Keynote Speakers

• Poul L. Bjerg
  Professor Poul L. Bjerg (*1961) obtained his MSc (Environmental Engineering, 1987) and Phd degree (Transport of cations in aquifers) from the Technical University of Denmark. He was appointed as professor in Environmental Geochemistry in 2002 at Department of Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. He was on sabbatical at CSIRO, Land and Water, Perth, Australia 2000-2001.The research field is risk assessment and remediation technologies for contaminated soil, groundwater and surface water. This involves more recently use of life cycle assessment tools and focus on holistic management of contaminated sites and water resources including groundwater/surface interaction. Leader or participant in several research projects under different programmes (EU FP6 and FP7, The Danish Agency for Science Technology and Innovation, Strategic Environmental Research Programme 1996). Significant experience with collaboration projects with leading consulting companies and administrative bodies (Danish EPA, Danish Regions/former counties). He obtained several awards for his research, innovation and teaching activities (2012 Academy of Technical Sciences, Soil and groundwater foundation, Poul Harremoés Award; 2011 Ejnar og Aase Danielsens Foundation: Environmental prize; Director Peter Gorm Petersen’s Award for the Ph.D. thesis). He has 90 refereed journal publications, a significant part with national and international co-authors, 2600 citations, and his H-index is 28 (Web of Science). Supervisor/co-supervisor for 18 PhD-projects and more than 80 master thesis students.
   

• Kirk Hatfield
  Dr. Kirk Hatfield is the Director of the Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment at the University of Florida, the Director of the Florida Water Resources Research Center, member of the Board of Directors of the National Institutes of Water Resources, and a Professor in the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering. Dr. Hatfield received his BS and MS degrees from the University of Iowa and his PhD degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Following graduation, he joined the University of Florida, Department of Civil Engineering in 1987.
  
  Dr. Hatfield’s ongoing research activities are in the areas of aqueous environmental monitoring, contaminant fate and transport modeling in the subsurface, environmental remediation, and water resources systems analysis. He has active research collaborations with universities and institutes in Russia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, England, and Germany.

• Tissa Illangasekare
  Tissa Illangasekare is the AMAX Distinguished Chair and Professor of Civil and Environmental at the Colorado School of Mines and the Director of Center for Experimental Study of Subsurface Environmental Processes (CESEP). He received his PhD in Civil Engineering specializing in subsurface modeling from CSU and an Honorary Doctorate from the Uppsala University, Sweden. He is a Fellow of AGU, a Fellow of AAAS and a Fellow of ASCE. He is a registered Professional Engineer and a Professional Hydrologist, Board Certified Environmental Engineer by American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Diplomate of American Academy of Water Resources Engineers and recipient of 2012 Darcy Medal from European Geosciences Union (EGU) for outstanding scientific contributions in water resources research and engineering. He is the current editor of Water Resources Research, and past hydrology editor of Earth Science Review and co-editor of Vadose Zone Journal published by American Soil Science Society. His research experience and expertise are in mathematical and numerical modeling of flow and transport in porous and fractured media, unsaturated and saturated zone processes, surface-subsurface interaction, snow hydrology, land-atmospheric interaction, multiphase flow, carbon storage, aquifer remediation, physical modeling of flow and transport in laboratory test systems and sensor technologies for environmental and hazard monitoring.
   

• Henning Prommer
  Henning Prommer is a principal research scientist with CSIRO Land and Water, Floreat Laboratories and the Winthrop Research Professor of Environmental Hydrogeology at the University of Western Australia. He graduated as a civil engineer from the University of Stuttgart (Germany) before working for several years as a consulting environmental engineer. He conducted his postgraduate research at the University of Western Australia, where he obtained his doctoral degree in 1999. He has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Edinburgh (UK), the University of Tübingen (Germany) and Delft University of Technology (Netherlands). In his current position he is leading the Western-Australian node of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training. His main expertise and research interests are (i) the development and application of reactive transport models to water quality issues in porous media, in particular the quantification of redox processes and the associated fate of organic and inorganic pollutants at both the laboratory- and field-scale (ii) understanding and quantifying coupled transport and (bio)geochemical processes induced by managed aquifer recharge techniques such as aquifer storage and recovery and (iii) numerical modeling of spatial and temporal variations of isotope signatures.
   

