João Pedro Faria Feliciano

João Pedro Faria Feliciano is CEO of AGS – Administração e Gestão de Sistemas de Salubridade. He holds a PhD in Civil Engineering with a post-graduation course in hydraulics and water resources from the Instituto Superior Técnico at the Technical University of Lisbon. He also completed an MBA from Porto Business School as well as the Performance Leadership Program at Oxford University. João then received a grant to support research activities at the Technical University of Lisbon and LNEC (National Laboratory for Civil Engineering), followed by consultancy for engineering design at Hidrorumo (EDP Group) and DHV Portugal.

In 2000, João focused on urban water cycles as a Technical Manager and from 2001-2005 was the Project Manager at a Águas de Portugal Group Company. Following this, he began collaboration with AGS holding positions in various roles. Since 2014, João has been the CEO and a non-executive board member in Group Companies. Currently, he is the Chairman at Aquasis.

Kelvin Siew

Kelvin is the Head of Distribution at Air Selangor, a water utility serving a population of 8.4 million people in the state of Selangor, federal territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya. He has 21 years of experience in the water industry; particularly in the fields of water distribution and non-revenue water (NRW) reduction. He is now overseeing non-revenue water reduction, operation and maintenance, enforcement and management of the 10 regional offices inline with Air Selangor’s strategic plan initiatives towards improvement to asset reliability and resilience, improving operational efficiency and delivering the best experience to our customers.

Kelvin graduated with a BEng (Civil) and has been involved in many facets of the water industry including water quality, water supply planning, customer billing services as well as crisis management. He started his career in the technical field as a water engineer and has been involved in management roles at both regional offices as well as headquarters. He is passionate in seeking and applying new and emerging technologies in our continuous efforts to provide clean water supply to customers in a more efficient and sustainable way. 

Nele Philips

Nele Philips is Program Manager in the R&D department at De Watergroup, a water utility in Belgium. Driven by a passion for sustainable water management, she initiates and coordinates projects that explore and showcase new digital technologies, and participates in various local and international research projects. The innovation program aims to make a valuable contribution to achieving the strategic objectives and prepare the utility for the future. A lifelong learner and positive challenger of the status quo, she hopes to inspire colleagues to embrace change and strive for continuous improvement.

Nele holds a MSc in environmental engineering and a PhD in civil engineering from the KULeuven University, Belgium. She has 20+ combined years of experience in the water sector, having worked in contracting and consultancy companies before joining the utility De Watergroep in 2019.

Flavio Silva

Flavio is currently an Electrical Engineer in the Innovation Department at CORSAN in Brazil, with previous experience as an Operational Coordinator at the municipality of Alvorada and a member of the Maintenance and Operation Department at the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre. He holds a PhD and Masters in Electrical Engineering from Federal University of Santa Maria, graduating from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul with a thesis entitled “Network Communications for Smart Grid – LoRAWAN Network Deployment for Rural Smart Grid in Brazil.” Flavio specialises in telecommunications, with expertise in electrical installation projects, energy efficiency, smart grids, IoT, and 5G – a digital transformation enthusiast.

Flavio is motivated by research on communications and digital transformation (Digital Twin) for Sanitation Utilities, IoT forecasting tools, end-to-end solutions for water, electrical and gas utilities, smart meters, automated supervision (SCADA), state estimator, ect. He has over a decade of experience in microelectronics for telecommunications (Scientific Initiation), the development of voice and data communication equipment (Internship), transmission projects for 3G networks (Nokia Siemens Networks), forecasting software (Aircom-UK), application engineering for mobile networks (TIM & Claro Operators) as well as large-scale MW application engineering (Siae Microelettronica). Flavio has worked for AES Sul companies of the AES Group, previously acquired by CPFL from the State Grid Group and electricity distributors in Rio Grande.

George Theo

George Theo is the current CEO of TasWater, Tasmania Australia. George has more than 30 years’ experience and a wealth of knowledge of the water sector, the majority of which has been operating at executive level of management and has held roles with global consulting company GHD and water utilities Unitywater, Brisbane Water (UU) and City West Water in Victoria. He has a proven track record in delivering sustainable outcomes for the benefit of customers, environment, employees and stakeholders by delivering initiatives that challenge the status quo.

