Dutch environmental engineering expert Mark van Loosdrecht delivered a talk at the University of Macau (UM) on Monday where he presented “environmental engineering issues from the perspectives of water resources management, technological innovations in water treatment, basic research, and the training of professionals”, the public university said in a statement on that day.

The talk, titled “Curiosity Driven Research as Foundation for New Resource Recovery Processes”, was part of UM’s University Lecture Series.

Van Loosdrecht, who is also a professor and the chair of the Department of Environmental Biotechnology in the Faculty of Applied Sciences at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, noted that innovation is essential to the development of a green and sustainable society and a fully integrated water sector.

Van Loosdrecht added that innovation has been slow partly due to the water sector itself, with its basic structure and design having remained unchanged for around 3,000 years. He said in the statement that to stimulate innovation in the water sector, it was necessary to promote curiosity-driven research embedded in an engineering context, with science and engineering the key to innovation in the water resources field.

He said, according to the statement, that this could only be achieved when different approaches are respected and effective communication is maintained over time.

Meanwhile, the statement said that Faculty of Science and Technology Associate Dean and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Head Zhou Wanhuan noted in a speech at the lecture that water treatment is not just a technology, but an interdisciplinary research field that provides a solid foundation for the continuous development of cutting-edge science and the sustainable development of society. 

This handout photo taken and provided by the University of Macau (UM) on Monday shows Dutch environmental engineering expert Mark van Loosdrecht giving a talk on the UM campus about water sector innovation.