• New Library wing opens. The new University of Haifa Library wing, constructed thanks to the generous donation of Younes and Soraya Nazarian, has begun operations. The new wing is home to the collection of foreign-language journals, a reading room, a state-of-the-art auditorium, discussion rooms and a cafe. See it now on video.

  • A View to a School: The University of Haifa has in the past two years undergone a dramatic facelift. All over campus several new buildings have recently been dedicated, the most notable among them the Hatter Student Building, named for our dear friends Sir Maurice & Lady Hatter. Read on Ha'aretz about the Building's special contribution to the campus and to Israeli architecture.

  • Israel – 2030: the State of Israel is on the path to becoming a religious state that might well jeopardise its existence, says Prof Arnon Soffer, Head of the Chaikin Chair in Geostrategy at the University of Haifa, in a new study describing demographic processes in Israeli society. The study focuses on the natural increase trends in the Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox), religious, secular and Arab sectors in Israel, and the implications of these trends. Read more on The Jerusalem Post.

  • Breakthrough in immunology research: A new study from the Department of Biology at the University of Haifa has found how the "decision making" process works in cells that play a role in the healing of infection. "The process that we have discovered can assist in the development of drugs that are based on the natural processes that take place in the human body, unlike most of the existing drugs that attempt to curb inflammation by artificial means," explains Dr Amiram Ariel, who headed the study. The research and its results have been published in the scientific journal European Journal of Immunology. Read on Science Daily.

  • Joint UK-Israel Research wins grant: Prof Suzanne Leroy from the Institute for the Environment at Brunel University and Dr Revital Bookman from the Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa are leading a project funded by BIRAX (Britain-Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership). Based on Dead Sea Basin sediment and pollen deposition records, the research will provide understanding about the regional climatic pattern, its implications to historical human communities that flourished and declined in the Levant, and will bear important information for future water resources management.

  • President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) visits Haifa University. Dr Thomas Mirow visited the University to learn how academic knowledge is being developed and merged with the private sector. Learning about unique business enterprises that University scholars have founded such as a new software to help learning disabilities; a technology to improve auditory skills for the hearing impaired and a new technology for the production of bio-ethanol (renewable energy); Dr Mirow said: "I hope we manage to implement the model of academic knowledge transfer that we have seen here at the University of Haifa in order to advance similar processes in those countries where EBRD is active."

  • Israel Prize to Prof Yaacov Dorchin: Israel Prize for Plastic Arts for 2011 is to be awarded to Haifa University's Prof Yaacov Dorchin. In explaining its choice, the Israel Prize jury cited the "lyrical and spiritual nature" of his iron sculptures, which "bring together contradictions such as delicacy and power, evanescence and stability, realism, industrialism and advanced culture." Read on Ha'aretz and see Prof Dorchin's works.