The Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences (CSMS) is a unique initiative on a global scale, applying an interdisciplinary approach with highly professional standards. The largest academic center of marine sciences in Israel, CSMS (U.of Haifa) was the only Israeli program included by the 2023 Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities for Oceanography in the top 200 universities world-wide and in the top 30 for SDG14 “Life below Water” in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2022.

Currently CSMS has three complementary Departments: the Dr. Strauss Department of Marine Geosciences, the Department of Marine Biology and the Hatter Department of Marine Technologies and offering an MA program in Maritime Strategies .
We also actively partake in teaching issues of marine science within the curricula of a Bachelors of Arts program for Navy captains, and within the Masters through the School of Political Sciences.

The close collaboration of scientists from the four departments offers unique opportunities for interdisciplinary research that can holistically address past, present, and future aspects of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. CSMS research is augmented by associated University of Haifa research centers: The Strategy and Research Center (HMS), The Haifa Center for Mediterranean History, and the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies.

The Charney School of Marine Sciences was chosen by the State of Israel to lead the Mediterranean Sea Research Center of Israel (MERCI), a consortium of seven universities, two colleges and two governmental research institutes, working together under the leadership of the University of Haifa. MERCI addresses the array of scientific, technological, economic, security and environmental challenges and opportunities we are facing within the Mediterranean and along Israel’s coastline.

 Location and facilities. main hub of CSMS research laboratories and teaching facilities is located on the Carmel Mountain Campus, overlooking the Mediterranean. Our research sites also include three coastal research centers with easy access to the Mediterranean. These comprise the Hatter Department of Marine Technologies laboratories and The Helmsley Mediterranean Sea Research Center a facility which develops and operates state-of-the-art underwater vehicles. The Morris Kahn Marine Research Station at Sdot-Yam and Ashdod are long-term marine ecological research stations that focus on coastal water research and long-term monitoring of the ecology and species of the coastal Mediterranean, as well as examining the anthropogenic impacts on the marine environment and on apex predator distribution (including dolphins, sharks, rays, and tunas).

While the Mediterranean is our major focus, our faculty also perform research around the world as well as in the tropical coral reefs of the Red Sea with a field laboratory at the Interuniversity Institute of Marine Sciences at Eilat.