The Student Ma'ath Nei'rat won the Engineer Zuhair Hijjawi Prize of excellence in scientific research for students of Palestinian universities in the field of water engineering and environment, as well as renewable energy, for his research, conducted under the supervision of Dr. Talal Shahwan at BZU entitled "Synthesis and Characterization of Iron Nanoparticles and Its Application to Study the Kinetics and Isotherm of Adsorption of Aqueous Methylene Blue" .

The research is based on the idea of using nano-scale on iron to clean up aqueous solutions from colored dyes, and this showed iron extraordinary ability to remove it from the aqueous solutions.

This research is part of the efforts undertaken by groups of researchers around the world to determine the extent of Nano Iron benefits in terms of cleaning surface water and groundwater from different pollutants. This topic is considered as one of the achievements of environmental nanotechnology, which is expected to provide effective solutions to the problems of water pollution around the world. It also can be taken advantage of this technology in Palestine in the event of available human and material resources.