Professor Ashantha Goonetilleke
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia

Talk Title: Urban stormwater pollution: Progress and challenges
Biography of the Speaker: Ashantha Goonetilleke is a Professor in Water and Environmental Engineering at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. He focuses on producing research outcomes of relevance to industry and the community and translation of research outcomes for practical application. His areas of expertise include stormwater pollution and mitigation, Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD), climate change adaptation, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and stormwater and wastewater recycling. For five years, he was the Director for Infrastructure Research, Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, QUT. For ten years, he served as the advisor on sustainability to Brisbane Airport Corporation and held the Professorial Chair in Airport Innovation. He has published more than 200 scholarly publications, including three books, book chapters and journal and conference papers. He has received over $11 million in research funding and supervised over 40 doctoral and masters’ research students.

Professor Ashish Sharma
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Talk Title: Water Resources Engineering and climate change: Recent developments and future challenges
Biography of the Speaker: Ashish Sharma is a Professor of Hydro-climatology and Water Resources Engineering at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Ashish is passionate about understanding changes to hydrology as a result of rising temperatures or changing land-use. His recent research projects have included developing better methods for design flood estimation to account for current and projected warming, developing procedures for correcting biases in long term and decadal climate projections, using satellite remote sensing to assess soil moisture and flood inundation, and improving the computational efficiency for physically based (calibration-free) semi-distributed eco-hydrological modelling. Ashish is also the President-elect of the Statistical Hydrology Commission (STAHY) for the International Association of Hydrology Sciences. He has published over 100 journal papers in the leading international journals, served in the editorial board of Water Resources Research and Journal of Hydrology. He also served in ARC College of Expert.

Professor Peter Coombes
Managing Director Urban Water Cycle Solutions , Sydney, Australia

Talk Title: Systems analysis of big data and macroeconomic history to reveal insights for water policy and markets
Biography of the Speaker: AProfessor Peter Coombes is currently the managing director of Urban Water Cycle Solutions that operates as an independent research, policy and consulting Think Tank. Peter is currently an editor the Urban Book of Australian Rainfall and Runoff published by Engineers Australia. He is also a Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources at Swinburne University, and was most recently a Chief Scientist in the Victorian Government. During 2015, Professor Coombes was a contributor to the inquiry into stormwater management and flooding convened by the Senate of the Australian Parliament. More information can be found at http://urbanwatercyclesolutions.com