Save the date: February 17, 2023

Sprekers

Keynote 2023

Tanja Zegers

  • How do you get from research in Archean geodynamics to working for the European commission, with a stop in between at a Mars space mission? The answer is: by being curious and always looking a little bit beyond the immediate horizon when things do not work out in the current path. But work is not all there is to life. In fact, work should fit with life rather than the other way around. In practice this is not so simple, and the result is an eternal balancing act between working life and partner, children, and wider family and friends.

    Tanja Zegers graduated in Geology from Utrecht University in 1992, and continued with a PhD on geodynamics and gold mineralization in the Pilbara granite-greenstone belt of Australia. In the meantime she was one of the initiators of the GAIA Network for women in Earth Sciences. After her PhD in 1996 she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University and at Michigan University in the United States. She joined the European Space Agency in 2003 as science coordinator and strategic planner for the first European Mars mission: Mars Express. In 2011 it was time for the next move, to Brussels this time, joining the European Commission. From a first job in Space Research policy to setting up a new space initiative on satellite communication, to a recent new challenge in the General Secretariat of the European Commission, dealing with Strategic Foresight for EU policies. Tanja Zegers is married and has two daughters.

Thema Earth Science Career Event 2023

Elke editie heeft het ESCE een nieuw relevant thema, dit jaar is het thema “Exploring new horizons”. Na een turbulente periode van onvoorspelbaarheid is het tijd om de blik weer op de toekomst te werpen. Maar het beeld van de toekomst is in een korte tijd drastisch veranderd. Denk hierbij aan relevante thema’s zoals klimaatverandering en de energietransitie. Hierbij staat de wereld aan het begin van een periode van verandering. Welke kansen liggen daar voor de nieuwe generatie studenten?

De uitdagingen die de ons te wachten staan zijn groot. Vraagstukken zijn complexer dan ooit, waarbij de oplossingen meer dan eens met elkaar verweven zijn. Tegelijkertijd zijn de mogelijkheden eindeloos, hierbij vervullen de aardwetenschappen een steeds prominentere rol. De taak om efficiënt en duurzaam om te gaan met de beschikbare hulpbronnen staat hierbij centraal. Maar om je eigen potentie en die uit je omgeving volledig te benutten, zul je avontuurlijk en creatief moeten zijn. Je zult de grens hierbij moeten opzoeken en deze op zekere momenten moeten verleggen. In deze taak zijn alle sprekers op zijn/haar eigen manier in geslaagd. In hun lezingen zullen ze jullie met veel enthousiasme vertellen hoe zij hun ‘new horizons’ hebben ontdekt. Enjoy!

  • Tirza van Daalen is the Director of the Geological Survey of the Netherlands TNO. She received her mSc in Geology in 1994 at Utrecht University.

    Before joining the GSN-TNO in 2009, Tirza van Daalen worked in IT as a management consultant and has been active as publisher in Geoscience for Elsevier Science.

    She has extensive experience in management of innovative projects. Currently is responsible for subsurface related activities within TNO ranging from research programmes in the domain of geoenergy, groundwater & subsidence.Next to that the information programme which holds the Dutch “Key register of the Subsurface” (Basisregistratie Ondergrond; BRO). This central facility for all public data on the subsurface in the Netherlands is unique in the fact that all public organisations producing. data on the subsurface will be required to deliver these, through web services to the BRO. Public organisations will also be obliged to consult the BRO before acquiring new subsurface data, e.g. for building permits. The BRO builds in GD&IT (GeoData en IT)) database, which already holds a worldwide unprecedented density of data on the subsurface in the Netherlands.

  • Sierd Cloetingh is Utrecht University Distinguished Professor. His research field is Earth Sciences. He published 381 papers in international peer-reviewed journals (Scopus: 118,664 citations, h-index 75) and has been promotor of close to 80 PhD students of 18 different nationalities.

    Currently he serves as Chair Regional Coordinating Committee Europe of the International Lithosphere Program. Past functions include President of the Academia Europaea, Member and Chair of the Board of SAPEA (Scientific Advice for Policy by European Academies), President of the Association for European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST), Membership of the Scientific Council (2009-2015) and Vice-President of the European Research Council (ERC), President of the European Geophysical Society (1998-2000), President of the International Lithosphere Program (ILP, 2004-2017), Distinguished Professor of the Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences (KNAW, 2006-2015), Editor-in-Chief of the international journal “Global and Planetary Change” and Chairman of the TOPO-EUROPE collaborative research program.

    Sierd Cloetingh received honorary doctorates from six European universities and numerous medals and awards. He is member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, the Royal Norwegian Academy, the Royal Danish Academy, the German National Academy for Technical Sciences (acatech), the Heidelberg Academy, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy of Barcelona and honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was distinguished in 2005 as Chevalier de Legion d’Honneur and in 2014 as Knight of the Royal Order of the Netherlands Lion for his contributions to science and European scientific cooperation in research and education.

  • William Ouellette is an environmental engineer that specialized early on in geo-ICT, and became particularly passionate about the possibilities of remote sensing for environmental monitoring.

    He has explored a variety of applications of remote sensing and earth observation data in the mapmaking business (TomTom), where he was using very-high resolution satellite imagery to automatically update map elements such as roads and buildings, as well as visually enhance the look-and-feel of cartographic data. Eager to put his skills and knowledge of Earth Observation data structures to use in a more high-impact environment, he decided to go consult for several (inter)national organization (FAO, KIT, World Bank). After these nonetheless enriching experiences, William realized the Aid & Development status quo was stuck in an operational procedure which required out-of-the-box solutions. He decided to start his own business with colleagues from the Aid & Development Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) where they would tackle the challenge of global climate objectives together with those of local socio-economic development in the Global South, and particularly in Africa, with the help of climate finance and voluntary carbon markets. Come and see his talk if you want to learn more about how (voluntary) carbon markets can fit into the Aid & Development narrative, and how this can only be done with more rigorous design, monitoring and evaluation of projects aiming to restore landscapes and ecosystems.

  • Sander Loos studied Physical Geography at Utrecht University and graduated in 2003. He explored the marshes of Siberia, focusing on hydrology and hydro-ecology for his final thesis, and sampled groundwater wells of local farmers in Morocco for assessing impacts of climatic changes on water availability. During these field campaigns he developed specific interest in the combination of hydrology/water management and IT/software development.

    Nowadays Sander is senior consultant hydroinformatics at HydroLogic and works for over 18 years in the fields of hydrology and IT. In these years he was project manager, consultant, product owner (agile scrum), system architect, software developer, GIS specialist and hydrological modeler. Sander played a significant role in the long-term development of HydroNET (www.hydronet.com), an online decision support system for water management. Often he was the link between end-users and the development- and support teams of HydroNET. Besides his work for HydroNET, Sander also works as senior consultant for waterboards implementing decision support systems for operational water management and real-time control (RTC) of water systems based on Delft-FEWS software. Sanders role is highly appreciated by waterboards, because he has the required ‘soft-skills’ to facilitate projects, processes, workshops etc. while still operating within scope, target, budget and planning.

    Because of his extensive experience in watermanagement and IT, Sander currently plays an important role in ‘human capital development’ at HydroLogic by training and coaching junior and medior consultants.