Over 80 students, PhDs, entry-level professionals and others from Denmark and abroad joined us on June 23rd, 2020 for a 90 minutes’ webinar with five experienced water professionals who shared their experiences and enthusiasm for working in the water sector.

A big thank you to our presenters, Haris Kadrispahic from Liqtech International, Inês Breda from Silhorko-Eurowater, Jan-Michael Blum from Envidan, Lars Holmegaard from Lemvig Vand and Klimatorium, and Per Nobel from Novozymes who presented their journey of how they became water professionals and illustrated the many facets of the water industry.

The presenters received numerous personal and technical questions from the audience, which they answered with great interest, and pointed out the importance of encouraging students and young professionals to join the water community.

Thanks to all who participated – we look forward to organizing similar webinars in the future!

This webinar was organized by a team of YWPDKs volunteers, who are preparing activities at the Nordic Stand for the IWA 2020 Congress in May 2021. If you would like to get involved, please reach out to ronja.sorensen@gmail.com.

On December 9, more than 25 young water professionals met up in Copenhagen for the annual Julehygge with interesting and diverse presentations:

• Rambøll’s Trine Munk and Damian Cronin gave an introduction to the company and their international work. They had also prepared a workshop on “climate justice” and gave us their take on how to include this when designing resilient cities.
  
• Yalda Pilehchian works in archi_lab and was one of this year’s UrbanLab participants. She gave us her take on the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, which she experienced both in UrbanLab as well as in her professional career.
  
• Jan-Michael Blum from EnviDan held an inspiring presentation on how we over the next decades will see a change in the way we perceive the value of wastewater, and down the line wastewater treatment plants may be an important supplier of important compounds for both agriculture, the energy sector and biotechnology.

Finally, we finished the evening with gløgg, æbleskiver and networking. Thanks to all the presenters and the participants for an interesting evening!

YWPDK were part of the yearly Dansk Vand conference taking place on November 12-13 and organized by DANVA. Ten YWPDK members were present at the conference to represent our network. YWPDK hosted sessions during both days of the conference.

The first day, students and other participants could join and hear about our members’ work in the water sector. It is impressive how diverse our members professions are. The brilliant members presented work on drinking water, climate adaptation, policy, wastewater treatment, and climate adaptation. The water sector is a multi-disciplinary sector whith multiple career paths. We hoped to illustrate this in the first session where careers within regulation, consultancy, utilities, and research were presented.

On the second day, we hosted a workshop on the workforce of tomorrow, where young – and old professionals participated and shed light on the competencies needed in the future.
During the conference we had multiple posters up where participants could add their suggestions for the most important challenges facing the water sector in the next 25 years. These challenges were then used for the workshop on the second day.
The groups prioritized the challenges facing our sector based on likelihood and impact on their daily work. This was an interesting exercise with thought-provoking results. According to our participants the most important challenges facing our sector in the years to come are:

– Digitalization
– Urbanization
– Ensuring clean drinking water

The second part of the workshop focused on what skills will be needed in future to stay relevant and cope with the challenges.
It is remarkable how much soft skills are emphasized. They are central in all the workshops we have held on the topic, which have been in very different international and professional contexts. We have previously held the workshop in Toronto and Helsinki, while we have discussed the topic at a panel debate in Copenhagen. It is becoming quite clear that hard skills will not be enough.

We want to thank DANVA for a great conference and for once again including us in the program and allowing students to participate for free.

YWP workshop Nordiwa 2017 improved

See the official NORDIWA conference programme here

The Danish Technological Institute is a self-owned and not-for-profit institution. DTI develops, apply and disseminate research- and technologically-based knowledge for the Danish and International business sectors. DTI is multi-disciplinary Institute divided into 8 divisions Production, Materials, Life Science, Business and Society, Energy and Climate, Agro technology, Building and Construction and Meat research. More info on DTI: www.dti.dk/

 Programme for YWPDK visit at Danish Technological Institute, Aarhus

15:00 Welcome: Pedro Carvalho(YWPDK) and Caroline Kragelund Rickers (Danish Technological Institute)

15:10: Sanin Musovic: The Trojan Horse – A new biotechnology for pesticide removal at drinking water sand filters.

15:30: Sabine Lindholst: Converting wastewater into fertilizing irrigation

Visit to laboratories at DTI, including wastewater treatment facilities, and biogas production.

16:15: Michelle Lison Rebsdorf: Skanderborg municipality- Safe recreational lake waters.

16:25 Sebastian Buch Antonsen: Microplastics in wastewater – how to measure and what to do

16:45 Sandwich and networking.

Venue: Danish Technological Institute, Kongsvang Allé 29, 8000 Aarhus

Sign up for event 

The conference will take place from the 9th-10th of March, 2017 in Hvidovre (Copenhagen) and is hosted by BIOFOS.
All Young Water Professionals are invited to join us for two days of knowledge sharing, soft skill training, excursions to technical sites, networking and much more.
To sign-up, please use the sign-up form in the first step, and in the second step purchase your ticket here. More information will be sent to you prior to the event.

We are looking forward to welcoming you all in Copenhagen!

The call for abstracts with further information on the conference and the program has been sent out to you by e-mail. The submission deadline for abstracts is December 20, 2016.

Registration for the conference will open in January 2017.

Are you not yet a member of YWPDK or know a friend, who sould be part of the network? Then you can learn more on our website and sign-up easily.

We are looking forward to welcoming you!

flyer_website_call_for_abstracts