2021 IUVA World Congress Gathers 320 Virtual Attendees
The International Ultraviolet Association hosted its Virtual 2021 IUVA World Congress on June 7 and 8, 2021, with over 320 attendees representing 29 countries. The World Congress conference program featured more than 80 presentations with speakers from industry and academia presenting the latest in UV technology for drinking water, reuse water and wastewater, air treatment, healthcare applications, surface treatment, food and beverage applications, UV LED, disinfection, Far UVC and several presentations dedicated to the industry’s work on mitigating the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Keynote presentations included an in-depth look at mercury regulations in UV technology from Jennifer Heathcote of GEW (EC) Limited and a thought-provoking, high-level discussion on what the future holds for emerging infectious diseases and public health threats between Dr. Richard Martinello, Yale Medical School, and Dr. Amesh Adalja, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
In addition to several live and on-demand conference sessions, attendees were able to take advantage of an AI-enabled networking platform, allowing chat and video discussions with other attendees with similar interests. The IUVA World Congress also featured a virtual exhibition and poster session, giving attendees the ability to see the latest products and research in UV technology.
IUVA Young Professionals (YPs) were active at the World Congress in a special session on June 6. IUVAYPs hosted the second edition of “Ask Me Anything” (AMA). The AMA event is a platform for experienced industry members to talk about their views on various topics of interest with a crowd of young professionals. Four panelists – Ida Marie Høiaas (CrayoNano), Sam Guzman (American Ultraviolet), Madjid Mohseni (University of British Columbia) and Ted Mao (TW Technologies) – fielded questions from roughly 20 young professionals for an hour. Molly McManus and Dan Spicer moderated the event.
IUVA is looking forward to a return to live events in 2022, with the IUVA Americas Conference taking place September 26-28, 2022, at the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio.
UVC Food Safety Webinar Scheduled for November 2
The IUVA Food Safety group will host a webinar on Tuesday, November 2. Three speakers will address UVC interventions for food processing facility engineers and food safety managers. It is to the benefit of UVC equipment manufacturers to promote adoption of well-designed and properly validated solutions. Additional details, speaker biographies and registration will be released soon. For more information, visit www.iuva.org.
IUVA YP Podcast Releases New Episode with Dr. Ashok Gadgil
In the latest episode of Wavelength, the IUVA Young professionals podcast was joined by esteemed guest Dr. Ashok Gadgil. He is best known for the innovations for the developing-world “UVWaterworks” and “the Berkeley-Darfur Stove.” He is a faculty senior scientist and was director of the Energy and Environmental Technologies Division from 2010 to 2015 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He also is distinguished chair professor of Safe Water and Sanitation in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Throughout this episode, the podcast dives into his past and present work, what future he envisages and what drives him to constantly innovate. Dr. Gadgil also offers his advice for the IUVA YPs to follow in his footsteps. To listen, the Wavelength podcast can be found at https://www.iuva.org/wavelength.
YP Spotlights
Jaser Lara de Larrea
Jaser Lara de Larrea is a graduate student of MASc in Environmental Engineering at Dalhousie University at Halifax, NS, Canada. He graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in Environmental Engineering (2020) and LP in Water Professions (2018) from Technological University of Tabasco (Mexico) and IUT de l’Aisne (France), respectively. While in Europe, an internship in a wastewater treatment plant in Switzerland allowed him to gain experience in water treatment, focusing on biological treatments. In 2019, he was awarded the Mitacs GRI fellowship for a 12-week internship at the Centre for Water Resources Studies (CWRS) where he participated in data collection for UV-LED-related projects. This internship helped him to gain experience in UV technology for various applications like photodegradation of organic compounds and water/surface disinfection. Currently, his thesis project consists of the treatment of biofilms and opportunistic pathogens in drinking water distribution system conditions using UV LEDs.
Saketh Thanneeru
Saketh Thanneeru is the sales manager – Southeast Asia at AquiSense Technologies. He received his Bachelor’s in Technology from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India, and M.S. with primary focus in Environmental Engineering from Cleveland State University at Cleveland, (Ohio). His thesis was focused on carcinogenic dye wastewater treatment. Thanneeru has been with AquiSense since 2015 and helps clients introduce UV-C LED solutions to their products and processes. He moved from Erlanger, Kentucky, to Bengaluru, India, in 2017, to introduce the technology in India and Southeast Asia. He actively participates in IUVA as a YP strategic growth coordinator, while also being part of the UV Solutions YP team and the Wavelength IUVA Podcast YP team. He is passionate about developing real-world solutions for people from all walks of life and hopes to play a part in bringing safe water to every human on earth.
The YP Committee exists to increase interest and involvement in the IUVA and the UV industry among young professionals (YPs), defined as students and professionals less than 35 years old or with fewer than five years of experience post-graduation in a UV-related industry, government or academia. For questions or comments, or to get more involved, contact the YPs via social media (@IUVAYP) or by email (iuvayp@iuva.org).