Professor Yoram Cohen, on faculty at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been named director of the UCLA International Institute’s Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, as well as the holder of the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Chair in Israel Studies.
Cohen served as interim director of the Nazarian Center since Jan. 1, 2015. As director, he will provide intellectual leadership to the center and is responsible for the development of the center’s academic, research and outreach programs.
A professor in UCLA Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, he is also founder and director of the Water Technology Research Center and co‐founder and member of the UCLA/NSF Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology.
Cohen’s work focuses on advancing water treatment and production technologies through research and development, as well as on technology transfer activities from the research level to full commercialization. He conducts research on and develops tools for environmental impact assessment and decision analysis, and he is engaged in policy and regulatory issues regarding water sustainability and environmental protection.
A UCLA Luskin Scholar at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, Cohen received the 2008 Ann C. Rosenfield Community Partnership Prize in recognition of his environmental research. He is a fellow of AIChE, the world's leading organization for chemical engineering professionals, which honored him with the Lawrence K. Cecil Award in Environmental Chemical Engineering in 2003.
Cohen is also an adjunct professor at Ben‐Gurion University in Israel. Previously, he served as a member of the International Advisory Committee to the Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. He was a visiting professor at the Technion in 1987‐1988, at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in 1994 and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Victoria University in 2006.