On March 22, Assistant Professors Liat Margolis and Aziza Chaouni took part in a panel discussion on water awareness and innovation entitled "Initiatives that address global water issues." The talk was organized by the organization Leaders of Tomorrow: Graduate, an engineering graduate student group at the University of Toronto as part of Canada Water Week.

Margolis and Chaouni presented their work on the Out of Water project, which identifies and assesses the performance of different methods of harnessing, treating, collecting and describing water. The assistant professors organized a multidisciplinary international conference in 2011 on the integration of water technologies in the architecture, landscapes, and urbanisms of arid climates.