Noam Weisbrod

Noam Weisbrod (Hebrew: נעם ויסברוד) is a Hydrology Professor (Alain Poher Chair in Hydrogeology and Arid Zone Research) at the Department of Environmental Hydrology and Microbiology of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research (ZIWR), which is part of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research (BIDR) at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). Weisbrod served as director of ZIWR from 2015 to 2018. In 2018 he became director of BIDR and was reelected for a second term in summer 2022.

Weisbrod earned his undergraduate (1990) and graduate degrees (MSc, with distinction: 1993; PhD: 1999) from the Department of Soil and Water Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1999 he joined the Department of Bioengineering (now Biological & Ecological Engineering), Oregon State University as a post-doctoral fellow. In 2002 he returned to Israel where he joined the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research (ZIWR) at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research (BIDR), Ben Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). During the summer of 2012, he held a Visiting Professorship at the Chinese Academy of Science, Chengdu. At Ben Gurion University, he has held numerous academic administration positions: from 2009 to 2015 he was the Head of the Department of Environmental Hydrology and Microbiology at the ZIWR, and he also served as the Director of the Blaustein Center for Scientific Cooperation (2013-2015). In 2015 he was elected as the ZIWR Director and in 2018 he was elected as the BIDR Director. Weisbrod has supervised more than 50 graduate students and served in numerous committees and panels. He has been involved in various international missions and evaluation panels to assess local water realities, in places like Chile, Inner Mongolia, Namibia and the Galapagos Islands. He was a member of the steering committee for BGU – University of Chicago cooperation in Water Sciences, and the steering committee for “BusinessH2O – Water management best practices from USA and Israel”.