Biographical note

Dr. Manish Kumar is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and faculty at Discipline of Earth Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. He earned his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan. He has multifacet research domains like Groundwater Pollution and Remediation, Water Systems and Climate Change, Isotope Hydrology, Emerging Contaminants: Occurrence, Fate and Transport, Arsenic and Metal Toxicity, and Bioremediation. He has been the recipient of Water Advanced Research and Innovation (WARI) Fellowship, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) foreign research fellowship, Brain Korea (BK)-21 post-doctoral fellowship, Monbukagakusho scholarship, Linnaeus-Palme stipend from SIDA, Sweden, and Research Fellowship from CSIR, India and others. He supervised 6 Ph.D. thesis and >20 master dissertations. He published >80 international peer-reviewed journal papers, >120 other scholarly works andhas 17 years’ research/teaching experience with H-index =25, i10-index=50 with total citation (*2500)-Google Scholar. He is the core committee member of the International Water Association (IWA)- India Chapter. He is the one of the illutrious members of global collaboration on wastewater based epidemiology of COVID-19.  

Dr. Francisco Munoz-Arriola is a faculty member in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering and the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His area of interest and expertise includes coupled natural-human systems, hydroinformatics, integrated hydroclimate and water quality and quantity, resilient of complex landscapes, sub-seasonal to seasonal predictability of hydrometeorological and climate extremes and phenotypes, remote sensing appli- cations, and the nexus food-energy-water-ecosystem services. He is fellow of the Robert B. Daugherty Water for food Global Institute, the National Science Foundation Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters, the American Meteorological Society Summer Policy Colloquium, and the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center. He has published his research findings in journals of both national and international repute.

Prof. Hiroaki Furumai is a professor of the Research Center for Water Environment Technology, the University of Tokyo with a joint appointment at the Department of Urban Engineering. His research group has conducted research on 1) Sustainable urban drainage management focusing on urban flood modeling and non-point source pollution, 2) Fate and control of pathogenic microorganisms in urban water cycles, 3) Bioremediation of contaminated soil and groundwater, 4) Water quality characterization and its evaluation for sustainable urban water use. He was a member of Board of Director of International Water Association (IWA) since 2012 and then organize the World Water Congress and Exhibition at Tokyo in 2018. He is IWA Distinguished Fellowafter working as IWA fellow 2010. He was a vice president (2014–2017), the president (2016–2017) and is now an advisor (2017- ) of the Japan Society on Water Environment. He is accredited with 250 research publications.

Dr. Tushara Chaminda is an academic and a professional engineer in Sri Lanka, specialised in the field of civil and environmental engineering. Currently, he is working as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka. His area of expertise includes but not limited to emerging micro-pollutants in the urban water environment, characterisation of DOM, heavy metal speciation, water and wastewater treatment, sustainable water management, etc. He received his PhD from The University of Tokyo, Japan, in the year 2008, in the field of Urban Environmental Engineering. Upon completing his PhD, Dr. Tushara Chaminda worked as a researcher at The University of Tokyo for 4 years. He has been engaged in several administration activities, projects and collaboration work with different international and local stakeholders of various academic and professional institutes. Dr. Tushara Chaminda has around 100 publications in international journal papers, book chapters and international/local conferences. Dr. Tushara Chaminda has also won several international and local awards for his research achievements for the last couple of years. He is also working as an editor and a reviewer in many international journals and international conferences.