Muhammad Bilal Asif is a senior water scientist and engineer with over 15 years of experience spanning advanced water and wastewater treatment technologies, technology assessment, and applied research. He brings deep expertise across membrane systems, micropollutant removal, resource recovery, and emerging treatment processes, with hands-on experience translating complex science into practical insight for industry and decision-makers.

Bilal has led and contributed to internationally recognised research across the UK, China, Saudi Arabia, and Australia, working closely with universities, utilities, and industrial partners. His work sits at the intersection of materials science, process engineering, and system-level performance, with a strong focus on techno-economic feasibility, scalability, and real-world application. He has been involved in industry-funded projects with organisations including Saudi Aramco and utility partners, combining rigorous analysis with applied problem-solving.

He is the author of more than 70 peer-reviewed publications and multiple book chapters, with over 4,000 citations, and has been recognised as one of the Top 2% of Scientists globally by Stanford University (2024, 2025). At BlueTech Research, Bilal contributes to technology and market intelligence, helping clients understand the performance, risks, and commercial pathways of emerging water technologies through clear, evidence-based analysis.

Shan brings over two decades of expertise in industrial wastewater, business development, innovation, and technology/project management across global markets. Her professional portfolio includes significant roles with prominent water technology firms such as Veolia Water and Technologies North America, SembCorp Industries Singapore, and SafBon Shanghai. Additionally, she has engaged with both local and international startups, including Aquafortus, BioLargo, and zNano. Shan is currently affiliated with Diamond Gold Investors, a family office based in Nevada. Her experience extends to the non-profit sector, where she was part of the Fraunhofer USA Center for Energy Innovation (now Connecticut Center for Applied Separations Technology) and helped the commercialization journey of various separation start ups.

Dr. Yong holds a Ph.D., M.S., and M.A. in Chemical and Environmental Engineering from Yale University, an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from MIT, and a B.A. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has made substantial contributions to the field of Forward Osmosis, with her high-impact research papers with more than 1000 citations.

Dr. Glen Daigger has more than 30 years of experience in wastewater treatment plant evaluation, troubleshooting, and process design. His areas of expertise include biological wastewater treatment and treatment process design, in particular biological nutrient removal (both nitrogen and phosphorus), combined trickling filter and activated sludge systems, the use of biological selectors to control activated sludge bulking, and oxygen transfer. He has served as a process engineer, project engineer, and project consultant on a variety of municipal wastewater treatment projects. He has contributed to all phases of facility development, from pilot studies to startup and troubleshooting. Between 1994 and 1996 he served as professor and head of the Environmental Systems Engineering Department at Clemson University.

In his role as CH2M HILL’s Chief Wastewater Process Engineer, Dr. Glen Daigger was responsible for wastewater process engineering on both municipal and industrial wastewater treatment projects. He was also the first Technical Fellow for the firm, an honor which recognizes the leadership that he provides for CH2M HILL and for the profession in the development and implementation of new wastewater treatment technology.

He is the author of numerous reports, articles, and conference presentations on wastewater treatment and sustainable wastewater infrastructure. Among the numerous topics he has written on are bioreactors, nutrient removal, water quality, optimization, chemically-enhanced treatment, and activated sludge. His texts including Biological Wastewater Treatment, Upgrading Wastewater Treatment Plants, and Principles and Practice of Phosphorus and Nitrogen Removal from Municipal Wastewater, are used in engineering classrooms across the country. Glen has also held the position of President of the International Water Association for two consecutive terms.

Ali is an assistant professor in the Civil Engineering department at the University of St. Thomas, where she helps students learn to solve complex problems. In her research, she applies systems thinking to emerging contaminants to better understand economic, environmental and human health impacts of their use, management and treatment. Current research focuses on PFAS distribution in environmental media, life-cycle assessment of PFAS treatment alternatives, and sustainable PFAS treatment alternatives for treating mixed waste streams. Prior to joining St. Thomas, Ali spent 10 years as an engineering consultant designing and troubleshooting industrial wastewater treatment systems.

Ali earned her Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and her Masters and PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has co-authored textbooks on industrial wastewater treatment and reuse and contributes to ITRC resources on PFAS.

