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.

Tine te Winkel is a water economist at Acacia Water, a Dutch groundwater consulting company. Both in the Netherlands and abroad, she works as an adviser in the field of water economics and policy. She focuses on valuation to foster sustainable water use under the pressure of growing scarcity. For Tine, valuation of water is more than an economic exercise. She feels the urge to raise awareness and uses economics as a tool to combine hydrology with society and politics. 

Staffan Filipsson is a chemist graduated from the University of Lund. 1987 Staffan was hired by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. Staffan has over 20 years of experience in the development of environmental technology and closed loop processes in different industries and is also experienced in the innovation processes. During a period between 2003 and 2012 Staffan was hired by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca as manager of quality assuarance groups. In parallell Staffan was working as a LEAN coordinator in production. 2012 Staffan was re-hired by IVL and has since then also been involved in the development of municipal waste water treatment technologies and systems at the unique pilot and demonstration plant for municipal water treatment Hammarby Sjöstadsverk, owned by IVL and the Royal University of Technology, KTH. The aim of most projects is to turn todays waste water treatment plants into production plants for energy, nutrients and reusable water. From 2017, the pilot plant also includes separation technologies for industrial processes.

Some examples of Staffan`s knowledge and activities: