Dear Friends,
I’m happy to present to you our most recent issue of our newsletter forum to provide you with an update regarding exciting recent activities at the Chair of Urban Water Systems Engineering at TUM.
Congratulations to Dr.-Ing. Mohamad Rajab, who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in July 2015. We also congratulate Stefan Böhm, who received the Max-von-Pettenkofer Award of the German Association of Water, Wastewater and Waste (DWA) for his master thesis and Therese Burkhardt, who was awarded the Laura Bassi Frauenförderpreis at TUM.
After more than 9 years of highly valuable contributions to the Chair of Urban Water Systems Engineering, Dr. Elisabeth Müller moved on to a new position last October. We are very thankful to Lisa for her dedication and her leadership in establishing and directing the research group ‚Microbial Systems’. Starting Jan. 1, 2016 Dr. Bastian Herzog, who just completed a two-year post-doc appointment in Canada, took over to direct the microbiological laboratory and the ‚Microbial Systems’ research group. Unfortunately, due to health issues Mrs. Petra Frömel had to step down as the administrative assistant of our foundation last year. On behalf of the board of directors, we are very thankful for her support over the years, in particular for organizing our annual conference on Wastewater Treatment (Abwassertechnisches Seminar – ATS). We are also happy that we were able to hire Mrs. Raphaela Hofmann, who will take over these duties in February 2016.
In July 2015, we hosted our 43rd Conference on Wastewater Treatment focusing on „Energy-efficient Processes to Remove Nitrogen“, which has been organized by Dr. Konrad Koch. For this event, we managed to line up internationally leading experts on the topic from Switzerland, Austria and Germany. This year’s conference, scheduled for July 14, 2016, will focus on „Energy transition – the role of wastewater treatment facilities in providing energy on demand“. You can find copies of the technical program in this annual report and on our website. We appreciate your interest in this exciting event and would be delighted to see you at this event.
In 2015, we completed a productive year in research and acquired a couple of new grants, for example the project FOR-IDENT (led by Prof. Thomas Letzel) funded by the German Ministry of Research (BMBF), a project on microbial methanation (led by Dr. Konrad Koch) funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Economy and Energy, and a large instrument grant of the German Science Foundation (DFG) to fund a new LC-MS/MS Q-Trap system. With more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles in print in 2015, we continued to translate our research into publications at a high level.
Last year, TUM launched a new initiative, the TUM Water Cluster, to better coordinate water research at TUM across three colleges (Civil, Geo and Environmental Engineering, Life Sciences and Chemistry), and to engage in strategic research areas. You can learn more about this initiative at the new website www.water.tum.de. Jörg Drewes is currently serving as the speaker of the TUM Water Cluster.
Staff members of the chair continued to deliver substantial shares of the curriculum for the education of bachelor students in Civil and Environmental Engineering and master students in Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Environmental Planning and Engineering as well as Sustainable Resource Management. Beside a large number of lectures and laboratories, we advised a total of more than 90 master thesis, master study projects and bachelor thesis last year.
On behalf of my colleagues, I’d like to thank you for your interest in our students and our research. In particular, we are grateful for your support to our foundation. These funds are used to assist our PhD candidates and graduate students regarding travel support to participate in conferences and as seed funds for new research ideas.
Please enjoy reading about the latest developments at the Chair of Urban Water Systems Engineering.
With best regards,
Jörg E. Drewes