Prior to his appointment as ED, Tareq Abu Hamed served as the Arava Institute’s Academic Director as well as the Director of the Institute’s Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation (CREEC). In 2013 he became the Israeli Ministry of Science’s Deputy Chief Scientist, and later the Acting Chief Scientist, the highest ranking Palestinian in the Israeli government at that time. Dr. Abu Hamed holds a Bachelor and a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from Gazi University (Turkey), and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Ankara University (Turkey). He has completed two terms of postdoctoral research, one at the Environmental Science and Energy Research Department of the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), and the second at the University of Minnesota’s Mechanical Engineering Department Solar Energy Lab. He also holds a Masters in Public Policy from Hebrew University. He lives in East Jerusalem with his wife and five children.