Prof. Willy Verstraete
University of Ghent, Belgium

Prof. dr. ir. Willy Verstraete is a bio-engineer, who graduated from Ghent University in 1968. He obtained his Ph.D in the field of Microbiology at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. He has worked at Ghent University as assistant professor since 1971 and became a professor and head of the Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology (LabMET), Faculty of Boiscience Engineering in 1979. From 1989 to 1993, he was co-chairman of the Party on Environmental Biotechnology of the European Federation for Biotechnology (EFB), and General-Secretary of the European Environmental Research Organization (EERO: 1991-1997), and has been emeritus professor since October 2011. Prof. dr. ir. Willy Verstraete′s R&D has as central theme: Microbial Resource Management; i.e. the design, operation and control of processes mediated by mixed microbial cultures. He has field experience with respect to drinking water production plants (slow sand filtration), aerobic wastewater treatment (especially with respect to nitrification-denitrification), anaerobic digestion of wastewaters and sludge, solid state fermentation of organic residues and bioremediation processes of soils and sediments. He has also gained experience in various aspects of pre- and pro-biotics used in human and animal nutrition and in systems that simulate the latter. He has received many awards from his research works. Several of his papers are in the top 1% most cited in his field of work, and he has been ranked in the list of Highly Cited Researchers. In 2015, he was nominated as advisor to the Dutch Water Institute KWR, to deal with the aspects of water and cyclic economy. In early 2016, he was elected as Chairman of the Flemish Science Council (FWO). For further information, see www.labmet.ugent.be; willy.verstraete@ugent.be

Prof. Damien Batstone
University of Queensland, Australia

Professor Dr. Batstone leads Anaerobic Technology and resource recovery research programme at the Advance Water Management Centre. He has published 130 peer reviewed journal publications, book chapters, or books that have over 4,000 Scopus citations and 33 Scopus h-indexes. He is a professor and Vice Chancellor′s Research Fellow, and teaches statistics and process modelling at the UQ Chemical and Civil Engineering programme. He is well know in novel processes and anaerobic modeling research, lead author of the IWA Anaerobic Digestion Model No.1, and Chair of Physicochemical Modelling Task group (PCM1). He has participated in other IWA modeling task group, and is currently Chair of the IWA Anaerobic Digestion Specialist Group.

Prof. Pinjing HE
Tongji University, China

Dr. Pinjing He is a full professor of College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Head of Institute of Waste Treatment & Reclamation at Tongji University, and Head of the Centre for the Technology Research and Training on Household Waste in Towns & Rural Area committed by Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of P.R. China. His research activity includes fundamental and applied aspects of waste management, with focus on biological, thermal treatment systems and sustainable landfilling of waste. He was the vice president of International Waste Working Group (IWWG) in 2013-2014 and a member of IWWG Managing Board since 2011. He is an associate editor of Waste Management (Elsevier), Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association (Taylor & Francis), Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management (Springer), invited quest editor of Bioresource Technology (Elsevier). He serves as a member of Advisory Boards for several key national programs in China in the field of waste treatment and utilization, has written more than 60 reports committed by governments and companies. He is an author of over 400 articles and chapters in peer reviewed journals, conferences and books.

Prof. Grietje Zeeman
Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Prof. Dr. Grietje Zeeman, has more than 35 years of experience in R&D and application projects in the field of treatment of waste, wastewater and sanitation, with a specialisation in anaerobic treatment. Since March 2012 she is appointed as Endowed Professor in ‘New Sanitation’ at the department of Environmental Technology of Wageningen University and Research (WUR-ETE).

She initiated projects on Decentralised Sanitation, aimed at recovery of energy, organics, nutrients and water, from 1999 onwards. As an initiator and project leader of the, EET-subsidized, project DeSaR-phase-1, started in 2001 and finished in November 2007, and additional STOWA projects, she was able to develop and demonstrate that Decentralised Sanitation is a feasible alternative for conventional sanitation concepts. As a result of the scientific, technological research the DeSaR (Decentralised Sanitation and Reuse) concept was developed and applied in a new housing estate of 32 houses, in Sneek, The Netherlands since 2006. The concept is now applied in full scale at 5 locations, viz. a new housing estate of 250 houses, 3 office buildings and a school. New projects are under development.

She was and is (co) promotor of more than 25 PhD students and published more than 100 peer reviewed papers. The scientific research aims at further improvement of concepts and technologies included in ‘New Sanitation’, for a more efficient recovery of water, organics, nutrients and energy.

Grietje Zeeman is frequently asked as advisor for application of decentralised sanitation systems and as key note speaker at scientific conferences. Moreover she was/is in the organising committee and scientific board of many scientific international conferences.

She is chairman of the executive committee of the TCA (Technical Committee Anaerobic digestion) of the Dutch Water Network, member of the ‘koepelgroep New Sanitation’, advising STOWA on ‘New Sanitation’ projects and member of the theme ‘Separation at Source’ of WETSUS, European centre of excellence for sustainable water technology. Next to her work at WUR-ETE, she works part-time at LeAF BV, a spin-off company of WUR-ETE.

