Brian Berkowitz

Brian Saul Berkowitz (Hebrew: בריאן ברקוביץ; born 3 February 1959) is an Israeli hydrologist, full professor at the Faculty of Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science. He served as Head of the Department of Chemical Research Support and as Head of the Department of Earth and Planetary sciences. His research focuses on flow and transport phenomena in porous media. He is the recipient of the Meinzer Award and the John Dalton Medal (2021).

Biography Brian Berkowitz was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the son of Sheila Joyce (née Lipsett) and Prof. Norbert Berkowitz, His father, born in Berlin and sent as a child to Britain as part of the Kindertransport, was a Chemist, an energy researcher, and a member of the Order of Canada. His mother was a bacteriologist and an activist in special education and in Edmonton's Jewish community. and immediately began his undergraduate studies in Applied mathematics at the University of Alberta. He completed this degree with honors in 1980 and continued toward a master's degree in applied mathematics and petroleum engineering at the same institution, which he completed in 1982. In that year he immigrated to Israel and began doctoral studies in hydrology at the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion. His doctoral thesis, supervised by Prof. Jacob Bear, was entitled "On continuum and discrete models for contaminant transport in fractured porous rock".

From 1986 to 1991 Berkowitz worked as a hydrologist at the Hydrological Service in Jerusalem. For the following two years he was a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and upon returning to Israel in 1993 he joined the Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science as a senior scientist. In 1999 he was promoted to associate professor and in 2005 to full professor in the same department, which later became the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Berkowitz chaired two departments in the Faculty of Chemistry: from 2004 to 2009 as Head of the Department of Chemical Research Support, and from 2010 to 2015 as Head of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. During those years he also served as Head of the Sussman Institute for Environmental Sciences.

Over the years he has been a visiting professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan and at the CNRS in France. He has served on numerous European, American, and international committees and programs in his field of research, and in 2022 was appointed Director of the InterPore Academy of the International Society for Porous Media.

Research

Anomalous (non-Fickian) chemical transport His laboratory developed a theoretical framework for anomalous (non-Fickian) chemical transport as observed in heterogeneous porous media and fractured rock formations. This theory is continuously being extended, with matching numerical models and laboratory experiments, for broad application to fractured and heterogeneous media.

Awards and honors

Landau Prize, awarded by Mifal HaPais (1997) Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (2005) Fellow of the Geological Society of America (2007) Inventor of the Year, Yeda Research and Development Company (2008) Oliver Distinguished Lecture in Hydrology, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin (2011) M. King Hubbert Award, National Ground Water Association (2012) Meinzer Award, Geological Society of America (2015) Outstanding Editor Award, European Geosciences Union (2018) Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2019) Lifetime Achievement Medal, International Society for Porous Media (2021) John Dalton Medal, European Geosciences Union (2021) Award of the Israeli Urological Association for outstanding research in endourology (2022) American Chemical Society Award for a Perspective Article in Soil Science (2023)

Personal life Berkowitz is married to Melanie and is the father of three. He resides in Rehovot.