A rich & diversified career path, including:

• • Over 35 years of senior executive roles in the global water & wastewater industry, with direct experience across the Americas, Europe, Australia, the Middle East & North Africa, in a wide range of industrial, municipal and commercial development sectors
• • Experience in the academic sector as the founder & initial director of a college-based environmental technology institute and as a professor in civil engineering
• • 12 years in the primary steel & steel construction sectors
• • A successful track record in establishing and managing complex businesses around the world, with full P&L responsibility in excess of $100 million per year
• • Deep-domain expertise & experience in leading edge technologies for the treatment of water & wastewater, water reuse, resource recovery and waste minimization, including advanced membrane technologies, sludge-to-energy conversion, phosphorus recovery and
  solutions for energy footprint reduction
• • Extensive experience in working with early-stage, advanced technology firms in North America, Europe, Israel and New Zealand, helping them move from concept to commercial success with their products & processes
• • Key advisor to a range of firms, from early-stage spin-offs to global multinationals, on technology & business assessment, business development, mergers & acquisitions, corporate development and project management.

Jim is CEO of Enereau Systems Group Inc., Vice-President Enereau B.V, and serves on the Advisory Boards for the Pictet Water Fund and Aquafortus Technologies Ltd.

Prior to his current activities, Jim was Managing Director of JWH Consulting GmbH, Chairman of Aquarion AG, Commercial for BluMetric Environmental Inc., Head of International Business Development for the Water Membrane Division of LG Electronics; Managing Director for Ostara Europe; Vice President at Toray Membrane Europe and Toray Membrane USA; Senior Vice President – EMEA for ZENON Environmental (later part of GE Water); Founding Director of the Sheridan Environmental Technology Institute; President of Pyxis Systems Group Inc.; Vice President at Kontek Ecology Systems and Manager of Market Development Engineering for the Algoma Steel Corporation.

Cindy Wallis-Lage has served the water industry for over 38 years through a combination of her work at Black & Veatch as well as service to public, private and non-profit industry organizations. Throughout her career, her focus has been on helping public and private entities successfully develop, enhance and manage their water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure via a variety of solutions and delivery methods.

Prior to her retirement, she served as Executive Director, Sustainability and Resilience for Black & Veatch to accelerate an enterprise-wide focus on sustainability and resilience solutions to support clients in the water, energy, telecommunications and transportation markets. Previously Wallis-Lage served as the President of the company’s global water business between 2012 and 2021 where she was responsible for the leadership and management of the company’s global water business that included a workforce of more than 2,800 professionals based around the world, including in North America, South America, the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and India. She also served on Black & Veatch’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors from 2012 until her retirement.

Currently Ms. Wallis-Lage continues to engage in the water industry by serving as a Board Member for several companies and serving as a Professor of Practice at Kansas State University for the Department of Civil Engineering. She is also active in Engineering Foundations of Kansas which is a non-profit dedicated to supporting STEM in K-12.

Using her position, passion and knowledge, she is a champion of the Sustainable Development Goals and seeks to educate how systems thinking can provide the needed long term human infrastructure to achieve social, economic and environmental sustainability goals.

Slava has more than 20 years of international experience in demanding industrial environments, with expertise in water technology, including R&D, analytical services, operations, and management . He developed innovative concepts for water systems of advanced semiconductor factories and municipal applications. He received Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Slava is a licensed Environmental Engineering Professional.

His professional contributions include more than 50 publications and conference presentations in water technology. He is particularly active with semiconductor industry activities, including organising and moderating conferences and seminars, developing water technology roadmap and standards.

Specialties: UltraPure Water (UPW), Water and Wastewater Treatment, Desalination, Filtration, Reverse Osmosis (RO), Biological Wastewater Treatment.

Dr. Michael Mickley has experience working in the field of desalination technology since 1966. Since 1990, most of Michael’s work within this field has focused on the area of concentrate/brine management. Michael has worked as a consultant to major engineering companies on several projects that involved site-specific evaluation of disposal options. His more recent international efforts have addressed challenges in Oman, U.A.E., South Africa, and Australia involving ZLD processing with associated salt recovery.

Michael’s research projects have been funded by Water Research Foundation (formerly AwwaRF), U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Office of Naval Research, and WateReuse Research Foundation (WRRF) – all addressing various concentrate/brine management issues. His recent reports include a 2008 WRRF report entitled Survey of ZLD and Volume Minimization Technologies for Water Utilities and a 2013 WRRF report entitled Development of a Knowledge Base for Desalination Concentrate and Salt Management. Michael is an internationally recognized expert in concentrate/brine management and is on the editorial board of Desalination and Water Treatment.

Dr. Mark Wilf is a membrane technology expert with over 35 years of experience in the membrane industry. His previous responsibilities have included development of membrane products, processes and system design for RO and membrane filtration applications. He served as Technical Director and Vice President of R&D at Hydranautics, and Director of Membrane Technology at Tetra Tech, a global engineering firm.

