Speakers

Jauad El Kharraz

Place of Birth : Morocco
Born : 1977
Position : Researcher at the Middle East Desalination Research Center
Field of study : Desalination, Water, Climate, Remote Sensing, Water-Energy-Food Nexus
H. Index : 8

Dr. Jauad El Kharraz is head of Research at the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC) where he manages its research programs dealing with sustainable desalination technologies, water-energy-food nexus and other water related topics. He has more than 19 years of international experience (Spain, France, Oman, EuroMediterranean & MENA region) in water issues: Water Information Systems, Remote Sensing applied to environment, drought monitoring, desalination technologies, water-energy-food nexus, environmental issues, and also scientific research.

He has been information and projects manager at the Euro-Mediterranean Information System on knowhow in the Water Sector (EMWIS) Technical Unit based in Sophia Antipolis (France) for the last 11 years and half. He also worked as senior consultant for Sud-Convergences consultancy (France) in the period 2006-2008, and Expert Evaluator of the European Commission DG Research & Innovation. On the other hand, he is co-founder and General Secretary of the Arab World Association of Young Scientists (ArabWAYS), and member of the Global Change Unit (University of Valencia, Spain). He is member of the Global Young Academy (GYA). He was nominated in 2011 by the French Ministry of High Education & Research as representative at the Intergovernmental framework for EU Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST Action TN1301) in Brussels, where he led its Networking Working Group since the end of 2011 in Vilnius (Lithuania). Dr. Jauad El Kharraz was one of 40 scientists worldwide selected to attend the “World Economic Forum ‘Summer Davos’ for New Champions” in Tianjin China on September 2012. He joined the Global Shapers Community of the World Economic by July 2014. He published more than 50 publications and papers at international journals and conferences, apart from magazines and newspapers. He has published and contributed to hundreds of conferences in more than 50 countries, journals and reports in the fields of water management, desalination, agriculture, water information systems, remote sensing applications and scientific research. He co-authored the last UNESCO science report (Arab countries chapter). Dr. Jauad contributed to numerous projects funded by the European Commission, ESA, USAID, and other regional programs (FP5-FP7, H2020, ENPI NGO, ENPI CBC-Med, LIFE, SMAP...).

Dr. Jauad is working currently mainly on supporting and conducting research in the area of sustainable desalination technologies, managing the environmental impact of desalination and encouraging the coupling of renewable energies with desalination to reduce the carbon footprint as well as the cost of the process. He also develops activities in the area of water-energy-food nexus, and improving water productivity in agriculture (e.,g. WAPOR). He manages a portfolio of more than 2 million USD per year. He just signed a new research project contract in June 2019 as PI. The project: “Use of end-of-life reverse osmosis membranes to treat wastewater for industrial and Agricultural use” will last for 2 years with a budget of 275.000 USD. He is conducting a regional study on desalination to be published before the end of the year and supported by the German foundation Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. He also manages two big programs: - Oman Humanitarian Desalination Challenge and – Research Path call for the humanitarian desalination challenge (http://www.desalinationchallenge.com/ ). The first one is 1 million USD project funded by Oman and the second one of 931.000 USD funded by USAID.

• Head of Research at the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC)

• He has been evaluation chair of water projects proposals for the Euro-Mediterranean program PRIMA, apart from chairing the evaluation of Jordanian-Palestinian MEDRC scholarships and the Palestinian-Dutch Academic Cooperation Program on Water (PADUCO), among other programs.

• He has been information and projects manager at the Euro-Mediterranean Water Information System (EMWIS) based in Sophia Antipolis (France) before joining MEDRC for the 11 years and half.

• He was also co-leader of water panel at WANA Institute (Jordan).