George has overseen transformation in the way businesses approach productivity improvements, capital planning and delivery, asset management, digital solutions, pricing, community and customer outcomes. He is the inaugural Chairman of the SWAN Asia Pacific Alliance. George has a Master’s in Business Administration, Degree in Engineering (civil) and an Associated Diploma in Municipal Engineering. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Miguel Ángel Ayllón Mesa

Miguel Ángel is Head of Drinking Water at the Engineering Department at Global Omnium in Spain. He has more than 18 years of experience in the water sector, specialising in several areas of the full water cycle, including hydraulic modeling and simulation, master planning, design and construction of drinking water treatment plants & hydraulic infrastructures, leading multidisciplinary work teams. After a year in the hydraulic department of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, in 2003 he joined Global Omnium, a Spanish water utility with more than seven million customers that have successfully developed and implemented a digital twin of the water network of Valencia and its metropolitan area that is being used in the daily operation and for optimisation purposes.

He is currently in charge of the drinking water area in the Engineering Department of Global Omnium and also leading the development and implementation of renewable energies within the company. In the last years, he has carried out several international consultancy services related to hydraulic modeling and water networks optimisation in the Middle East and LATAM regions. He acted as COO of Idrica, the spin-off company from Global Omnium, supervising the new technical functionalities and future developments of the GoAigua’s management solution for the full water cycle and also managing the digital transformation of several water utilities.

Miguel Ángel holds an MSc in Industrial Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia specialized in hydraulics and energy. He is a senior consultant in renewable energies by the EOI (Business School of Industrial Organisation) and PLD programme by ESADE University.

Ting Lu

Dr. Ting Lu is the Business Practice Leader for Digital Solutions at Clean Water Services in Hillsboro, Oregon. Ting leads and directs innovation of digital solutions and the implementation of data management, and IT, OT and ET integration. Ting also currently serves on the Utility Management Committee and Intelligent Water Technology committee at WEF.

Before joining Clean Water Services, Ting worked for the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati and Black & Veatch, where she led the integrated planning effort and developed a quantitative and innovative water quality program with smart sensors and data analytics. has authored over 100 papers and presentations nationally and internationally and coauthored several book chapters for the Water Environment Federation. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati.

Thomas Kuczynski

Thomas Kuczynski is the Vice President of Information Technology for the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) and the President of Blue Drop. Tom joined DC Water in August 2013 and heads up an IT team of 60 individuals and a $20 million budget to develop applications that support all aspects of DC Water’s business. As President of Blue Drop since 2019, Tom leads the team responsible for generating non-ratepayer revenue from various products and services including Bloom our Class-A exceptional quality bio-solids, intellectual property and other non-traditional sources.

Tom has more than 40 years of experience in utility management and operations including nearly 30 years at Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW). As Senior Vice President, Strategic and Information Services for PGW, Tom was responsible for managing Strategic Planning, Enterprise Performance Management, Information Services and Internal Auditing. He has extensive experience in a wide range of utility information technology solutions including customer information systems, credit and collections, ERP, SCADA, GIS, AMI and mobile work management to name a few. Recently he led the development of DC Water’s Pipe Sleuth an AI and machine learning solution for automated defect detection of sewer pipe videos.

Prior to DC Water, Tom worked for Pacific Gas & Electric’s National Energy Group as Director of Technology Strategic Planning and Architecture, and for Delmarva Power in Wilmington, Delaware where he provided IT Strategic Planning Services to the Energy Supply Group. Tom is a graduate of La Salle College of Philadelphia and the Executive MBA program at University of Maryland University College.

Marouschka Romme

Marouschka Romme is Advisor Innovation at Brabant Water in the Netherlands. After finishing her bachelor’s degree in Business Innovation (BA, Strategic Marketing and Innovation Management and Commercial Economics) at Avans University of Applied Sciences she decided in 2019 to join Brabant Water, a Dutch sustainable drinking water company that supplies drinking and industrial water to 2.6 million residents and businesses in Brabant.

She is currently working on multiple strategic large innovation projects such as ‘GeoRight’ for the (semi)automated processing of pipeline data in GIS and the digital twin project ‘Smart Operations From Intelligent Assets’ (SOFIA). The aim of the SOFIA project is the implementation of a digital twin to have a real-time hydraulic model of the water distribution network to respond to key challenges and the business needs that the company is facing in the future (short, mid and long term). Her role in this project is to help with project management and provide substantive advice on the required sensor measuring devices. Marouschka is a medior consultant in innovation management and has affinity with (smart) technology in the drinking water sector.

Julia Mehr

Julia Mehr is currently leading the design and implementation of the first Digital Neighbourhoods for water networks at TasWater. She is directing the introduction of IoT systems and AI/ML solutions to the organisation with a view to improve operational efficiency, enrich customer experience, enhance asset management, introduce predictive maintenance, and make a significant impact on evolving the organisation to become a data-driven business.

Julia is a highly experienced program leader with a proven track record of working across various industries including information technology, bio tech, government, medical, and services industries. She has a strong digital background with acute interest in technology adoption supplemented with big-data actionable insights to identify business improvement opportunities and drive innovative transformation.