Carolin Welzel is Senior Advisor at the Agency for Business and Development (AWE), focusing on development banks, the EU and UN and their private sector programs.
She has been with GIZ for the past 10 years, working in various functions on private sector development and cooperation with the private sector in Germany, East- and North Africa. Before joining GIZ she spent several years with the Bertelsmann Foundation and served as an expert to the European Union as well as to the Council of Europe for eGovernment development in Europe. Carolin is a trained journalist and built up a non-profit internet start-up on digitalization and politics. She is winner of the re-known prize for journalists “Grimme Preis” in the section of online journalism.

Dr. Bernd Manfred Gawlik is Portfolio Leader for Water Quality at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and provides scientific support to the design, implementation and monitoring of EU water policies.

Bernd, who closely interacts with all actors around “water”, has contributed to more than 100 publications and reports of the European Commission. He oversees also the technical developments and guidance behind the European Water Reuse Regulation. In collaborations with UN, the Union for the Mediterranean and other supra-national organizations, he looks beyond the mere technological know-how by promoting actively social engagement activities and novel connects of applied water diplomacy to address the interplay of water with society and its actors.

Parssa Razavi is managing director of Irriport GmbH, a consulting company for modern and sustainable irrigation systems. He graduated in 1995 as an irrigation engineer in Iran. After three professional years in Iran, he continued his work as an irrigation engineer in Germany. In the past 20 years, through intensive cooperation with the world’s largest irrigation manufacturer, he has got to know the interrelationships and background knowledge of drip pipe production and the ways to success. Irriport’s focus lies on water supply in agriculture as well as irrigation system efficiency.

Peter Asteberg represents Norconsult, a Scandinavian consulting firm in the water and infrastructure sector. From 2014 to 2020, he was the project manager for the planning, design and construction of three new drinking water plants on Öland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea that had experienced extensive water shortages.
In 2016, he was assigned the task of leading the development and construction of a new desalination and water reuse plant, the Mörbylånga Drinking Water Plant, which was commissioned in 2019. The plant is the first full-scale facility ever in Sweden for direct potable reuse of water, and it has received both national and international attention.

Peter holds a Master of Science degree in Civil engineering from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. He is also a Certified Project Manager according to the standards of the International Project Management Association (IPMA).

Thomas is Hydrogeologist by education, with more than 30 years of experience in integrated water management, especially in connecting water users from different sectors as public supply and industry. With respect to innovation the focus of his work is on the interface between research and application, to help bringing solutions into practice. Amongst others he is coordinating the networking and transfer project of the German BMBF funded funding measures on water reuse „WavE and WavE II” since 2016.

Dr. Angela Ante obtained her degree in Biology in 1982.
She graduated (Bioprocess technology) from RWTH Aachen in 1995.

Since 1995, Dr. Ante has been a water expert for waste water, process, cooling water in industry (paper, steel, chemistry, refinery, copper production) at various plant manufacturers (Lurgi, Eisenmann, SMS).
She has been working in bid proposal management; Process engineering; R & D project management.
Further, Dr. Ante is an expert for biofilter, anaerobic and aerobic treatment, enhanced biological phosphorus removal, nitrification, denitrification and desalination of industrial water.

  – Dipl.-Ing. Production Engineering-Process Engineering
– BASF research fellowship at the University of Bremen (Department of Technical Thermodynamics)
– since 2013 at OOWV: Asset manager and strategic planner for drinking and process water; also responsible for research projects on the subject of drinking water as well as industrial water an water reuse (e.g. MULTI-ReUse, AQUARES, FITWAS)      

Dr. Smith holds and MSc from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Aberdeen. Her research at Cranfield explores the governance, institutions and societal dimensions of the water and wastewater services sector.
Recent projects have examined the emergence of new technologies and approaches in the sector, such as water recycling and resource recovery, and how these fit with existing governance frameworks and the perceptions of end users. Her research adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, particularly at the boundary between social science and engineering.  

Miquel Rovira is Ph.D. on chemical engineering and has spent his whole professional career in applied research focused in circular economy and environmental technology in different sectors such as: resources, chemistry, mining, energy and agrofood among others. Currently, Miquel Rovira is Sustainability Director at Eurecat-Technological Centre of Catalonia. He is also member of the management board of different organizations that promote circular economy, such as Water Reuse Europe, Catalan Water Partnership and the Catalan Cluster of Bioenergy.

He has co-authored more than 100 publications, including 64 in SCI journals and he has supervised 5 Ph.D. Thesis.

Since October 1, 2019, Dr. Franziska Gromadecki has been the Managing Director of the Abwasserverband Braunschweig based in Wendeburg.

After studying civil engineering at the Technical University of Braunschweig, specializing in urban water management, waste management and urban and regional planning, as well as receiving a doctorate, she initially worked there in various positions.

Since 2008, Dr. Gromadecki has been the Head of the Urban Drainage and Waste Management Department at the City of Braunschweig. There, the contract controlling with the commissioned third parties for the urban drainage and waste management, the closure and aftercare of the Watenbüttel landfill as well as budget and business plan matters fell into her responsibility. Since November 2017, she has also held the position of deputy head of the civil engineering and transport department at the city of Braunschweig. With the summer semester 2001, Dr. Gromadecki was also offered a teaching position at the TU Braunschweig.