Water Research Australia PhD candidate Kaili Li shares her experience presenting her research at the recent IWA World Water Congress.
“The IWA World Water Congress was held in Copenhagen, Denmark during September 2022. The congress was a grand event and a high-level summit for water professionals all over the world, which featured engaging water professionals with interdisciplinarity experts from agriculture, architects, urban planners, social sciences, hydrologists and others. The five-day conference was an excellent opportunity for people to reunite after nearly three years of the pandemic and to share the brilliant idea and thinking around the topics of most concern such as climate change, water and wastewater management, city-scale planning and operations.
As a third-year PhD student, it was my greatest honour to attend this exceptional conference under the support of Water Research Australia through the Nancy Millis Memorial Award! The conference provided a great chance to learn, network and embrace novel research ideas. During the conference, I got to meet with pioneers from my research area. The conversation with them shed light on my future career plan. The interesting talk in each presentation greatly inspired me and I learned so much outside of my research area.
Besides meeting and learning from other water professionals, I was also lucky enough to showcase my research with a topic on modelling and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from sewage treatment plants using a hybrid modelling approach. I was even more blessed that the audience showed great interest in my work with loads of questions and discussions.
Overall, the overseas conference experience was an absolute highlight of my PhD journey and I was even more motivated after the conference.”
