Professor Hasson joined the Chemical Engineering Department of the Technion at its infancy shortly after its foundation and contributed much to its academic development. He pioneered teaching and research activities in desalination at Technion in the early seventies and established in the late eighties teaching and research activities in the growing field of membrane separations. He served two terms as Chairman of the Chemical Engineering Department and held the post of Technion’s Vice-president of Research in the period 1972-76. He is a founding member and Past President of the Israel Institute of Chemical Engineers and a founding member and Co-ordinator of the Israel Desalination Society. Professor Hasson chaired the organization of five out of the seven annual desalination conferences held by the Israel Desalination Society He also serves as a member of the Research Advisory Committee of the Middle East Desalination Research Center.

Professor Hasson’s areas of expertise are in Process Heat Transfer, Membrane Separation Processes, Desalination Processes and Water Treatment Technologies.

He supervised over 40 graduate students for higher degrees and carried out extensive funded projects in various aspects of desalination and water treatment technologies. He has published over 80 papers and is on the editorial board of the journal ``Desalination``.

Professor Semiat received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. Degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He has a wide Industrial experience in research and development of chemical processes. His current interests and activities are centered on water technologies and chemical-environmental processes. Recent projects are on flow patterns (including uses of electro-optical techniques for flow measurements), heat and mass transfer aspects of liquid-liquid, solid-liquid and gas-liquid systems In October 2003, Professor Semiat was nominated as the Director of Technion’s Grand Water Research Institute which affiliates 53 professors from 8 academic departments.