Organizing Committee

Below you can see the details of conference’s organizational committees.

Farokh L Kakar

Dr. Farokh L Kakar is an environmental Engineer at Brown and Caldwell and Founder of Blue College of Water and Technology.  Dr. Kakar is also the founder and president of Canadian Young Water Professionals and former Emerging Water Leader at International Water Association (IWA) also serving as Vice President of Young Professionals in Canadian Association for Water Quality (CAWQ). In addition, she is the Global Ambassador of the Society of Women Engineers empowering women in engineering internationally.

Gamze Kirim

Gamze is a passionate environmental engineer specialized in water and wastewater management. She is working on modelling and model-based optimization of biological wastewater treatment processes and recently obtained her PhD degree in this field. She is working at Western University as post-doctoral researcher and Ontario Water Consortium as a coordinator. She is the co-hair of IWA YWP Canada and a management committee member in IWA MIA Specialist Group.  

Hadi Mokarizadeh

Hadi is a Ph.D. student in Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta with a background in Chemical Engineering. His previous research focused on applying membrane separation processes for industrial wastewater treatment. Currently, he is developing novel and environmentally friendly materials for the degradation of toxic contaminants through solar-driven advanced oxidation processes (AOPs). Passionate about improving water quality and promoting environmental equity, he began volunteering with the IWA-YWP in March 2022 and is currently serving as the Communications Director for IWA-YWP Canada.

Frances Okoye

Frances is a resource recovery enthusiast who is passionate about the water industry. She recently completed her doctorate with a research focus on anaerobic digestion. Frances currently works as a wastewater project engineer. She volunteers as a communication director in the IWA YWP Canada chapter.

Sifat Kalam

Sifat Kalam is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. She holds a master’s degree from the same university and her expertise is in water and wastewater treatment and resource recovery. She is one of the communication directors at the IWA-YWP Canada conference. Sifat has been actively involved with the BCWWA student chapter and the WEST conference organizing committee. She volunteered as a logistics team lead in the WEST conference for 3 consecutive terms and was the co-chair of WEST 2022.

Shaghayegh Goudarzi

Shaghayegh (Shaya) Goudarzi is a postdoctoral and a PhD graduate from chemical engineering department of Toronto Metropolitan University, where she has received several awards and scholarships. She is currently a senior associate research scientist at Jubilant DraxImage company. Shaya is the regional (Ontario) director of the IWA-YWP Canada executive committee and a young professional member of the CAWQ organization. “Providing clean and affordable water is one of the modern-times hurdles. Finding new remedies could mean saving thousands of lives. Therefore, through my Ph.D. I focused on developing strategies to remove contaminants from water to provide clean water by developing novel adsorbent systems”.

Karen Mesta Ortega

Karen is a master’s student in water engineering at Université Laval. Her research is based on wastewater characterization through the use of respirometry and modelling, with the aim of improving WRRFs operational conditions. Motivated to contribute more to the water research field, she became the secretary of the IWA YWP Canada chapter in 2021, and she is currently working in the social & networking events subcommittee for the national conference.

Huan Liu

Huan is a Ph.D. candidate (Civil Engineering) at The University of British Columbia. He is also a Professional Agrologist with expertise in environmental consulting. His main research fields are waste-to-resource conversion, pollutants behavior, and environmental remediation. He has received numerous scholarships including the prestigious NSERC CGS-D. Committed to sustainable environment, he is actively collaborating with industries and international researchers in developing technologies for biofuels and fertilizer production from wastewater.

Amr Ismail

Amr is a Structural Engineer turned Environmental Engineer. Following his enthusiasm towards water and sanitation, he obtained a Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Western University, specializing in pretreatment technologies and anaerobic co-digestion of organic wastes. His research also involves developing and integrating wastewater treatment, anaerobic digestion, and water chemistry models. He started volunteering for IWA YWP Canada in 2020, and has been part of the chapter ever since.

Masoume Ehsani

Masoume is a PhD candidate at Toronto Metropolitan University and she volunteers as Event Coordinator at IWA-YWP Canada. She has practical experience in the field of Membrane Fabrication, Membrane Fouling Control/Cleaning, Membrane-based Separation Processes and Chemical Coagulation for Wastewater Treatment Applications. 

Nahid Azizi

Nahid is a Ph.D. candidate in the Chemical Engineering department at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). She is interested in working on materials, especially biomaterials, and engineering them for various applications such as wastewater treatment, healthcare, etc. Her passion for the environment led her to join IWA YWP Canada in 2021 as an Event Coordinator to spread awareness in the water field.

