IGUDAN and the national water company Mekorot inaugurated the establishment of the National Education and Innovation Center for Water, which will be built at the Shafdan site near the city of Rishon Lezion. The ceremony was held in the presence of Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen, Water Authority Chairman Hezi Lifshitz, Mekorot CEO Amit Lang, IGUDAN Chairman Gal Sharabi-Damayo, and IGUDAN CEO Dudu Mahlav.
The new national center will be established as part of IGUDAN’s technology incubator and is expected to promote innovation, international collaborations, academic research, scientist programs, and entrepreneurship in the field of water treatment, including reclamation and coping with climate change. The center is set to open in 2026 and will feature laboratories, training rooms, and research spaces for both academic and industrial researchers. The center will advance studies that, among other things, examine how to address climate change. Its opening is expected next year, at which point labs, training rooms, and spaces for researchers from academia and industry will also be established.
According to IGUDAN and Mekorot, the new center will serve as a beta site for start-ups in areas such as data management, critical cyber defense for protecting critical infrastructure, energy consumption, and infrastructure mapping using AI models. Mekorot is already working with several start-up companies in the field, and the aim is to expand the number of participating organizations in order to offer their solutions to foreign countries where Mekorot is active in consulting on water infrastructure management amid global warming.
Energy Minister Eli Cohen stated, “Israel is a global leader in water technologies, and the establishment of the innovation incubator at Shafdan is a step that will further strengthen Israel’s position in the field. Water is life, and we will continue investing in developing infrastructures that contribute to the energy sector, agriculture, and Zionism.”
Mekorot CEO Amit Lang added that innovation is a way of life at Mekorot, and therefore, establishing the national institute is a natural development for the company. “We are global leaders in our field by every international comparative metric. The innovation center that will be established here will integrate technology, academia, and industry. This collaboration with IGUDAN is a growth engine for both parties, as well as for the local and international water sectors.”
Gal Sharabi-Damayo, Chairman of IGUDAN, concluded at the event: “Our constant focus will be education and innovation. Without these two, we will not progress. The incubator is a tremendous project that will achieve great things—the research, the start-ups, and the opening of a branch to promote water engineering studies will be groundbreaking, because it is here that the next generation of scientists who will lead the water sector will emerge. I very much hope that the regulators will allow development at the site so we can build more in the center and thereby deliver more water to agriculture in the Negev.”