Prof Gary Amy

Clemson University, Clemson, USA

Title of talk: A New Paradigm for the Mining Industry: Separation and Recovery of Critical Metals from Aqueous Sources

Gary L. Amy is presently Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the College of Engineering and Science at Clemson University USA as well as Visiting Professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at the National University of Singapore. He is the former Director of the Water Desalination and Reuse Center (WDRC) at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. Prior to KAUST, he was Professor of Water Supply Engineering at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands, where he held a joint appointment at the Technical University of Delft. Read more

Prof Jean-Philippe Croué  

IC2MP/ENSIP, University of Poitiers, Poittiers, France

Title of talk: NOM vs EfOM: Structural properties, transformation, reactivity

Dr. Jean-Philippe Croué is Professor in Environmental Science and Engineering at the University of Poitiers – France since 1989. He is conducting his research at the Institute of Environmental Chemistry (EBICOM/IC2MP). He was on lay-off for nearly 10 years. From September 2009 to September 2014, he was Professor at KAUST, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where he conducted his research at the Water Desalination and Reuse Center. Read more

Prof Cécile Formosa-Dague  

Toulouse Biotechnology Institute, Bio & Chemical Engineering, Toulouse, France

Title of talk: Contribution of Atomic Force Microscopy to the Advancement of Flotation Processes for Microalgae Harvesting

I realized my PhD between 2012 and 2015 at the Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of the Systems (LAAS-CNRS) in Toulouse, where I worked on important issues related to multidrug-resistant microorganisms using AFM. After that, I joined the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium, where I pushed further the technological concepts developed during my PhD to study biofilm formation in bacteria. Read more

Prof Hamanth Kasan 

IWA President Elect, South Africa

Title of talk: Opening address

Prof Kasan has over 35 years of experience in water and sanitation services delivery. He has both academic and practical experience. He has worked with many local, continental and global organisations. Currently he is the President Elect of IWA, serves on Board of AFWASA, Utility Partnerships Director at RockBlue.

Prof Dr Gang Liu 

Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Title of talk: NOM and microbial ecology in drinking water: degradation, (re)stabilization and transition

Prof Dr. Gang Liu, finished his PhD at Delft University of Technology in 2013, and afterward worked as senior researcher at Oasen drinking water in the Netherlands. He was promoted to be assistant professor at Delft University of Technology in 2016. Since late 2018, he took the position of Professor and Team leader at Research center for eco-environmental sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Now, he is visiting professor at Delft University of Technology. Read more

Prof Jun Ma

School of Environment Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Title of talk: Enhanced Water Treatment with High Valence and Nanoscale Fe/Mn Species

Dr. Jun Ma is professor of Harbin Institute of Technology, and the Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He is the first Changjiang Scholar Professor in Water and Wastewater Engineering in China and now is the Director of the National Engineering Research Center of Urban Water Resources, China. Read more

Prof Soraya Malinga

Chemical Sciences, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Title of talk: Dendritic polymer integrated nanostructured membranes for the removal of organic pollutants from water

Prof Soraya Malinga is an Associate Professor and co-Director for the Joint Research Centre for Water, Environmental Science and Technology (JRC-WEST) at the University of Johannesburg, Department of Chemical Sciences. Prof Malinga’s research involves finding sustainable solutions to solve problems relating to water quality. This approach involves applying the principles of nanoscience and nanotechnology to develop membranes for drinking water and wastewater treatment. Read more

Prof William Mitch 

Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, USA

Title of talk: Re-Thinking NOM: Predicting Important Byproducts of Disinfectant Reactions with Organic Matter During Water Treatment

Bill Mitch is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. His research focuses on environmental organic chemistry, with particular interests in contaminant removal within treatment trains for the potable reuse of municipal wastewater, advanced oxidation processes, reactions of disinfectants, and seawater photochemistry. Read more

Prof Vigneswaran Saravanamuthu

University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Title of talk: Membrane Hybrid Systems for Sustainable Water Reclamation and Desalination

Prof. S. Vigneswaran is currently an Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and a Research Professor at Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) in Oslo. He was Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) till December 2021. From 2008 to Feb 2018, he served as the Inaugural Director of UTS’s Centre of Technologies in Water and Wastewater (CTWW). Read more

Dr Pierre Bérubé

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Title of talk: Re-Engineering Membranes for use in Low Resource Contexts

Dr. Pierre Bérubé is a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of British Columbia. He has over 25 years of research and consulting experience in water quality assessment and treatment, with particular emphasis on membrane and other filtration related technologies. His work has generated new research tools, and in partnership with industry, new processes and products that have become standards in the field. He serves on the board of the Canadian Association on Water Quality and is a member of the Management Committee of the IWA Specialist Group on Membrane Technology.