Lin Sun

Lin is a current Ph.D. Candidate in the Biofilm Engineering and Wastewater Resource Recovery Laboratory at Western University. His research focuses on the optimization of aeration and energy, and improvement of carbon utilization for advanced nitrogen removal processes with multivariate and microbial analysis, also monitoring emerging contaminants in municipal wastewater. Actively volunteering as Vice President to Western Water Chapter, Social Media Editor to IWA YWP committee, Coordinator to IWA YWP Conference Organizing Committee, Graduate Councilor to Society of Graduate Students, also an executive member of Water Environment Association of Ontario YP committee and Ontario Water Consortium Graduate Leadership Council committee.

Pranav Sampara

Pranav is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia with a research focus on sustainable wastewater treatment by leveraging the microbial metabolic capacity. He studies the ecophysiology of microbial communities involved in nitrogen and phosphorus removal from wastewater builds engineering models for sustainable wastewater treatment. When he is not in the lab, he is hiking, strumming his guitar, or writing fiction. 

Md Nurul Afcher Shishir

Shishir is an MASc. student at University of British Columbia (Vancouver) specializing in drinking water treatment. His current research project involves analyzing the historical data from full-scale low-pressure membrane facilities across Canada with a goal in optimizing the operating protocols of such treatment plants. He is actively involved in advocating for the graduate students’ rights and well-being by serving in the Graduate Student Society (GSS) under various capacities. Currently, he is also working as the venue co-lead of the IWA YWP Canada conference and the seminar series coordinator for the Environmental System Engineering (ESE) group at UBC. 

Varshaa Kumaran

Varshaa Kumaran is a graduate student at the department of Civil Engineering, at the University of British Columbia working on drinking water treatment using gravity-driven membrane filtration. Her research focuses on characterizing biofilm development in a passive membrane system and its low-cost, low-energy applications for first nation communities. She is the co-lead for venue operations of the IWA Young Water Professional conference, 2023. She is also a member of the communications team for the WEST (Water Environment and Student Talks) conference from 2021 to 2023.

Pabel Antonio Cervantes Avilés

Pabel is a Chemical Eng. and holds a Ph.D. on Water Science and Technology and a M.Sc. on Water Sciences. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara. Dr. Cervantes research focuses on understanding the effects of emerging contaminants in the environment, as well as the application of promising technologies to prevent and remediate the pollution. Internationally, Pabel was honored two consecutive times with the Best Platform Presentation Award in the editions of International Young Water Professionals Conference 2014 and 2017 held in Taipei and Cape Town, respectively. 

Hayat Raza

Hayat Raza currently works as Project Engineer with Continental Carbon Group, Inc. in Ontario, Canada. His work involves providing air, drinking water and groundwater treatment solutions to clients utilising various physical and chemical water treatment technologies. Hayat obtained his bachelor’s and master’s in chemical engineering with research in the areas of Ozone and Supercritical Water Oxidation. He is currently serving as the Regional Director ON for IWA YWP Canada and is one of the founding members of the YWP Canada group. 

Reza Eslami

Reza Eslami is a Ph.D. candidate at the chemical engineering department of Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). He uses material, polymer, and nanomaterial science fundamentals to deliver results, with a primary focus on innovation and sustainability. Deep technology understanding and creativity led him to turn his ideas into a startup and now he is co-founder and CEO of Sensofine Inc. He is also, holding Ontario Graduate Scholarship for three consecutive years.

Jacob Amengor

Jacob is a young water professional from Ghana, with over 8 years’ experience in WASH. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Water and Sanitation from the University of Cape Coast in 2014, and currently, pursuing a Master of Science Degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada. Jacob is a Member of the International Water Association, and the Chair to the Young Water Professionals Steering Committee. Jacob founded the WASH Advancement Centre, a social enterprise with focus on constructing solar-mechanized water systems and on-site sanitary facilities in rural communities, and the training of WASH entrepreneurs. Jacob likes to write articles on environmental sustainability with a special focus on emerging WASH issues. He loves to mentor, inspire and motivate young people to find solutions to challenges existing in the water sector because he believes that the successful realization of the Sustainable Development Goals depends on the abilities of young people. Ultimately, Jacob wants to see a World, where access to clean water and sanitation is no longer a reserve for the privileged few; rather, a human right realized for all regardless of place, class, and status.