Dr. Nabin Aryal is an Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN). His research focuses on environmental biotechnology, waste valorization, and microbial-material interactions, particularly the use of carbon-based materials in bioremediation and sustainable resource management. Dr. Aryal earned his PhD from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and holds an Erasmus Mundus MSc in Environmental Technology and Engineering from Ghent University, Belgium. His work advances biofilm-based technologies and biotechnological solutions for the circular bioeconomy and environmental sustainability.Lars Ditlev Mørck Ottosen is Professor in Environmental Biotechnology with focus on energy and environmental technologies. He is also Head of the Biological and Chemical Engineering Department at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has extended R&D experience from more than a decade in the industry, and as university professor in projects that combine research and industrial technology development. Prof. Ottosen has more than 100 publications. In addition to technology R&D, He is dedicated to education, and played a key role in developing new BSc and MSc educational program in Biological and Chemical Engineering at Aarhus University. Michael Vedel Wegener Kofoed is Project Director and Research Group Leader of Microbial Conversion Technologies in the Biological and Chemical Engineering Section at the Department of Engineering of Aarhus University, Denmark. With expertise in bioengineering and industrial microbiology for solving societal and industrial challenges, his current focus is methanation for producing the storable energy carrier, methane, from renewable electricity. Deepak Pant is a Senior Scientist at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Belgium, leading the research linked to electrochemical and bioelectrochemical conversion systems with a focus on CO2 conversion in recent years. He has co-authored 194 publications in peer-reviewed journals (13 of which are “highly cited on Web of Science), 40 book chapters, 6 patents and has edited 6 books on topics as Microbial electrochemistry, LCA, Bioeconomy and Applied Biotechnology. Current h-index is 75 (>16800 citations; Google Scholar). He was recently awarded the Highly Cited Researcher 2022 from Clarivate for multiple highly cited papers in last decade. He is a member of several scientific communities including ISMET, ISE, BES, BRSI, IFIBiop and AMI and was made a fellow of the Biotechnology Research Society of India (BRSI) in 2018 and Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in 2021.He is a member of the editorial board of 10 journals, Editor for ‘Bioresource Technology Reports’ (Elsevier) and acts as a peer reviewer for numerous journals. He has participated/participates in >25 projects of which 14 are European projects (FP7/H2020/Horizon Europe) on CO2 conversion, electrode development and resource recovery. He has a wide international network of active collaboration, among them from several European ongoing projects as coordinator, work package leader or partner (E2C, PERFORM, Bac-To-Fuel, VIVALDI, CLUE, CATCHY, ECOMATES, BeHyFe). Dr. Pant supervised 7 researchers in their postdoc position (of which 2 were Marie Curie Fellows), supervised/supervising 8 researchers towards their PhD, supervised 18 master students for their thesis and 6 bachelor students.
