ETWT 2026 Program

Harsha Ratnaweera is the President of the European Water Association (EWA) and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Water Association (IWA), where he is a Distinguished Fellow. He has been a Professor of Water and Wastewater Engineering at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) since 2012, and at Qingdao University of Technology in China since 2025. He also holds an adjunct professorship at the United Nations University – FLORES in Germany, and several honorary Professorships in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Prior to his tenure at NMBU, Dr. Ratnaweera was the Director of International Projects and Innovation at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), where he worked for 20 years. He earned a PhD in Civil Engineering (1992) from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and an MSc in Chemical Engineering (1987) from the National Technical University of Ukraine (KPI).

In 2024, Dr. Ratnaweera was elected a Fellow of both the European Academy of Sciences and the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences. He has also received numerous awards from national, provincial, and city governments in China. In recent years, his work has centered on digitalization and the green and circular economy within the water sector, focusing especially on the use of digital tools in process surveillance and control.

Ari Koistinen is a Group Manager at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), where he oversees operational flood and hydrological forecasting. He directs scientific and expert projects related to hydrological modeling, climate change impacts, and water resources management, working closely with water-sector stakeholders in Finland and internationally across both the public and private sectors.

Koistinen has over 25 years of experience in hydrological modeling, forecasting system development, and expert roles related to water resources. Before his current role, he served as a Research Scientist and Senior Research Scientist at SYKE, focusing especially on the development of hydrological simulation and forecasting systems and the application of ensemble weather forecasts in hydrological forecasting.

In addition to his research and expert responsibilities, Koistinen is a Lecturer at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, teaching mathematics, statistical methods, programming, data analytics, and the fundamentals of modeling and simulation. He holds an M.Sc. (Philosophy) in Mathematics from the University of Helsinki.

Manuela Antonelli is an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano (since 2017) and holds the Italian National Scientific Qualification for Full Professor (2020). Her research focuses on the urban water cycle, integrating treatment technologies and modeling to protect ecosystems and human health. She has led and contributed to numerous projects on sustainable water use, wastewater treatment upgrades, and risk assessment for micropollutants. Her work spans adsorption, advanced oxidation, and disinfection from lab to full scale.
She is active in working groups on emerging contaminants and pathogen control, serves as Associate Editor of Water Research X, has co‑chaired IWA conferences, and has co‑edited several journal special issues. She has also contributed to an open‑access volume on engineering for the Sustainable Development Goals and leads multiple MOOCs on water‑related topics.