Urs von GuntenURS VON GUNTEN
born in Baden (Switzerland) on 20/10/1959
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Drinking water quality and water treatment. Unit processes and process combinations (adsorption processes, membrane processes, oxidation processes). Chemical oxidation and advanced oxidation processes: kinetics and mechanisms of formation of disinfection by-products and degradation of micropollutants. Assessment of toxicology of of transformation products. Biogeochemical processes in riverbank filtration systems. In situ and out-of-ground treatment of groundwaters
EDUCATION
Diploma Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich, Department of Chemistry,Switzerland, 1983
Ph.D.Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich, Switzerland, 1989.
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2018 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher
2015 Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher
2015 Recipient of the Harvey Rosen Award 2015 of the International Ozone Association
2015 Professorship under the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative for Distinguished Scientists
2014 Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher
2013 Distinguished Lecturer for AEESP at the American Water Works Association Annual Conference, Denver, June 10, 2013
2012-to date Adjunct Professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea
2011 Full Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL)
2010 Adjunct Professor at the State Key Laboratory of Environmental Aquatic
Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences
2010 Adjunct Professor at the Curtin University of Technology, Perth,
Australia
2007 Honorary Professorship at the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin,
China
2007 Recipient of the Harvey Rosen Award 2007 of the International Ozone
Association
2007 Environmental Science and Technology Excellence in Review Award
2006 Professor title at ETHZ, Department of Environmental Sciences
2001 Recipient of the Harvey Rosen Award 2001 of the International Ozone
Association
1999 Recipient of the Marteen Schalekamp Award 1999 of the IWSA
1993 Recipient of a short-term fellowship of the Swiss National Science
Foundation in 1993 and 1994
1993 EERO short-term fellowship-holder
PROFESSIONAL RECORD
2013-2016 Head of transdisciplinary project “Regional Water Supply Basel Country 21”, Eawag
2010-2017 Head of Competence Center for Drinking Water, Eawag
2008/2009 Visiting Professor at the Curtin Water Quality Research Centre,
Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia
2004-to date Deputy head of department Water Resources and Drinking Water,
Eawag
2004-2008 Head of the cross-cutting project Drinking water for the 21st
century, Eawag
2000 2004 Head of department Water Resources and Drinking Water, Eawag
2000/2001 Sabbatical at University of Colorado, Boulder
1998 - 1999 Head of department of Chemistry, Eawag
1995 - 2011 Lecturer at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich,
Switzerland.
1995- to date Group leader of the drinking water group of the chemistry
department at Eawag
1994/93 Visiting Scientist at the International Research Center for
Water and Environment of Lyonnaise des Eaux (8 months),
CIRSEE, Le Pecq, France
since 1992 Research Scientist at Eawag
1989 - 1991 Postdoctoral Researcher at Eawag
1984 - 1989 Research Assistant, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,
Zürich
EDITORIAL ACTIVITIES
Associate Editor Environmental Science and Technology (2010/2011)
Guest Editor Water Research for special issue on Emerging
Contaminants (2010)
Guest Editor Journal of water supply: Research and
Technology-Aqua for a special issue on Oxidation Processes (2008)
Member of the editorial board of the journal Ozone: Science and Engineering.
Member of the editorial board of Journal of water supply: Research and Technology-Aqua.
FORMER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
2016 Co-organizer of PEAK seminar ”Neue Herausforderungen und Lösungsansätze in der Wasserversorgung – Fallbeispiele aus dem Kanton BL”. Dübendorf, November 11, 2016
2015 Organizer of PEAK seminar “Micropollutants in drinking water”, Dübendorf, October 30
2014 Co-organizer of the Eawag Infotag “Wasserversorgung und Uferfiltration – ein System unter Druck?” Dübendorf, September 9, 2014
2014 Co-organizer of a Symposium “Advanced oxidation processes for water treatment” 5th EuCheMS Chemistry Congress 2014, Aug. 31 – Sept. 4, Istanbul, Turkey, 2014
2013 Co-Organizer of PEAK seminar on “Oxidation and Disinfection Processes”, Aug. 30, Dübendorf
2013 Co-Organizer of the Micropoll & Ecohazard Conference, Zürich, June 17-19, 2013
2013 Co-Organizer of the session “Advanced Oxidation – Technologies and Applications, Leading Edge Technology (LET) Conference, Bordeaux, June 2-6, 2013
2011 Co-Organizer of Korean-Swiss Science Days in Zürich “Water for the Future”, ETHZ, November 9-10, 2011.
2010 Co-Organizer of an international symposium “Oxidation processes in natural and technical aquatic systems” in honour of Jürg Hoigné’s 80 birthday, Eawag, May 21, 2010.
