Prof. Dr. Habil. Chem. Laura Bulgariu

Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iaşi, “Cristofor Simionescu” Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Protection, Department of Environmental Engineering and Management, Iaşi, Romania

Speech Title: Ecological strategies using marine algae biosorbents for environmental decontamination

Dr. Laura Bulgariu is a Professor at "Cristofor Simionescu" Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Protection, Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi since 2019. In 2013, she obtained the habilitation in Environmental engineering. Her research area includes theoretical and experimental aspects related to the removal of heavy metal ions from aqueous media, using methods with low impact on the environment (“environmental-friendly methods”). The obtained results have been concretized in the publication of over 300 papers, books and book chapters (H-index = 31). She currently holds research grants from the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and various private companies. She is a laureate of the Romanian Academy in the geosciences domain.

Dr. Nour Shafik El-Gendy

Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute, Egypt

Speech Title: To Be Announced

Dr. Nour Shafik El-Gendy is a Professor in the field of Environmental Sciences, Clean Energy and Nano-Biotechnology. She is the Head Manager of Petroleum Biotechnology Lab., Former Acting and Vice Head of Process Design & Development Department, Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute (EPRI). El-Gendy is the Head of Technology Innovation Support Center (TISC) office, Vice Head of Center of Excellence and member in Entrepreneurship Hub in October University for Modern Sciences and Arts, MSA University. She is a Member of Water, Energy and Environment Committee Technical, Monitoring and Performance Evaluation Office, and the Coordinator of National Committee for Environmental Issues in the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT). She is the Former Advisor for the Egyptian Minster of Environment. El-Gendy is Scientific Advisor for the Federation of Arab Women Leaders. El-Gendy is the Former Coordinator of Nanobiotechnology Program, Faculty of Nanotechnology for Postgraduate Studies, Cairo University, Sheikh Zayed Branch Campus. She is the Vice Coordinator of the Scientific Research Committee and a Member in Rural Woman Committee, National Council for Women (NCW) of Egypt. ElGendy is an Ambassador for the Egyptian Young Academy of Sciences (EYAS). El-Gendy is a Member of the Higher Scientific Committee of the Arab Union for Sustainable Development and Environment. She is a Member of many technical committees for the preparation of regulations of different faculties concerned with Energy, Environmental and Biochemical Engineering. She was awarded Professional Diploma in "Preparing Arab Women Leaders Internationally and Regionally" documented by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. El-Gendy is an expert in the assessment of environmental pollution and its remediation, wastewater treatment, biofuels, petroleum upgrading, green chemistry, nanobiotechnology, valorization of wastes, biocorrosion and its mitigation. El-Gendy was awarded Diploma in “Environmental Management”. She has published 10 chapters, 9 books and 127 research papers, and supervised 29 MSc and PhD theses. Dr. El-Gendy is also an editor and reviewer in 88 and 186 international journals, respectively. She participated also as PI, Co-PI or research member in research projects concerning with biovalorization of wastes, solid waste management, bioethanol from lignocellulosic wastes, biofuels from algae, application of nanobiotechnology in upgrading of petroleum and bioremediation of polluted environment. Dr. El-Gendy participated in 89 international workshops and training courses, and 107 international conferences and seminars. Dr. El-Gendy established 4 ongoing research schools: Petroleum and Environmental Biotechnology, Environmental Nanobiotechnology, Biofuels, and Valorization of Solid Waste Biomass. Dr. El-Gendy is a member in many international associations and organizations concerned with petroleum industry, environmental health and sciences. She is also an active member in national committees concerning with sustainable development, water desalination, wastewater treatment, biofuel standards, petroleum pollution, chemical engineering and biotechnology. She is in international collaboration with different foreign international universities. She has also teaching experience (Chemical Engineering Department-Faculty of Engineering-The British University in Egypt BUE, Faculty of Biotechnology and Chemical Engineering Department-Faculty of Engineering-Modern Sciences and Arts MSA University, Faculty of Science-Monofiya University, Chemical Engineering Department-Faculty of Engineering-Cairo University and Biotechnology Program-Faculty of Science, Cairo University). She was honored in many scientific forums. She was awarded from India the Sciencefather Women Researcher Award 2022 for the contribution and honorable achievement in innovative research and the International Scientist Award 2021 on Engineering, Science and Medicine. El-Gendy has also been awarded the Best Women Scientist Award 2021 from College of Agriculture and Food Sciences, Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University, USA. She has been honored by the Official Portal of Department of Environment-Ministry of Environment and Water-Malaysia and University of Putra Malaysia-2021. Her biography is recorded in Who’s Who in Science and Engineering.