• Suresh Rao
  Suresh Rao is the Lee A. Reith Distinguished Professor at Purdue University (School of Civil Engineering and Agronomy Department). Dr. Rao also served for 25 years on the faculty at the University of Florida. Dr. Rao’s research interests have spanned from lab-scale, process-level, and filed studies on fate and transport of various contaminant classes; and aquifer-scale and watershed-scale studies on water quality impacts of agricultural and industrial land uses. His most recent research and educational interests have focused on: (1) landscape transitions under human impacts, and multi-scale modeling/analysis of catchments; and (2) resilience analysis of coupled, complex (natural and engineered) systems. Courses Dr. Rao has taught include Vadose Hydrology, Contaminant Subsurface Hydrology, Remediation Engineering, Global Water Resources Sustainability, Ecological Resilience & Sustainability, Transport Processes in Nature, and Complex Systems. Dr. Rao was one of four Editors-in-Chief for the Journal of Contaminant Hydrolog, and served as an Associate Editor for Water Resources Research, Environmental Chemistry & Toxicology, and Journal of Environmental Quality. He has conducted collaborative research through CRC CARE, University of South Australia, and CSIRO, including a sabbatical leave in Perth, Western Australia. He also maintains active research collaboration with colleagues in Switzerland, Italy, and Sweden.
   

• David Rudolph
  Dr. David L. Rudolph, Ph. D., P. Eng. is a Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Waterloo specializing in regional hydrogeology and groundwater protection and management. Specific research interests include field investigation and numerical modeling related to groundwater flow and contaminant transport with a specific focus on regional groundwater flow systems, recharge dynamics and vadose zone processes. Dr. Rudolph has participated extensively with municipal authorities both nationally and internationally in groundwater development and management. Research applications have focused on assessing the impacts to water quality from agricultural land-use practices and he heads a Canada-wide research team working on prioritizing risk to water quality from various agricultural practices and evaluating performance of Beneficial Management Practices.
  www.ngwa.org/Foundation/darcy/Pages/Current-Darcy-Lecturer.aspx
   

• Mario Schirmer
  Prof. Dr. habil. Mario Schirmer, hydrogeologist and geophysicist (German and Canadian, born in 1964); high school degree in 1983; 1986–1991 studies of Geophysics, Technical University Mining Academy Freiberg, Diploma in 1991; 1991–1993 research associate at the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering, University of Stuttgart; PhD student in Hydrogeology 1993–1998 at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada), PhD convocation 1999; 1998–1999 research associate, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Waterloo. From 1999 until 2001 postdoctoral research fellow at the UFZ. From 2002 until February 2008, Mario Schirmer was head of the Department of Hydrogeology at the UFZ. In addition, he was Prof. for Hydrogeology and Modelling at the Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg from 2004 until February 2008. In March 2008, Mario joined the Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, in combination with an associate professorship at the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland). His expertise is related to lab and field methods in hydrogeology, geophysics and computer modelling, including the simulation of contaminant fate and transport. His main research interests are urban and (pre-)alpine hydrogeology, interactions of ground- and surface water, hydrogeological issues in relation to climate/global change and the interaction between social and natural sciences. Mario is currently coordinating a four-year inter- and trans-disciplinary research project on many aspects of river restoration. This RECORD-Catchment project which started in 2012 investigates the coupled ecological, hydrological and social dynamics in restored and channelized corridors of a river at the catchment scale.
   

• Avner Vengosh
  Avner Vengosh is a Professor of Geochemistry and Water Quality at the Nicholas School of Environment in Duke University. Dr. Vengosh also has a secondary appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University. He is an Associate Editor for the international journal Applied Geochemistry. In 2011 Dr. Vengosh received the International Association of Geochemistry (IAGC) Fellow award.
  
  Dr. Vengosh research aims to delineate the sources and pathways of contaminants in the environment and their possible impacts on human health through integration of environmental geochemistry, advanced isotope geochemistry (boron, strontium, carbon, and radium isotopes), and environmental health research. Currently Dr. Vengosh research is focused on the environmental risks of shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing, particularly for evaluation groundwater and surface water contamination and the direct links to shale gas exploration.
  
  Overall, Dr. Vengosh research is engaged in three major themes:
  
  (1) The energy-water quality nexus that includes (i) studies on the impact of coal combustion products on the environment; (ii) the origin of contaminants associated with mountaintop mining in valley fill head waters in West Virginia; and (iii) the impact of shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing on the quality of shallow groundwater and surface water in the USA.
  
  (2) Salinization of water resources induced from human activities and climate change. Current studies focused on shallow groundwater in the sub-Saharan basins of Morocco and coastal aquifer of the southeastern United States. Studies also include the geochemistry of “new water” generated by reverse osmosis desalination of seawater and saline groundwater.
  
  (3) The relationships between groundwater geochemistry, water quality, and human health in different aquifer systems, worldwide. Current studies including high arsenic drinking water in private wells from Union County, North Carolina; high fluoride and arsenic in groundwater from the Rift Valley in Ethiopia; high salinity, fluoride, and radium in groundwater in Morocco; and high radium in fossil groundwater in the Middle East, and high arsenic and salinity in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Studies include developing new diagnostic tools to evaluate their bioaccumulation in the local populations by measuring the contaminants in nails and conducting health surveys in exposed populations.