Prof Peter Huck

University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

Title of talk: Using Liquid Chromatography-Organic Carbon Detection (LC-OCD) for Insights into Drinking Water Treatment

Peter M. Huck is Professor and NSERC Chairholder in Water Treatment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Professor Huck has over 40 years of experience in directing research related to drinking water treatment. As Chairholder, he provides leadership to a team of professionals and graduate students conducting leading edge research in various areas related to water treatment, including robustness, biofiltration, membrane filtration, trace contaminants and microbial pathogens. He has received several publication awards from the American Water Works Association (AWWA) as well as the 2008 A.P. Black Research Award, making him the first non-American recipient of that award. Additionally, Professor Huck received the Aquarina Award from the Polish Association of Sanitary Engineers for his research in the field of Natural Environmental Protection.

Prof Adam Gilmore

HORIBA Instruments Inc, Flemington, USA

Title of talk: Water Quality Standardization Projects for the HORIBA Aqualog: Dissolved Organic Carbon Concentration and Composition, Disinfection Byproducts and Oil Contamination

Adam Gilmore, Ph.D., is a Fluorescence Product Manager who joined HORIBA Instruments Inc. in 2004. He received his Ph.D. in 1992 from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the Department of Plant Molecular Physiology. He has over 29 years of experience in the field of optical spectroscopy. At HORIBA he has developed and patented application-specific instruments and software methods with primary foci on pharmaceutical and life sciences, nanotechnology, water treatment monitoring and molecular fingerprinting applications of wine and other materials. The most significant developments have included establishing HORIBA Scientific’s line of Absorbance-Transmittance fluorescence Excitation-Emission Matrix (A-TEEM) spectroscopy instruments.

Prof Vitaly Gitis

Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

Title of talk: Micronanobubbles to Enhance Performance of Ultrafiltration Membranes

Vitaly Gitis is a Professor of Energy Engineering at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, where he teaches courses on chemistry, separation processes, and alternative energy sources. His research interests embrace granular and membrane filtration separation processes, multi-layered ceramic membranes, wastewater treatment processes, and colloidal chemistry. Read more

Prof Peter Jarvis

Cranfield University, Bedford, UK

Title of talk: Comparing treatment of NOM from lowland and upland surface waters

Peter is Professor of Water Science and Technology at Cranfield University, where he heads the Cranfield Water Science Institute and the Drinking Water research area. Having obtained his MSc in Water and Wastewater Engineering (2001) and PhD in Water Treatment from Cranfield (2004), he worked at Anglian Water in industrial research and development before returning back to academia. Read more

Prof Stefan Panglisch

University Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

Title of talk: Application of polyelectrolyte capillary nanofiltration membranes in water treatment

Stefan Panglisch is heading the Chair Mechanical Process Technology/Water Technology (MVT/WT) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE). In this function he is responsible for the international Master program “Management and Technology of Water and Wastewater at UDE. Associated with the professorship is a position as scientific director at the Rheinisch-Westphalian Institute for Water Research (IWW), a nationally and internationally renowned research and consulting institute.
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Prof Volodymyr Tarabara

Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA

Title of talk: Moringa oleifera-derived coagulants for water treatment: Floc structure, residual organics, and performance tradeoffs

Volodymyr Tarabara is a Professor of Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University. His research is in the areas of membrane separations and interfacial processes with applications that include water treatment, industrial pollution control and biosafety monitoring. Prof. Tarabara has co-authored over 100 journal papers and book chapters on these and related subjects and currently serves as an Editor of Separation and Purification Technology (Elsevier) and as the Editor for Special Collections of the Journal of Environmental Engineering (ASCE). He is a recipient of three Fulbright awards: U.S. Scholar award to Georgia in 2014, Fulbright Specialist placement to Ukraine in 2021 and U.S. Global Scholar award to France, Georgia and Singapore in 2022.

Prof Stijn Van Hulle

Green Chemistry and Technology, Ghent University, Kortrijk, Belgium

Title of talk: Optimisation of advanced oxidation processes in view of micro-pollutant removal from (waste) water with different (natural) organic matter content

Stijn Van Hulle is a Full Professor at the Department of Green Chemistry and Technology of Ghent University and is spearheading the industrial water technology related research at the Kortrijk Campus. During the last 20 years, his group performed research on the modelling and engineering of water treatment and resource recovery processes. Specific research topics include: electrocoagulation and AOP processes. He is also responsible for the service center on water technology which supports SME’s and non-profit organizations with advice and guidance. Prof. Van Hulle teaches bachelor and master level courses on physical chemistry, water treatment, process simulation and statistics to students in the engineering educational programs at Ghent University. He has over 200 publications in Scientific Journals and International Conferences. He was promotor of 16 doctoral dissertations and is currently supervising 15 ongoing PhD studies.

Prof Paul Westerhoff

School of Sustainable Engineering and The Built Environment, Arizona State University, Scottsdale, USA

Title of talk: Inorganic and Organic Iodine Occurrence and role in DBP formation

Paul Westerhoff is a Regents Professor & Fulton Chair of Environmental Engineering at Arizona State University. He has over 400 peer reviewed publications related to water. He is the Deputy Director of a NSF ERC for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment and co-Deputy Director of the NSF Science and Technologies for Phosphorus Sustainability Center. He received several awards including the 2020 A.P. Black award from AWWA, 2019 NWRI Clarke Prize, 2013 ARCADIS/AEESP Frontier in Research Award, 2006 Paul L. Busch Award., and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2023.