Wastewater Surveillance for Covid-19 Management

Dr. Manish Kumar is a Distinguished Professor at the School of Engineering and Sciences, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico; & at UPES, Dehradun, India. He also serves as an Institute Professor (Visiting) at Chuo University, Japan. Previously, he served IIT Gandhinagar (India), & Tezpur University (India). He also worked at University of Nebraska Lincoln, US; Kunsan University, South Korea; Uppsala University, Sweden. His research aims to broaden the understanding of fate, transport, and remediation of geogenic, microbial and emerging contaminants.

Prof. Kumar earned Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo, Japan, and supervised ten Ph.D. thesis and >50 master dissertations, contributed >200 international journal articles, cited >10,000 times, leading to a H-index >50 and i-10>175. He featured in the list of the top 2% of researchers in the world (2019-2023). He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). He renders editorial services to severalQ-1 journals of the American Chemical Society, Elsevier, & Springer.

Dr. Keisuke Kuroda is an Associate Professor at the Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering, Toyama Prefectural University, Japan. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Tokyo (2010). He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Eawag, Switzerland, and the University of Tokyo, and was a senior scientist at National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan. His research interests lie in the dynamics of various natural and man-made pollutants in the water environments and their management in urban water systems. Particular interests are subsurface geochemistry and mitigation technologies of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), arsenic, and per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS). Recent research focuses include assessment of environmental fate of antiviral drugs and their ecotoxicological risks, wastewater-based epidemiology, advanced oxidation process (AOP), and photocatalytic water treatment for decentralized water systems. He is serving as one of the editorial board members in Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN) and was a guest editor of STOTEN, Journal of Environmental Management (JEMA) and the Scientific World Journal.

Dr. Santanu Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor at the School of Agricultural Sciences, Shoolini University of Biotechnology and Management Sciences, Himachal Pradesh, India. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Bonn, Germany, and worked as a guest scientist in FZJ, Juelich, Germany. He was a visiting researcher at Savannah River Ecological Laboratory, USA. After returning to India, he worked as a DST-SERB (Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology in India) postdoctoral fellow at one of the top institutions of this country, IIT-Gandhinagar. He is the recipient of multiple accolades of national and international repute, to name a few: the India-Japan Hiyoshi Young Leaf Award, the Early Career Travel Grant by The Geochemical Society (GS) and the European Association of Geochemistry (EAG), the ICAR International Fellowship, the Hutchison Young Scientists Foundation Awards, the DST-SERB-GOI Fellowships, the DST-SERB TARE grant, the DST-SERB Start-up grant, the UCSI-REIG grant (2023) with Malaysia, the GRIFA (Italian Pesticide Agency) grant, and the EU-COST action biochar grant. His research interest includes the fate of emerging contaminants, biogeochemical transformation of nutrients, and the role of dissolved and particulate organic matter in deciding contaminants' fate in the environment. He is serving as a youth editorial board member of Biochar (Scopus indexed journal from Springer), guest editor of Sustainability journal, reviewer of many Scopus-indexed journals, have also edited three books, and published several peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.

Prof. Long D. Ngiehm, is the Director of the Centre for Technology in Water and Wastewater and a Professor in Environmental Engineering at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. The overarching aim of his work is to discover, develop, and transfer new knowledge, skills, and technologies that improve the provision of clean water and purification of wastewater in service to society. Before joining UTS, he received research training and experience from the University of New South Wales, Yale University, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Wollongong. In 2009, he was a visiting professor at the Colorado School of Mines, USA. In May and June 2016, he was an August-Wilhelm Scheer Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. To date, he has supervised to completion 20 PhD and 8 MPhil students, and have overseen the delivery of numerous research projects with over $3 million in funding.

Meththika Vithanage is a Professor in Natural Resources and the founding director at the Ecosphere Resilience Research Centre, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka. She is now serving as an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Agriculture, University of Western Australia, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, India and the National Institute of Fundamental Studies, Sri Lanka. She has received Presidential Awards for Scientific Publications for 12 years from the National Research Council of Sri Lanka. She is a Young Affiliate of the TWAS and a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka. She received the General Research Committee Award by the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science in 2019. She was awarded as the Best Young Scientist, 2018 by the Young Scientist Forum of the National Science and Technology Commission, Sri Lanka and in 2016, she became the Young Scientist in Chemistry by the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka. She has received the Early Career Women Scientists fellowship by the Organization for Women Scientists in the Developing Countries, Italy in the year 2019. She is one of the leading researchers on Biochar and listed in the top 10 authors who have published SCI articles on biochar. Further, she was listed as Top 2% of the most cited scientists across various disciplines globally from 2017 to 2023. She has contributed to 250+ journal articles, 60+ book chapters and 8 co-edited books published by Elsevier, Springer, Wiley and CRC Press.

Vinay Kumar Tyagi is a Scientist at the Environmental Hydrology Division, National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, India. His research interests include anaerobic digestion, energy-efficient wastewater treatment systems, Sludge management, and advanced biomass pretreatment methods. Dr. Tyagi has published 100+ publications including 7 books, 45 book chapters, and several journal articles. He also published manuals such as the O&M of Sewerage Works, and Operation and Maintenance Guidelines for UASB-DHS System, jointly published by Government of India and Japan. Dr. Tyagi is fellow and life member of several professional bodies and organizations. He is Management Committee Member of International Water Association (IWA) Sludge Management Specialist Group and represent South Asia Division. He is an active Reviewer of 100+ International Peer-Reviewed Journals and editor for IWA publishing (UK), editorial board member of Environmental Science and Eco-technology journal and lead editor of several special issues for international journals. Dr. Tyagi has extensive international research exposure of working in Taiwan, Spain, Japan, and in Singapore in various environmental research domains of wastewater treatment, sludge pre-treatment, and biomass to bioenergy recovery.