Sofia Husni obtained her engineer degree in Material Science from Polytech Sorbonne, which is part of Sorbonne University in Paris. She, then, completed her PhD on “Magnetically assisted Flocculation for Water Treatment”. She studied a model system composed of clay platelets (pollutant) and magnetic nanoparticles (flocculating agent) and realized a complete characterization (at micro and macro scales) on the process until she tested it on a real system: The Seine River.

After a 6 months post doc at the CNRS working on highly conductive magnetic systems, she was recruited as the new DWC project leader at SIAAP (Greater Paris Sanitation Authority) mid-September 2020. Her job entitles in managing and organizing the different steps of the project concerning Paris and its surroundings. A great deal of communication and information exchange has to occur between the French partners and the European ones.

Lena is a water engineer with extensive experience working in the international water sector; the EU and overseas. Her special technical expertise is in the fields of hydrogeology, water resource management and water treatment. Over the years she has worked alongside technology companies, end users of technology and investors alike and brings a wide understanding of the different approaches and challenges to innovation. Other experience was gained working amongst others in the UK water industry, British Geological Survey, UNESCO Centre and Imperial College London. Today Lena’s primary focus is on managing the Isle’s German team and using her broad knowledge base managing projects delivering tailored solutions supporting clients and accelerating the uptake of novel technologies, solutions and products within the water tech sector.

Christian studied environmental engineering in Germany, Spain, the USA and Switzerland. He graduated with an MSc from ETH Zurich in 2018 and co-founded the ETH spin-off Hades after his studies. In addition to his environmental engineering background, Christian is also a certified sewer rehabilitation consultant. 

Agnes Janda has a doctorate degree in economics and is working for GELSENWASSER AG in various roles since 20 years. In her position as the Head of Corporate Strategy, she has accompanied a wide variety of infrastructure development projects in the water, gas, electricity and wastewater sectors and worked on the technical, commercial and legal facets. Since 2015, she leads the Sewer Infrastructure Department. This includes technical tasks of the condition assessment and rehabilitation planning of sewer networks, as well as the support of wastewater-specific cooperation projects in the communal environment, which regularly include a technical and commercial due diligences of networks and systems.

Paul Fleming leads the Global Water Program for Microsoft. Paul joined Microsoft to build the its corporate water stewardship program and has helped establish Microsoft as a leader in the corporate water stewardship space over the course of two years. Microsoft has committed to be water positive by 2030, with a goal of replenishing more water the company consumes globally in approximately 40 water-stressed locations around the world and enabling drinking water and/or sanitation access to at least 1.5 million people in seven countries. In addition to driving the company’s operational water commitments, Paul drives collaborative partnerships with other companies and NGOs and serves as the company’s water subject matter expert, advising business groups on go to market strategies. He helped co-found the Water Resilience Coalition, a group of 18 companies focused on collective action to improved conditions in water stressed regions around the world, and serves on the steering committee of the CEO Water Mandate.

Before joining Microsoft, Paul established and led the Climate Resiliency Group, which was one of the first dedicated groups focused on climate change in an US municipal utility, for the Seattle Public Utilities. In that role, he was responsible for building organizational adaptive capacity, developing collaborative partnerships, and assessing the possible impacts of climate change on the utilities’ systems and integrating climate considerations into utility decision making and planning. Paul has a BA in Economics from Duke University and an MBA from the University of Washington. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two daughters.

Dipl.-Ing. Regina Gnirss (F), has studied Environmental Science at TU Berlin. She works in water and wastewater technologies since 1991 and is Head of the R&D department of Berliner Wasserbetriebe since 2007. She had been Senior Project manager of national and international R&D projects in Water, Wastewater and Sludge Management. Today, most relevant topics are Digitalization, Climate Adaptation and Trace Organic Removal in Water Sector. She also serves as member of the IWA Strategic Council, the supervisory board of the UFZ and in specialized DWA-working groups. Author of >40 journal publications and 1 patent (>1260 citations, h index 16).

Daniel Sauter studied Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin with a focus on urban water management. After working as a consultant for wastewater engineering for over 2 years, he joined the R&D department of Berliner Wasserbetriebe in 2016. Since then, he is dedicated to R&D projects with different topics along the urban water cycle. In January 2020, he took over the coordination of the BMBF funded project AUZUKA that has the potential of being a game changer for the future of sewer condition assessment at Berliner Wasserbetriebe.

Dr. Lydia S. Vamvakeridou-Lyroudia is the Director of Watershare and a Senior Researcher at KWR, Netherlands. She also holds a part-time affiliation with the Centre for Water Systems at the University of Exeter, UK. With a background in Engineering and Hydroinformatics, her main areas of expertise are water systems modelling, artificial intelligence techniques (fuzzy logic and evolutionary algorithms) and System Dynamics Modelling, with particular application to water systems. She has over 15 years’ experience of ongoing and past FP6/FP7/H2020 projects as a senior researcher at the University of Exeter, UK and at KWR as senior researcher, Project Manager, Scientific and Technical Manager, WP leader, and as the leader of clustering actions. She also has significant expertise as evaluator of EU projects, both for H2020 and for SME instrument calls She is currently leading ICT4WATER, a cluster of over 50 EU-funded projects on ICT, Water and Smart Water, as well as the Water&Energy Working Group for Water Europe.

Dr.-Ing. Robert Stein is the Managing Associate of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stein & Partner GmbH and Managing Director of STEIN Infrastructure Management GmbH. His business activities include the consultation of cities to optimize their investment planning and their rehabilitation concepts for water supply and wastewater disposal networks. The basis for this is the life cycle asset management system “STATUS”, which has been continuously developed since 2003 and has already been used successfully for approximately 25,000 km of sewer and water networks. Since 1995 he has published more than 100 publications, reports, expertise and feasibility studies. He is the author of the reference book “Wertermittlung von Abwassernetzen (Asset Valuation of Sewer Networks)”, Trenchless Technology for Installation of Cables and Pipelines – 2nd Volume: Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD), of the chapter on pipe jacking works (ATV DIN 18319) and co-author of the 4th edition of the international bestseller “Instandhaltung von Kanalisationen” (Rehabilitation of Drain and Sewer Systems) as well as of various technical articles.