Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) is one of Israel's largest research universities. Approximately 20,000 students are enrolled in its five faculties (Natural, Engineering, and Health Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management), in the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research (BIDR), and in the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies. Internationally recognized, BGU researchers have made significant impacts on progress at the frontier of science and technology in fields such as cyber security, robotics, drug discovery, and functional bio-polymers. As the culture of research has evolved to emphasize inter-disciplinarity, BGU has kept pace by establishing new research institutes, centers and laboratories that significantly enhance its ability to support multidisciplinary academic work. The emphasis on applied research – adopted by BGU from the very beginning – has been intensified by exploiting advanced fundamental research to promote the so-called use- inspired research. The Department of Geography and Environmental Development at BGU represents a variety of geography fields and it has nine laboratories. The Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences offers a wide gamut of related science courses and has a very large graduate student body; most of Laronne’s BGU research students stem here.

Field research facilities comprising unique automatic bedload monitoring systems situated in the Eshtemoa stream, Israel, Arroyo de los Pinos, USA, and identical systems in collaboration: the Joganzi and Ashi-Arai-Dani rivers, Japan, and the Drau River, Austria; computers, office and laboratory space; and students (presently 6 PhD, 10 MSc & 2 post-docs).