Since 2010, he works as an independent consultant advising clients regarding new product development, membrane system design and operation, optimization of process economics and training water professionals on design and operation of membrane water treatment systems. He is an editor of two handbooks on membrane technology applications, and is named as inventor and co-inventor of numerous patents.

Dr. Karen Meidlinger is the director of partnerships at the Center for Clean Hydrogen, University of Delaware, where she is responsible for external corporate engagement. Prior to joining the University of Delaware, Dr. Meidlinger led the digital innovation team at Evoqua Water Technologies which created the award winning SophisTM Digital Services. Before Evoqua, she worked at a Comcast Corporation’s spin-up company MachineQ where she was director of new business ventures IoT. Prior to Comcast, she was a cofounder and managing principal of Meidlinger Partners which invested in, grew, and developed water technology, product, and service companies with scalable solutions to address water and wastewater issues. Prior to co-founding Meidlinger Partners, Dr. Meidlinger was an associate at Johnson & Johnson where she spent almost four years leading innovation management projects, identifying new technologies that would drive future business growth for the corporation. Prior to her work at Johnson & Johnson, she ran the life science business incubator at the University City Science Center. She advised over 100 startup companies, including several biotech companies that went from startup to exit, turning $432 million of VC investment into $1.2 billion.

Dr. Meidlinger earned her M.B.A. at the University of Cape Town (South Africa). She completed her Ph.D. in marine ecology at the University of Southampton (UK) and her B.Sc. in marine biology at the University of Liverpool (UK). She also completed an entrepreneurship fellowship at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She grew up in Eswatini, Southern Africa and now resides in the United States in Philadelphia.

Dr. Sebastien Tilmans is an environmental engineer with over 15 years of experience scaling innovative wastewater treatment technologies. He was the founding Executive Director of the Codiga Resource Recovery Center at Stanford University, where he led the development and operation of an internationally recognized test-bed facility for resource recovery systems. Projects he led included anaerobic membrane bioreactors, membrane aerated biofilm reactors, advanced primary treatment, forward osmosis/reverse osmosis, and others. Prior to his work at Stanford, Dr. Tilmans served in the Process Engineering group at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. His project work spans diverse environments—from municipal utilities in California to off-grid, decentralized sanitation systems in rural Panama, and cities in Haiti and Peru.

Dr. Tilmans holds a B.E. in civil engineering from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Stanford University. He is a licensed professional engineer in California. He is also a former Fulbright Scholar, NDSEG Fellow, and EPA STAR Fellow.

A recognized sustainable technology executive and team-builder with an extraordinary history operating from the trenches to the boardroom. A transformational leader with a proven international track record of digging into impactful technologies, extracting maximum value, building high powered teams, and driving process improvements. Superior strategic, commercial and capital market insights with the ability to bridge the communication gap between investors and management.

Dr. Hubert Fleming is former Head, Water Management, Anglo American. Prior, he was Global Managing Director of Hatch Ltd. Hu holds MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from Cornell University and is a graduate of Harvard Business School, Executive Management Program. He is author/co-author of four books, including the Handbook of Membrane Technology ,and holds 12 US patents on membranes, water treatment. He has been invited speaker at the United Nations, and was Chairman, NATO Advisory Group on Environmental Affairs, as well as the World Health Organization Task Force on Water.

Dr. Graeme K. Pearce, is a membrane technology specialist with 30 years experience in the membrane industry and member of the O2 TAG. A graduate of Oxford University with a chemistry first degree and a chemical engineering doctorate, Graeme’s introduction to membrane technology started in BP Chemicals R&D in 1980. In 1991, Graeme was Technical Director of the core team to start up Kalsep, a Separations company formed by a management buy-out from BP. Kalsep specialized in membrane and filtration systems for water, wastewater, and process applications, and achieved a $7.5 million dollar turnover within 6 years.

Graeme joined Hydranautics in 2000, where he was responsible for the development and marketing of the ultrafiltration (UF) and microfiltration (MF) technology.

In 2005, Graeme left Hydranautics to form an independent consultancy, Membrane Consultancy Associates (MCA). A deep understanding of both technology and markets enables Graeme to provide a comprehensive service in the field of membrane technology in liquid treatment. Assignments have included advice on technology development and improvement, competitive positioning, market strategy, and growth opportunities. Graeme has also acted as an advisor in mergers and acquisitions.

