$$News and Reports$$

Apr. 24, 2013
the Swiss Institute for Dryland Environmental and Energy Research (SIDEER)

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev will inaugurate the Swiss Institute for Dryland Environmental and Energy Research (SIDEER) on Wednesday, May 8, 2013 during its upcoming 43rd annual Board of Governors Meeting.
 
The event will take place in the presence of Andreas Baum, Ambassador of Switzerland to Israel. Michel Halpérin, President, Swiss Associates and Daniel Guggenheim, President, Bona Terra Foundation, will be speaking at the event. The inauguration is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on BGU’s Sede Boqer campus.
 
 
The BIDR, of which SIDEER is one, is at the forefront of research that affects the lives of billions. Experts on desert ecosystems and combating desertification, researchers at SIDEER and the other Institutes are addressing the most pressing food, water and energy issues of our world today.
 
SIDEER and its sister institutes are also magnets for international students. Students come from every continent including some from Arab countries which are normally hostile to Israel.
 
“The Institute is based on an unconventional synthesis:  developing a sound fundamental scientific approach to study the arid environment and people in it, and in particular, what this environment does for people, and what people can do for it,” says Prof. Boris Zaltzman, SIDEER director.  
 
“What practical purpose will this research serve? The basic knowledge provided by SIDEER research will help to guide people and governments fighting desertification and striving for sustainable development and healthy preservation of the environment. Its three departments are united by their common mission to foster an integrated, multidisciplinary and fundamental approach.
 
The SIDEER scientists study the basic interdependencies of plants and animals in the ecosystem and the patterns which these systems follow; physical basics of recovery, usage and storage of natural resources, such as solar energy, and of the advanced environmental technologies, such as emerging novel methods for desalination of saline and brackish water; and the very basis of human existence and activity in the drylands.
 
SIDEER is the first ever institute designed with the explicit purpose of bringing together experts in architecture, anthropology, ecology, physics, and mathematics under a single umbrella for the purpose of specialized desert research,” he says.
 
 
Specifically, these three departments deal with:
  • The Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology:
    Conservation and environmental protection
  • Alexandre Yersin Department
    of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics:
    Ecological patterns’ study, solar energy research, study of physical principles of desalination and bio-technologies, climate research and natural resource management
  • Bona Terra Department of Man in the Desert:
    Basic design of "desert appropriate" human living and lifestyles

the Institute’s brochure