Dan Elhanati is a PhD student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Weizmann Institute under the guidance of Prof. Brian Berkowitz, researching contaminant transport within groundwater systems. Dan has a dual BSc in Geophysics and Geography from Tel Aviv University, and an MSc in Earth Sciences from Tel Aviv University, where he conducted research in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Israel.

In his current PhD work, Dan combines experimental data derived from lab-scale physical aquifer models with numerical models to observe and quantify various mechanisms involved in solute transport. Dan's primary focus is investigating the impact of time-dependent velocity fields on the dispersion and mixing of chemicals in porous media. Through the construction of macroscopic lab-scale models, Dan can generate and analyze transport phenomena that have previously been primarily described theoretically. The development of robust numerical models that effectively quantify the experimental data enables explaining and predicting similar phenomena on larger scales.

Expanding the scope of his research, Dan has recently applied the same numerical models to assess the response of spring discharge to changing precipitation patterns in a karst system located in the Alps.