Jean-Philippe Steyer
INRA, France

Dr. Jean-Philippe STEYER is Director of Research at INRA (www.inra.fr) and Director of the “Laboratoire de Biotechnologie de l′Environnement” in Narbonne, France.
www6.montpellier.inra.fr/narbonne
He received his Ph.D. degree in process control from the University of Toulouse in 1991 and was awarded by the CNRS as the “best Ph.D. thesis in applied process control” that year. Dr Steyer was actively involved in many national and international projects and he was entitled in 2005 of an EIF Marie Curie fellowship (project MEIF-CT-2005-009500) to study for one year the “Control of anaerobic digestion processes for optimisation of hydrogen production” at the Danish Technical University in Lyngby, Denmark. Dr. Steyer participated in the writing of 1 book, 13 book chapters, 212 scientific papers in International peer-reviewed journals and more than 250 in International conferences (H-index = 32, 4454 citations). He has been Associate Editor of two International journals (Reviews in Environmental Science and Bio/Technology and Water Research). Dr. Steyer supervised over the last 17 years 32 M.Sc. and 20 Ph.D. students (most of them dealing with instrumentation, modelling and control of biological wastewater treatment processes) together with 9 postdocs (including 2 Marie-Curie postdocs). In 2013, he was the Chair of the IWA International conference on Instrumentation, Control and Automation (ICA) for water and wastewater systems (more than 200 participants) organized in Narbonne, France.

Mr. Werner Kossman
Former Chief Technical Advisor, GIZ, Vietnam

Mr. Werner Kossmann is graduated from the Technical University Berlin with a Master′s degree in “International Agricultural Development”. For over 25 years he worked as Technical Advisor for the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) mainly on renewable energy issues, including biogas technology. From 1986-2007, he was an Advisor in several projects under the GTZ, e.g. the Thai-German Biogas Programme in cooperation with Chiang Mai University and the Department of Agricultural Extension, the Information and Advisory Service for Appropriate Technology at GIZ HQ, the Improved Municipal Solid Waste Management project in Phitsanulok, Thailand. Furthermore, he was Managing Director of the Thai-Swiss Joint Venture Company “Pure Natural Power”, a service provider for the development of CDM projects. Between 2012 and 2015, he was assigned by the German International Cooperation Agency (GIZ) as Chief Technical Advisor to the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT), responsible for the implementation of the Renewable Energy Development project. Currently, he is the Director for business development at the Thai registered company Natural Power, focusing on international market development for large scale biogas systems.

Mr. Weerapan Kiatpakdee
Natural Power Co.,Ltd., Thailand

Mr. Weerapan Kiatpakdee graduated with a Master degree from King Mongkut′s University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand. He is an expert in renewable energy application and has had more than 20 years experience of biogas systems. His scientific background in biogas technology and close cooperation with the Thai - German Biogas Programme led to the design of a unique biogas system, which has been optimized for local conditions and is adaptable to a wide range of feedstock materials and waste water. Nowadays, he continues a successful career; as head of the Natural Power Co.,Ltd., which sells his technology exclusively.

Dr. Ruben Michael Ceballos
University of Arkansas (Fayetteville), USA

Dr. Ruben Michael Ceballos (Tepehuano-O′dami) is an assistant professor of Biological Sciences Department at the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, USA). He has broad educational background in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Alabama (UAB) at Huntsville for bachelor, Neuroscience from UAB at Birmingham for master and PhD in Microbiology and Biochemistry from the University Montana. His doctoral studies were funded in part through a U.S. National Science Foundation IGERT Ecology of Infectious Disease program. He was also an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Indigenous Graduate Program (SIGP) PhD awardee, a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship awardee, and was the recipient of the NASA Astrobiology Institute MIRS award in 2006. In 2007, Dr. Ceballos established the Native American Research Laboratory (NARL), a unique intercultural and interdisciplinary research and learning lab dedicated to provide "hands on" research opportunities to students from underserved groups with a strong focus on serving Native American students. His Ceballos Lab is a highly interdisciplinary microbiology and biochemistry research laboratory. Dr. Ceballos has gained experience in both fundamental and applied research in various aspects; from neuro-science to environmental science & technologies development. Dr. Ceballos collaborates with both domestic and international partners to explore novel methods to enhance aquaponics technologies toward developing low maintence, low energy-use, "sustainable" systems for use in rural and tribal villages. This includes the integration of new feedstock “microalgae” photobioreactor and permaculture systems to bioremediate aquaculture effluent while producing useful photosynthetic products (i.e., algal and plant biomass/metabolites) that may be used as food or medicine. This project is supported, in part, by an award from the U.S. National Science Foundation. He is recently publishing his new book entitled “Bioethanol and Our Natural Resources: Feedstocks, Pretreatments & Engineered Systems”.