Mr Masagos Zulkifli was born in Singapore on 16 April 1963. 

He graduated with a First Class Honours Bachelor of Engineering Electrical in 1988 and a Master of Science Electrical Engineering in 1994 from the National University of Singapore. He began his career with Singapore Telecommunications Limited in 1988.  He was awarded a SingTel Postgraduate Scholarship and graduated with a Master of Business Administration from the University of Southern California, United States in 1995.

While at Singapore Telecommunications Limited, he had international postings to Ujung Padang, Sulawesi, Indonesia and to Sydney, Australia. He was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of SingTel Global Offices.

In 2006, he left Singapore Telecommunications Limited for public office. He was elected one of five Members of Parliament for Tampines Group Representation Constituency (GRC) in the May 2006 General Election.

On 2 June 2006, he was appointed Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Education. On 1 April 2008, he was appointed concurrently Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs. On 1 November 2010, he was promoted to Minister of State, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Home Affairs.

In the 2011 General Election, he was elected one of five Members of Parliament for Tampines GRC. On 21 May 2011, he was appointed Minister of State, Ministry of Home Affairs & Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On 1 August 2012, he was promoted to Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Home Affairs & Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On 9 April 2015, he was appointed Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, and promoted to Second Minister, Ministry of Home Affairs & Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In the 2015 General Election, he was elected one of five Members of Parliament for Tampines GRC.

On 1 October 2015, he was appointed Minister for the Environment and Water Resources.

Snehal Desa is Global Director Sustainable Business Blueprints & Strategies at The Dow Chemical Company in the United States. 

Dow combines the power of science and technology to passionately innovate what is essential to human progress. The Company is driving innovations that extract value from material, polymer, chemical and biological science to help address many of the world’s most challenging problems such as the need for clean water, clean energy generation and conservation, and increasing agricultural productivity. Dow’s integrated, market-driven, industry-leading portfolio of specialty chemical, advanced materials, agrosciences and plastics businesses delivers a broad range of technology-based products and solutions to customers in approximately 180 countries and in high-growth sectors such as packaging, electronics, water, coatings and agriculture.

Ahmed Aboutaleb (born 1961 in Beni Sidel, Morocco) has been Mayor of Rotterdam since 2009. Previously, he represented the PvdA (Labour Party) as State Secretary for the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment in the fourth Balkenende cabinet (2007-2008) and as an alderman in Amsterdam (2004-2007). 

Rotterdam has achieved a high level of success in developing best-in-class climate adaptation and water management strategies to address the threats of sea-level rise and pluvial flooding inherent in their unique geography and morphology. 

The City is currently striving to link these achievements with strategies for addressing other risks and in particular emerging social cohesion challenges. The city’s resilience strategy has several objectives such as: a city with a balanced community, a global port city running on clean and reliable energy, infrastructure that’s ready to face the 21st century and taking Rotterdam’s resilience to climate change to a new level.

Rotterdam's water and climate plans may serve as an example: investments in water and climate resilience are combined with new activities and scheduled maintenance. This accelerates integration and reduces additional cost.

Rotterdam is a city with a strong character, energetic and never the same. The city and its residents know how to bounce back. Rotterdam wants to remain and, if necessary, strengthen its resilience. To make sure that the city is prepared to embrace the opportunities and challenges of the future.

Resilient Rotterdam sets the city in motion. It’s a growing network of people working on a resilient city: companies, residents, social organizations and the municipality. Together they develop their skills to keep and make Rotterdam resilient. Together they draw structural attention to the resilience qualities of the city. And together they carry out initiatives to make sure that Rotterdam is ready for the 21st century.

Actual position: Chief Engineer Higher Order Solutions Water Treatment

Company: Xylem Services GmbH

Country: Germany

24 years experiences in the Water Industry. Key roles and responsibilities in his carrier: Manager Research and Development; Technical Director; Environmental-Safety-Health and Quality Manager.  