2010 Co-Organizer of 23. Mülheimer Wassertechnisches Seminar “Möglichkeiten und Grenzen von oxidativen Prozessen in der Wasserreinhaltung”, March 11, 2010, IWW, Mülheim an der Ruhr
2008 Co-Organizer of the Eawag Infotag 2008 “Vom Gewässer ins Glas”, Sept. 12, 2008, Eawag, Dübendorf
2008 Organizing committee of Leading Edge Technology Conference (LET), Zürich, June 1-4, 2008.
2008 Co-organizer of Sino-Swiss workshop “Water Resources Management and Drinking Water Quality”, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, January, 2008
2007 Organizer of Wave21 seminar on “New insights in the field of drinking water treatment”, Dübendorf, Sept. 14, 2007.
2007 Co-organizer of a symposium entitled “Sustainability in Water Supply: Advances in Oxidation Processes for Water Treatment” at ACS Spring conference, Chicago, March 25-29, 2007.
2006 Organizer of Wave21 seminar on “New developments of analytical methods for drinking water analysis”, Dübendorf, Sept. 15, 2006,
2005 Organizer of Wave21 seminar on “New applications of ozone in water treatment”, Sept. 23, 2005, Dübendorf
1999 Co-organizer of 200th Anniversary Symposium in honor of Ch. F. Schönbein - the discoverer of ozone, October 1999, Basel.
1995 Organizer of a symposium in honor of J. Hoigné, June, 1995, Dübendorf, Switzerland
1991 Co-organizer of the workshop "Chemodynamics of Groundwaters", November, 1991, Mont Sainte-Odile, France
Anthony Christopher DavisonAnthony Davison has published on a wide range of topics in statistical theory and methods, and on environmental, biological and financial applications. His main research interests are statistics of extremes, likelihood asymptotics, bootstrap and other resampling methods, and statistical modelling, with a particular focus on the first currently. Statistics of extremes concerns rare events such as storms, high winds and tides, extreme pollution episodes, sporting records, and the like. The subject has a long history, but under the impact of engineering and environmental problems has been an area of intense development in the past 20 years. Davison''s PhD work was in this area, in a project joint between the Departments of Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College, with the aim of modelling potential high exposures to radioactivity due to releases from nuclear installations. The key tools developed, joint with Richard Smith, were regression models for exceedances over high thresholds, which generalized earlier work by hydrologists, and formed the basis of some important later developments. This has led to an ongoing interest in extremes, and in particular their application to environmental and financial data. A major current interest is the development of suitable methods for modelling rare spatio-temporal events, particularly but not only in the context of climate change. Likelihood asymptotics too have undergone very substantial development since 1980. Key tools here have been saddlepoint and related approximations, which can give remarkably accurate approximate distribution and density functions even for very small sample sizes. These approximations can be used for wide classes of parametric models, but also for certain bootstrap and resampling problems. The literature on these methods can seem arcane, but they are potentially widely applicable, and Davison wrote a book joint with Nancy Reid and Alessandra Brazzale intended to promote their use in applications. Bootstrap methods are now used in many areas of application, where they can provide a researcher with accurate inferences tailor-made to the data available, rather than relying on large-sample or other approximations of doubtful validity. The key idea is to replace analytical calculations of biases, variances, confidence and prediction intervals, and other measures of uncertainty with computer simulation from a suitable statistical model. In a nonparametric situation this model consists of the data themselves, and the simulation simply involves resampling from the existing data, while in a parametric case it involves simulation from a suitable parametric model. There is a wide range of possibilities between these extremes, and the book by Davison and Hinkley explores these for many data examples, with the aim of showing how and when resampling methods succeed and why they can fail. He was Editor of Biometrika (2008-2017), Joint Editor of Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, series B (2000-2003), editor of the IMS Lecture Notes Monograph Series (2007), Associate Editor of Biometrika (1987-1999), and Associate Editor of the Brazilian Journal of Probability and Statistics (1987 2006). Currently he on the editorial board of Annual Reviews of Statistics and its Applications. He has served on committees of Royal Statistical Society and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Assocation and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a Chartered Statistician. In 2009 he was awarded a laurea honoris causa in Statistical Science by the University of Padova, in 2011 he held a Francqui Chair at Hasselt University, and in 2012 he was Mitchell Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. In 2015 he received the Guy Medal in Silver of the Royal Statistical Society and in 2018 was a Medallion Lecturer of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.