Prof. Dr. Abu Zahrim Yaser

Chemical Engineering Programme, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Speech Title: Agro-Based Industry Effluent as a Nutrient Enhancer and Moisturizer for Compost Production

Prof. Dr. Abu Zahrim Yaser is an Associate Professor in the Chemical Engineering Programme at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS). He serves as the Chairperson of the Research Cluster (Engineering and Technology) and is the founder of the Kundasang Compost Living Lab. He obtained his PhD from Swansea University (UK), MSc from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Malaysia), and BEng from the University of Malaya (Malaysia). Dr. Zahrim's research primarily focuses on waste processing technology, and he has led several projects since 2006. To date, Dr. Zahrim has published 14 books, 30 book chapters, 58 journal articles, and over 50 other publications. His creative work, presented at the Festival of Ideas under the title 'Kompos' has been viewed more than 3000 times and holds 5 copyrights on composting systems. He has delivered various keynote and invited talks on waste management, book/article publication techniques, and has chaired several international/ national seminars/ conferences. Dr. Zahrim actively serves as a reviewer for several high-impact journals and has reviewed more than 240 articles (Publon). Dr. Zahrim is currently supervising 4 Ph.D. candidates and 1 M. Sc. He has successfully supervised 1 postdoctoral fellow and 7 M.Sc. candidates. His inventions have been adopted by the Tongod, Nabawan, and Kundasang communities in Sabah. He has also served as a visiting scientist at the University of Hull. Dr. Zahrim is a Professional Engineer registered with the Board of Engineers Malaysia and a recipient of the National Book Award (2023).

Prof. Iqbal M. Mujtaba

University of Bradford, UK

Speech Title: To Be Announced

Prof. Iqbal M. Mujtaba is a Professor of Computational Process Engineering at the University of Bradford. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the IChemE, a Chartered Chemical Engineer. He was the Chair of the European Committee for Computers in Chemical Engineering Education from 2010-2013 and the Chair of the IChemE's Computer Aided Process Engineering Special Interest Group from 2012-2019. He is currently an Associate Editor for Asia Pacific Journal of Chemical Engineering, South African Journal in Chemical Engineering, Chemical Product & Process Modelling and an Editorial Board Member of Desalination, Processes, Energies. Professor Mujtaba leads research into dynamic modelling, simulation, optimisation and control of batch and continuous chemical processes with specific interests in distillation, industrial reactors, refinery processes, desalination, wastewater treatment and crude oil hydrotreating focusing on energy and water. He has managed several research collaborations and consultancy projects with industry and academic institutions in the UK, Italy, Hungary, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Qatar, South Africa, Iraq, Algeria, China, Libya, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. He has published around 400 technical papers and has delivered more than 75 invited lectures/ seminars/ plenaries/ keynotes/ short courses around the world. He has supervised 43 PhD students to completion and is currently supervising 8 PhD students. He is the author/ co- author of (1) 'Batch Distillation: Design & Operation' (text book) published by the Imperial College Press, London, 2004 (2) 'Wastewater treatment by Reverse Osmosis' published by CRC Press, 2020 (3) 'Desalination Technologies: Design and Operation' published by Elsevier, 2022. He is one of the co-editors of the books (1) 'Application of Neural Networks and Other Learning Technologies in Process Engineering', Imperial College Press, London, 2001 (2) 'Composite Materials Technology: Neural Network Applications', CRC Press, 2009 (3) 'The Water-Food-Energy Nexus', CRC Press, 2017 (4) 'Water Management: Social & Technological Perspective', CRC Press, 2018.

