Nitai Amiel was previously a PhD student researching contaminants transport under the supervision of Prof. Brian Berkowitz in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Weizmann Institute. He has a BSc and MSc in Geology from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

In his PhD work, Nitai studied the mechanism controlling rare Earth elements' mobility in aquifer media. He focused on conducting batch column experiments using different REE solutions, i.e. pH, ionic strength, and organic matter concentration, and different aquifer media, i.e. sand, soil, and carbonate rock, together with transport modeling.

During his PhD work, Nitai also investigated groundwater contamination in the Negev, where contaminated waste from fertilizer plants infiltrated the groundwater system and later emerged in the Ein Boqeq and Ein Zin springs. During this project, conducted in collaboration with the Israeli Water Authority, Nitai detected ultra-low concentration elements that can serve as indicators for the spatial distribution of groundwater contamination.