include a precedent-setting case decided by the Israeli Supreme Court.
National and international impact
Prof. Avraham Kribus, pictured here with his master's student Amir Hirshfeld, has developed a unique solar collector that could increase the use of renewable energy sources. The school's effect on public policy is equally impressive. For example, Porter's research instigated a change in Israel's national road planning policy to combat pollution of underwater aquifers due to "highway run-off."
Collaborations with governmental departments abroad are also part of the mix, including an extensive R&D project funded by the Italian Ministry of the Environment, led by top scientists from both countries, focusing on air pollution, monitoring ecological change in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, combating desertification, rehabilitating polluted streams and treating waste water for recycling, and developing renewable energy sources.
Porter's academic collaborations include a developing project to tackle climate change with Columbia University's Earth Institute and a joint scholarship program with the Imperial College London.
How you can help
Dr. Arie Nesher, Professional Director of the Porter School of Environmental Studies, is an architect and city planner. With the support of friends and donors around the world, Porter's potential is unlimited.
Contributions to establish a "financial umbrella" for new faculty and students will help Porter compete for the best and the brightest on a global level. Your contribution of $500,000 can provide scholarships to cover tuition and expenses for the full term of their studies for 2 PhD students and 5 Master's students, as well as for 3 gifted post-doctoral researchers — and help meet Israel's demand for cutting-edge environmental scientists and researchers.
Just as critical, is the promotion of research of specific priority areas. With broad consensus on the prospect of climate change worldwide, more research is needed into the changes expected on the regional level and the steps needed to address this, in order to impact decision making at the national level. Your gift of $250,000 can support a one-year research project (on topics such as desertification, water treatment, renewable energy and others), bringing together environmental researchers from a range of fields to study the regional effects of climate change from a broad interdisciplinary approach.
Gifts providing funding for conferences with high-profile visiting scholars will help cement TAU's — and Israel's — primacy in environmental scholarship. The Porter School's public conferences, seminars and workshops provide a platform for environmental debate both within and outside of academia. Your contribution of $75,000 can support an annual series of conferences featuring guest speakers from abroad, bringing new approaches and expertise to the Israeli agenda.
As Dr. Arie Nesher, Porter's professional director, says, "Our potential is TAU's potential — and Israel's. With the ability to bring together world-class minds who might never have expected to meet, there is no limit to our research — or what it can do for Israel and beyond."
More about The Porter School at the School's Web page, http://www.environment.tau.ac.il/Eng/.
The Porter School Alumni Say...
AMIT HUPPERT
'07 Porter School Post-Doctoral Fellow
Senior Scientist
Gartner Institute
Sheba Medical Center
By combining mathematical models of ecology and economics, Huppert is working to minimize the risks of environmental and epidemiological hazards in Israel. After he had returned from post-doctoral research in the US at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Porter School gave him a competitive salary and the independence he needed for applying his research locally.
Today Huppert is developing high-profile environmental risk-assessment surveys, and is working to build a center that models infectious diseases. He says, "Near the end of my fellowship, the Porter School's directors personally helped me find challenging work in my field. And the nice thing about them is that while I was there, I was given full freedom to explore whatever research direction I wanted."
"I also like that they are attempting to do interdisciplinary work. It gave me an opportunity to cross fields that I would otherwise never encounter, and work with other young fellows in different specialties like law. As a young scientist returning to Israel from abroad, it is hard to get a decent fellowship that compare to U.S. standards. The Porter Fellowship was very competitive -- I think the highest in the country."
HADAS MAMANE
’07 Porter School Post-Doctoral Fellow
Environmental Engineer
TAU Faculty Member
With both an industrial and academic background, Hadas Mamane is searching for new, environmentally friendly technologies to treat and disinfect water. Her collaborative Porter studies drew on expertise from fields ranging from biology and ecology to optical physics and chemistry.
The Porter School promotes a unique idea. Says Mamane, "Together with various departments at TAU, it has created a brilliant program to advance environmental fields. By situating faculty candidates specializing in environmental studies at various departments, such as the school of Mechanical Engineering where I am located, I was able to promote fruitful and multidisciplinary collaboration with other researchers."
The necessity of collaboration among various disciplines is an important approach for successful research today, says Mamane, and is essential for implementing bold engineering solutions. "The Porter School has taken me under their wing like family and embraced my research. Their support throughout my fellowship has opened doors for my research ideas, that I never could have opened on my own. Now as an appointed faculty member at TAU, I am continuing in the Porter way, by advising students how to promote environmental concepts in their research." |
"I was given full freedom to explore whatever research direction I wanted."