Prof. Monzur Imteaz

Department of Civil & Construction Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

Speech Title: To be announced

Dr. Monzur Imteaz is a Professor and Head of the Urban Environmental & Transport Systems research group at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. After completion of his Ph.D. in 1997 from Saitama University (Japan), he has been involved with water related consulting works in collaboration with Danish Hydraulic Institute at Denmark. Later, he was involved as a postdoctoral researcher with Queensland University of Technology and University of Queensland at Brisbane (Australia). He has been involved with several Australian academic and government sectors working on sustainability, environmental modeling, rainfall and streamflow forecasting using Artificial Intelligence. Since 2007, he has been teaching at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. He is the author of the book “Urban Water Resources” published by CRC Press (USA). Moreover, to date he is the author 1 edited book, 22 book chapters, 208 journals and 118 conference papers. As per 2022 citation record, he is among top 1% most-cited scientists in the world in the field of "Environmental Engineering". At present, his Google Scholar h-index is “42”. He has been serving as an editorial board member for the renowned journals: "Resources, Conservation & Recycling (Elsevier)" and "Journal of Hydroinformatics (International Water Association)".

Prof. Dr. Foo Keng Yuen

Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia

Speech Title: A shared vision on the pragmatic actions for water security management in Malaysia under the UNESCO Chair Program

Prof. Dr. Foo Keng Yuen is the UNESCO Co-Chair on Ecohydraulics for Sustainable Water Infrastructures for SDG 6 in the Asia and the Pacific Region. His research interests are environmental engineering, waste utilization, water treatment technology, catalysis, food security and toxicology, and environmental health. He has involved in different kinds of university, national and international research grants, amounting to approximately RM 10 million. His aptitude for high quality research of international standing has been supported by the consultancy projects of exceeding RM 3 million, more than 100 international publications, with a total citation of exceeding 17,000, and an author h-index of 50. In term of Intellectual Properties, he holds 3 patents, 1 trade-secret and 1 trademark. Foo’s scholastic achievements and thought leadership are recognised locally and internationally. He is honoured to be the Top 2% Scientists in their Respective Fields and Top 2% Highly Cited Scientists in the world by the Stanford University, California consequentially for 5 years. Foo has been nominated to be the honoree of the Ten Outstanding Young Malaysians (ToYM) 2022, Top Research Scientist Malaysia (TRSM) 2019, National Young Scientist Award 2017, International Young Inventor Award, Marquis Who's Who in the World, Top 100 Engineers, and Honorary Doctorate of Letters by International Biographical Centre Cambridge, England, and special award or medal winners in International Inventions, Competitions and Exhibitions. He serves as the Editor, Editorial Board Members, Scientific Adviser, Technical Committee, Review Committee, Keynote and Invited Speakers in international scientific journals, conferences, and research seminars. Foo has been nominated as the Chief Consultant for several UNESCO’s international workshops, connecting with more than 30 industrial partners, currently has been appointed as the technical consultant for TG Ocean Health Food Industries Limited Company and research and development (R&D) consultant for Gold Choice Food Industries Limited Company.

Dr. Vlado Spiridonov

Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Republic of N.Macedonia

Speech Title: Navigating the Storm: Understanding the Interplay of Global Climate Change and Water Pollution

