Ina Vertommen is the team leader of Hydroinformatics at KWR and a scientific researcher in the fields of water demand modelling, robust design of water distribution networks and optimisation problems. She likes to explore the added value and application possibilities of different new techniques and methods for the water sector. Ina gets energy from collaborating with researchers and water management professionals and strives to achieve innovative and valuable research results and solutions together.

Dr. Janelcy Alferes is a researcher at VITO, specialized in the domain of full scale water quality monitoring, real  time optimization of water systems and digital water. She holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Navarra (Spain).

With focus on applied R&D in the international context, she has accumulated more than 12 years of experience in strong collaboration with industry, technology providers, local communities, researchers and governmental authorities towards the implementation of practical solutions. She has worked as Project Manager at different international companies, coordinating applied research projects in the field of environmental engineering, water and air quality monitoring and data intelligence, for case studies around Europe, America, and India, with the common objective of providing real time environmental data and support data based tools for improvement of sanitation policies and smart water management.

Within VITO she is involved in the project Internet of Water (IoW) across the Flemish region in Belgium. She is also coordinating the Belgium Case Study for the European project AquaSpice.  Her current activities within the new Water Climate Hub (WCH) at the Ostend Science Park include the definition of the roadmap for building applied research capacity in the areas of smart water technology, climate adaptation and sustainability. 

As a PhD candidate at EAWAG and ETH Zürich, Liliane Manny investigates social and political aspects of the digitalization of urban wastewater systems in Switzerland. Her research aims at identifying potential social and socio-technical barriers to smart urban wastewater systems.

Jennifer is a water economics and risk expert with 11 years of experience and a passion to increase awareness around water risks and communicate these in a way to create traction and find collaborative solutions.  

Jennifer conducts water security assessments for cities, river basins and countries, and uses the power of multi-stakeholder platforms to identify the root causes of water risks, as well as suitable solutions. To ensure that her on-the-ground understanding remains accurate, she investigates water challenges as part of photojournalism projects. Her clients include the World Bank, 2030 Water Resources Group, UNDP, Circle of Blue, Vector Center and multinational companies, such as Microsoft, to name a few. She now passes on her knowledge via online water risk trainings.  

Before becoming an independent consultant around 5 years ago, Jennifer was a manager at Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), where she was invited to be part of PwC's High Potential Program and also co-lead the PwC Global Water Network. Jennifer has completed her BSc in International Economics and Finance (cum laude) at Tilburg University & her MSc in Water Science, Policy & Management at Oxford University. 

In her role as a development engineer at GF Piping Systems, Katja Stadler is responsible for the technical design and testing of new products for piping networks. The focus of her work is on solutions for gas and water supply. Katja holds a Master's degree in process engineering from the University of Stuttgart and joined GF in 2019.