Deborah Shmueli is currently the head of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa. She is a planner specializing in environmental policy issues related to water, land use, transportation and solid waste. A strong focus of her efforts is towards environmental and public sector conflict management and community and institutional capacity building. She received her Ph.D. in Architecture and Urban Planning (1992) at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and her M.C.P. and B.S. in Urban Planning from the MIT (1980).