Dr. Vlado Spiridonov completed his specialist, master, and doctoral studies in meteorology at the Institute of Meteorology at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Belgrade. In 2004, Vlado Spiridonov was honored to be appointed as the Director of the Hydrometeorological Service and the Permanent Representative of Macedonia with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). This prestigious role prevented him from pursuing a postdoctoral opportunity in Canada, for which he had been selected with the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). In April 2007 was elected as Assistant professor of meteorology while on two occasions (2012 and 2017) he was elected as the associate professor of meteorology. He is a representative of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the National Council for Climate Change in Macedonia, as well as a member of the Commission on Atmospheric Sciences at the WMO. Dr. Vlado Spiridonov was a Visiting Professor of Meteorology at the University of Vienna, Austria from 2017-2019. Dr. Vlado Spiridonov was also honored with a visiting professor of meteorology position at the “Faculty of Informatics and Computer Sciences”-FINKI in 2019, while in December 2020 he was appointed as a full-time Professor of Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Institute of Physics at “Ss Cyril and Methodius University” in Skopje. He has participated in several international scientific conferences, organized international events, and symposia, had presentations, and scientific presentations, and has been invited as a lecturer at plenary sessions and seminars, worldwide. He has published many scientific papers in international journals, several contemporary books in the field of meteorology, and has won awards and recognitions (e.g., "Patent of the Year-2000" in Macedonia, a gold medal with a mark at the EUREKA-2000 exhibition in Brussels, a genius award from the Hungarian Association of Innovations and GRAND PRIX in 2002 at the fourth international exhibition of inventions in Budapest GENIOUS-2002 for the invention related to the method of scattering of fog, as well as numerous other successes.

Dr. Soufiane Haddout

Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Ibn Tofail University, Morocco

Speech Title: International Water Conflicts: Understanding, Causes, and Solutions

Dr. S. Haddout is researcher in the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Ibn Tofail University, Morocco. To date, he is the author of 2 books, 2 submitted books, and published more than 50 refereed journal articles with 35 refereed articles as the first. He is involved in collaborative research with 20 universities/institutions worldwide. Dr. Haddout is the expert reviewer with AEIC-Academic Exchange Information Centre (China) and reviewer for many project proposals from international universities. He has received more than 100 certificates from international conference and renowned journals and has been invited speakers for many international conferences. Award-2020, 2021 and 2022: Best Research Awards (i.e., Thermodynamic in estuaries; and Water shortages and pandemics in Africa, and Bi-variate and CM plotting of the Sediment Dynamic Process in the estuaries)-International Research Awards, Iceat conference…etc. Co-Chair of the scientific session of the International Conference of Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation USA; Lead-Chair of the 1st and 2nd International Conference on Climate Change and Ocean Renewable Energy (CCORE 2022-2023); Coordinator of the 1st International Round Table Webinar on A Multi-criteria decision making tool for the management of water bodies in developing countries towards climate change resilience. Lead-Chair of the scientific session of the 18th International Conference of Computational Methods in Sciences (Greece) and is a Guest Editor of Regional Studies in Marine Science, Elsevier and active reviewer of reputed journals of Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer, Wiley…etc.

Dr. Priya K. L.

Department of Civil Engineering, TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, Kerala, India

Speech Title: Microplastics in aquatic bodies: Assessing the role of human interventions

Dr. Priya K. L. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, Kerala India. She is a pronounced researcher in estuarine studies and her research interests include estuarine contaminant dynamics, flocculation and settling of suspended sediments, groundwater quality studies, water and wastewater treatment involving flocculation, microplastics studies, RS and GIS applications for contaminant detection. To her credit, she has over 62 international publications in reputed journals / book chapters, over 37 papers in conferences and the recipient of Charles Boyden Award of Estuarine and Coastal Sciences Association UK, apart from several Best Paper Awards. She has completed 10 funded research / consultancy projects, guided 4 IAESTE interns, 2 research scholars and over 50 undergraduate / graduate projects. She has a wide network connection in the international arena, including USA, UK, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Morocco, Brazil, South Korea, Vietnam, Mexico, Croatia, Mozambique, which is evident from her publications with several universities abroad. She is a State-level core team member of the evaluation committee of the DPRs for pollution abatement of rivers in Kerala, member of Haritha Sabha Mission, Core committee member of Conservation and Management of Ashtamudi wetland. She is a Guest Editor of the Special Issue “State-of-the-Art in Estuarine Modelling” in Regional Studies in Marine Science, Elsevier, “Microplastics and Estuaries” in Journal of Environmental Management” and is an active reviewer of several journals of Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer, etc. She has chaired several sessions of International Conferences including that of Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation, Asia-Oceania Geosciences Society, to name a few.