Mike Adkins is a professional engineer with over 40 years of experience in the fields of water and wastewater treatment and environmental engineering. He recently led AECOM’s global water treatment practice and was responsible for the technical direction and strategy for the group, the marketing of its services and the securing of new, large projects including the management and preparation of major proposals and associated marketing efforts. The group’s revenue was currently approximately $250 million pa with a further $250 million pa of “at risk” design build projects in the water sector.

He has held leading roles in the areas of consulting, operations and systems manufacturing. He has extensive leadership experience on large multi-disciplinary projects, with a particular focus on water supply treatment and distribution projects.

Mike has very solid technical expertise. He was a leading figure in the development of dissolved air flotation (DAF) within the United Kingdom and later into the North American market and he has played a key role on some of the largest DAF plants in North America. His experience covers all of the water treatment technologies commonly found in use in today’s market and includes the design and development of membrane ultra-filtration and seawater desalination systems, bio-filtration, ozone, UV and the treatment and disposal of residuals.

His international experience includes working in the UK, Canada, USA, Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, Nigeria and Australia. For the past four years he was based in Dubai, UAE responsible initially for developing international water treatment projects in the Asia Pacific market and more recently, with a focus on projects within Saudi Arabia.

Mike recently retired from AECOM and is now working as a technical and business advisor to various clients in the water supply and treatment field.

Somnath Basu is a Technology Assessment Group (TAG) Expert of BlueTech Research. He serves as a Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the US Department of Energy (DOE), Washington, DC. He is affiliated with the Water Power Technologies Office of DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) program. His immediate past affiliation was Headworks International, Houston, TX where he served as the Chief Technology Officer for the development of biological processes for water and wastewater treatment. His other past affiliations include the Water & Utility division of Shell Oil Company where he was a member of the Shell Global Solutions team, Siemens Water Technologies, and Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.

Somnath is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the current chair of the Editorial and Publications subcommittee of the Industrial Water Committee (IWC) for the Water Environment Federation (WEF). He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (AAEES). He has over 35 years of experience in water and wastewater treatment, and technologies for generation of energy from renewable resources.

Wade Miller is currently a water strategies consultant, assisting private and public sector clients with business planning, strategy development, mergers and acquisitions, market research, fundraising, and Washington representation.

For almost 14 years (2000-2014), he served as the Executive Director of the WateReuse Association – a non-profit organization whose mission is to advance the beneficial and efficient use of water resources through education, sound science, and technology using reclamation, recycling, reuse, and desalination. Mr. Miller was also Executive Director of the WateReuse Research Foundation, which conducts applied research on water reuse and desalination.

Mr. Miller has been involved in the water field in various capacities for approximately 40 years. He twice served as an advisor to presidential commissions on water (i.e., President Carter’s Intergovernmental Water Policy Task Force in 1979; and the National Council on Public Works Improvement in 1987-88). Mr. Miller was instrumental in the establishment of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators and the International Association of Environmental Testing Laboratories and served as Executive Director of both associations. Before joining the WateReuse Association in 2000, he owned his own management consulting firm. During the course of his career, Mr. Miller has authored and published numerous papers, reports, and chapters in books.

Mr. Miller is a Fellow of the Center for Integrated Water Research at the University of California Santa Cruz and has served on numerous boards in the past (e.g., Global Water Research Coalition, College of Chemical and Life Sciences at the U. of Maryland, etc.)

He is a graduate of the University of Maryland (B.S., Chemistry) and has pursued graduate studies in marketing and finance at American University and Virginia Tech

Dennis Philbin is an accomplished executive in the technology-enabled information services industry, with 25 years of experience and a proven, entrepreneurial track record in all aspects of running both large and small businesses. Dennis has held numerous global leadership roles, including CEO of venture-backed research and information services company Lux Research; Senior Vice President responsible for developing new lines of business at IDC, and Asia/Pacific Managing Director across 14 regional markets. He has also served as an operating board member for IDG companies Computerworld and BioIT World and as an advisor/board member for TwoDegreesAdapt, Expeerient, DataMarket, and Greenometry.

Dennis received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University and his Master of Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin for his thesis on the funding of technological innovation.

Professor dr.ir. Cees J.N. Buisman holds a MsC and PhD degree from Wageningen University & Research.

Since 2003, he is Professor at the sub department of Environmental Technology at Wageningen University in the field of biological reuse and recovery technology. The current focal point is on bio-electrochemistry, alternative fermentation and biological induced solid production, both for recovery of energy, chemicals and minerals.

He combines his position of Professor with his position as Executive Board Member at Wetsus, “European centre of excellence for sustainable water technology”. The objective of Wetsus is to create a business-driven international multidisciplinary research program.