Upon his return to Israel he has joint the faculty of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research (BIDR) at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev as a member of the Algal Biotechnology lab.

He also had few other administrative roles in BGU including serving as the director of the Ben Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism (2007–13) As well as Dean for international Academic affairs (2010–12).

The main goal of these studies is to try to understand the mechanisms involved in the adaptation of dense algal cultures to the extreme environment existing in many drylands.

[7] Professor Vonshak is involved in few activities outside of the University served as the director of the Ben-Gurion Heritage institute, he is the academic advisor for the Ramat-Negev International training center for Desert-Agriculture.

His findings point out that in many cases the system is down regulated or even photoinhibited not necessarily because of exposure to high light intensity but rather due to other environmental stress that reduce the photosynthetic activity be it temperature or salinity.