Angelos Findikakis
Angelos Findikakis
Stanford University / Bechtel Corporation
United States of America
Invited talk title: Water and the Question of Sustainability and/or Growth
Angelos Findikakis has spent most of his career with Bechtel Corporation working in studies supporting the licensing, design and construction of industrial and civil infrastructure projects in the United States and around the world. He specializes in water resources, hydraulics and hydrology. As a Bechtel Fellow he has an active role in Bechtel’s technical excellence program.
As Adjunct Professor at Stanford University he taught water resources management for several years.
He has been active in different national and international professional associations, currently serving as Editor of the quarterly magazine Hydrolink and as IAHR’s Liaison to the UN Water program.
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Kaveh Madani
Kaveh Madani
United Nations University, Institute for Water, Environment and Health
Canada
Invited talk title: Coupled Human-Nature Systems: Greater Than the Sum of Their Parts?
Prof. Kaveh Madani is a globally recognized scientist, educator, and activist, working on complex human-water systems at the interface of science, policy, and society. He is currently the Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), aka the UN think tank on water.
He has previously served as the Deputy Head of Iran’s Department of Environment, Vice President of the UN Environment Assembly Bureau, Chief of Iran’s Department of Environment’s International Affairs and Conventions Center, Head of the Resource Nexus Research Programme at the United Nations University, and a tenured faculty member of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.
Prof. Madani is an expert in applying mathematical and economic methods to complex human-water problems to derive policy and governance insights. He has over 200 publications and is a Fellow of AGU and EWRI. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his fundamental research contributions, teaching innovations, as well as outreach and humanitarian activities, including the New Face of Civil Engineering (ASCE), Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Young Scientists (EGU), Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Award (AGU), Walter Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (ASCE), and Ambassador Award (AGU).
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María Carmen Llasat
María Carmen Llasat
University of Barcelona
Spain
Invited talk title: Flood management challenges in the framework of the SDG 13
María Carmen Llasat is Full Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Barcelona (UB) and leads the GAMA Group since 1995. Her research and activity focus on climate change and hydrometeorological risks (mainly floods) from a multidisciplinary approach, fields in which she has more than 200 scientific peer review publications.
She was president of the Natural Hazards Section of the European Geophysical Society and founder and editor-in-chief of Natural Hazards and Earth System Science. She has been member of numerous international committees and projects as well as member of the Advisory Council for Sustainable Development (CADS) of the Generalitat de Catalunya for more than 10 years. Nowadays she is member of the steering committee of the Mediterranean Experts group on Climate and Environmental Change (MedECC), among others. She has had a strong participation in the First Mediterranean Assessment Report and nowadays is one of the coordinators of the Special Report on Coastal Risks of MedECC. Besides her research activity, she develops a strong outreach activity, and acts as mentor of a high number of PhD students.
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George P. Karatzas
George Karatzas
Technical University of Crete
Greece
Invited talk title: Sustainable coastal groundwater management through innovative governance in a changing climate
Professor George P. Karatzas received his Ph.D. in 1992 from the Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering at Rutgers University, USA in a combined Ph.D. program with Princeton University, USA. At the present time he is a Full Professor in the School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Crete, Greece (1998-today) where he has served as Chairman and Dean of the Department. Prior to that position he worked as a postgraduate at the Research Center for Groundwater Remediation Design at the University of Vermont (1992-1994) and as an assistant professor at the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Vermont (1994-1999).
His area of research includes numerical simulation in porous media, subsurface hydrology and contaminant transport, groundwater management, subsurface remediation techniques, global optimization techniques, surface water modeling and floods. He is the author of 113 journal publications, 87 conference proceedings, one book and 5 book chapters. He has been principal investigator and co-investigator in several national and international research projects related to groundwater flow and contaminant transport, groundwater management, surface hydrology and floods.