During the month of February, dozens of junior high school students from all over Israel took part in a study tour of the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the framework of the program – Youth Learns About Water and Desalination – which is being implemented in schools throughout the country.

The tour was carried out as a joint effort of the Hi-Teach Company and the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion, on the initiative of the Water Authority and VID, a desalination company in Ashkelon.

The opening talk was given by Prof. Avi Shaviv, head of the Division of Environmental, Water and Agricultural Engineering. During the talk, the various fields of study in the Faculty were presented, especially those connected to water, the environment and agriculture. Prof. Noah Galil spoke on the topic of water quality and techniques for treating water, presenting a broad view of the field and all its aspects. His lecture covered water sources and their preservation through control and monitoring, wastewater treatment and reuse, reclamation of rivers and water quality (with respect to health, esthetics and economics), as well as expanding on the subject of filtration. The rest of the lectures and the visit focused on reverse osmosis as a method of filtration for desalination of seawater, including the topic of energy reuse characteristic of the technology developed in Israel (IDE desalination industry), which is used by VID in Ashkelon, under whose auspices the project took place. Later, the students visited the innovative laboratories in the Stephen and Nancy Grand Building (the Water Research Institute) and observed laboratory experiments, using two methods of reverse osmosis, demonstrated by Sara Sabah, who is in charge of the laboratory. Accompanying the tour was Anat Dekel, a master’s student in the Division of Environmental, Water and Agricultural Engineering.

Hi-Teach was founded and has been operating since 2000 under the leadership of Dr. Amnon Shefi, an experienced CEO from industry and a graduate of the Technion’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering. The company deals with study systems and training in education, industry and academia in Israel and abroad. It develops and also runs unique projects to bring up-to-date scientific and technological knowledge from industry into the educational curricula. The water project, in which junior high school students throughout Israel study water management and desalination for a full year, is part of this framework. Dr. Shefi said that cooperation with the Technion is intended to deepen the students’ theoretical knowledge, present to them training processes and research at the Technion and show the way in which advanced technology is integrated into industry and the water economy in Israel. “The wide range of schools taking part in this project includes students from Raanana, Taibe, Haifa, Ashkelon, Zichron Yaakov, Holon, Ashdod, Kfar Silver and Netivot. The students represent the entire spectrum of Israeli society, including Arab students from Taibe, religious girls from the AMIT School Network, secular students from Tel Aviv, religious and yeshiva students, students from boarding schools and those from regular junior high schools. The students enjoyed the visit, learned a lot and received a glimpse of academia that will surely remain in their memories as for many years to come,” stressed Dr. Shefi.