Professional Societies

GDCh (German Association of Chemists) Specialised groups: Analytic, Water Chemistry and Environment, Toxicology

IOA (International Ozone Association) EA3G- and International Board Member, International President 2014/15

FIGAWA (German Professional Association of Water Treatment and Gas Production), Chairman of specialised group: ozone applications

IWA (International Water Association) Secretary of specialised group: Advanced Oxidation Process

Member of IWA National Committee Germany

DWA/DVGW (German Water and Wastewater Associations) member of workgroups related to oxidation and disinfection processes

Involvement in Research Projects (key projects past 6 years)

BMBF Transrisk (2011-2014) “Risk management of Chemicals and Pathogens of Concern in the water cycle”  

US WRF 11-02 (2012 – 2014) “Equivalency of Advanced Treatment Trains for Potable Reuse”

US WRF 11-01 (2012 – 2014) “Monitoring for Reliability and Process Control of Potable Reuse Applications”

EU LIMPID (2011-2014) “Nano composite materials for Photo reactors”

EU AquaNES (2016-2019) “Combined engineered and natural solutions for Water Reuse”

An architect and engineer by training, Professor Carlo Ratti teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he directs the Senseable City Lab, and is a founding partner of the international design office Carlo Ratti Associati. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Ratti has co-authored over 500 publications and holds several patents. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum in Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Two of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion and the Copenhagen Wheel – have been included by TIME Magazine in the list of the ‘Best Inventions of the Year’.

He has been featured in Esquire Magazine’s "Best and Brightest" list and in Wired Magazine’s "Smart List." Blueprint Magazine included him among the "25 People who will Change the World of Design," and Fast Company named him as one of the "50 Most Influential Designers in America."

Ratti was a presenter at TED, curator of the Future Food District pavilion for the 2015 World Expo in Milan, and is currently serving as both a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Cities and special adviser on Urban Innovation to the European Commission.

As well as being a regular contributor to Project Syndicate, he has written for international media including The New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Scientific American, BBC, and others.

Yanhong Kong, Senior engineer (equal to professor position in University) and deputy chief engineer in China Urban Planning and Design Institute. Professor Kong has been engaged in urban planning which including ecological planning, engineering planning, and water system planning as well as design work. She presided over or participated in several ecological planning and related issues, water system planning, and civil engineering planning and design. She also completed a number of projects such as the guidelines for eco-city planning, ecological city planning in the city of Yuxi, water system planning in Miyun, a section of water system planning in Sanya and Zaozhuang, and eco-city planning in Tianjin. Besides the achievement in industry areas, Professor Kong also made a great success in academic areas. She responsible for the projects "The key technology of environmental impact assessment in the city planning " and " Research and demonstration of key technologies in urban water system planning ". Both projects are belonging to the subject of "Eleventh Five-Year". Professor Kong was also awarded a second prize of China science and technology progress in 2013 and 2016. Until now, more than 20 papers have been published.

Adjunct Position: 

Executive deputy secretary in China Urban Science Research Association of eco - city professional committee       

Membership of China Urban Planning Society of Urban Ecology Professional Committee

Dr. Lai was appointed as the Director-General of WRA since November 2016. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Director-General and the Chief Secretary of WRA, the Director of Southern Region Water Resources Office (July 2011-Feb. 2014). His career in WRA started from being an engineer within the 4th River management Office, then the Chief within the Water Management Division and the Chief Engineer within the Central Region Water Resources Office. He has extensive experience in the field of Water Resources Management.

Dr. Lai got his Master and Ph.D. Degree in Soil and Water Conservation at National Chung-Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan. In 1998, he had received scholarship for going to the University of Florida to study Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing System. Also in 2001, he had received the invitation to be visiting scholar for University of California- Berkeley on the topic of river ecological restoration.

During Dr. Lai’s career, he involved in many important governmental projects, including the constructions of levee, dikes and Dams. During Chi-Chi Earthquake, he hosted the emergency measure plan for Cao Ling landslide dammed lake. He also hosted the Tseng Wen Reservoir trans-watershed diversion project and sediment sluicing tunnel project. Many projects under his leadership have received rewards; for instance, the Improvement Project for Tseng Wen Reservoir and the Headrace Channel Construction Project for Hushan Dam, both received the Golden Quality Awards from Public Construction Commission. To recognize his hard work, WRA awarded him the Outstanding Senior Award in 2006, and the Executive Yuan awarded him the Model Civil Servant Award in 2007.

Born in 1979,  Senior Engineer and PhD in Economics.

Working responsibility at BWA: Be responsible for management of water resources, coordination and management of water hydrological work, water saving, flood responding, financial management. News spokesman of municipal Flood Control Management Commander Office. 

Mr. Liu had worked in Ministry of Water Resources before moving to BWA, as director Of Division of Water Resources Management, Department of Water Resources in the Ministry.

Kai Schwärzel is an Academic Officer at UNU-FLORES where he leads the Soil and Land-use Management unit. The overall goal of his work is to understand, quantify, and predict processes that control water and matter fluxes in variable saturated soils ranging from the plot to catchment scale. He is using lab and field experiments, as well as numerical modeling, to deal with these problems.

After completing his PhD, Dr. Schwärzel worked as a Postdoc at the Chair of Site Ecology and Soil Protection, TU Berlin. During his time at TU Berlin, his research focused mainly on the impact of dewatering of wetlands on hydraulic soil properties, water budget, trace gas fluxes, and crop yields.

In 2004, Dr. Schwärzel became a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Soil Science and Site Ecology at TU Dresden. His research over the last decade has focused on the impact of soils, land use management and climate on water and matter fluxes, and related soil properties. He has studied the functions of soils under various types of land use and management with respect to flood prevention in mountainous regions and with respect to soil physical health. The work of Dr. Schwärzel combines aspects of soil physics/hydrology and soil-plant-atmosphere interactions.

Laura Tuck assumed the position of World Bank’s Vice President for Sustainable Development on July 1, 2015. In this role, she oversees the work of the Global Practices and Cross-Cutting Solutions Areas (CCSAs) that bring together the best expertise from across the World Bank Group, and from partners, to help countries tackle their most complex challenges in the area of sustainable development.  The practices and CCSAs under her responsibility include Agriculture; Climate Change; Energy and Extractives; Environment and Natural Resources; Public-Private Partnerships; Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience; Transport and ICT; and Water.

Before taking this position, Ms. Tuck served for close to two years as Vice President for the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region.   During this period, ECA’s lending and advisory services increased substantially, stepping up support for programs and projects aligned with the goals of reducing poverty and increasing shared prosperity. 

Ms. Tuck joined the World Bank in 1987 as a Young Professional, and worked initially as an Economist in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MNA) and, later, in the ECA Region, as a Lead Economist in the Chief Economist’s Office and then as Sector Manager for Agriculture and Rural Development.

Her extensive experience in sustainable development includes a decade leading the Bank’s work in this area in two regions. Between 2002 and 2006 she was the Director for Sustainable Development in ECA and, from 2006 to 2011, she held the same position in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region.   She then became Director of Strategy and Operations supporting the Regional Vice President in the MNA region, followed by a stint in the same position in ECA.

Before joining the World Bank, Ms. Tuck worked for several consulting firms in the area of agricultural policy, food policy, and food needs assessments.  She also served on the faculty of Princeton University as part of a university research project, and worked and lived in Africa between 1980 and 1987.

Ms. Tuck has an MPA from Princeton University in Economics and Public Policy and a BA from the University of California at Davis in Economics.  She is married and has two grown children.

The economist Udo Kock gained his doctorate at the VU University Amsterdam and the Tinbergen Institute Graduate School of Economics. In 2001 he joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC. Kock worked there as (senior) economist, including working on economic recovery programmes for Iraq and Pakistan.

At the IMF, he also worked on other economic development programmes including Laos, Sri Lanka, Jordan and Uzbekistan. He also analysed financial and economic development in emerging economies. In recent years he has been Permanent Representative of the IMF for Palestinian Territories in East Jerusalem. Udo Kock has written more than a hundred articles in (scientific) journals and newspapers about diverse subjects, including unemployment, the employment market, social security, the housing market, higher education, foreign policy and politics.

He was dual city councillor for D66, secretary of the party's Amsterdam department and a member of the Board for the Economic Research Office. In June 2014, he was appointed as alderperson for Finance, Decentralisations, Water Management and the District of West.

Udo Kock is married and has three children.