Governance

Harry Dixon (Chairperson) - UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH)

Harry leads the Water Resources Systems Group at UKCEH. He is a hydrologist specialising in the measurement, management and assessment of hydrometric data. He has extensive experience of working in the UK and internationally on projects related to the collection and management of hydrological data and information. Harry is a member of the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Hydrological Coordination Panel and chairs the Global Hydrometry Support Facility (HydroHub) Advisory Council.

Fabrice Fretz - Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Fabrice Fretz is a public administration professional with extensive experience in international development. He is currently a program manager at SDC's water division, in charge of the preparations for the 2023 Water Conference and collaborations with UN-Water, WMO and IUCN. Fabrice took over this position in the summer of 2020 after 3 years in West Africa as regional migration advisor for SDC.

Mark Heggli - Innovative Hydrology Consulting

Mark is President of Innovative Hydrology Consulting. He serves as a consultant and one of the lead experts in hydromet observation and information systems to the World Bank. His activities focus on preparing and overseeing the execution of water resource related projects that span Disaster Risk Management (DRM), Water Resources, and Climate. Mark has been fortunate to consult in over 40, mostly developing countries, spanning six of the seven continents. Mark uses these opportunities to instill global good practices in hydrometry, data transmission and dissemination in real-time focusing leading to sustainable outcomes.

Mauro Nalesso, Ph.D.   – Lead Specialist, Water and Sanitation Division, IDB

Civil Engineer with a Master in Hydraulic Engineering and a Ph.D in hydraulic and hydrological numerical modeling with 25 years of academic, research and consultancy experience in the field of water resources management, hydraulic projects, hydrodynamics and field and laboratory measurements. Since 2016 is a Lead Specialist for the Water and Sanitation Division of the Inter-American Development Bank, creator and coordinator of the HydroBID Support Center for Latin America and The Caribbean with presence on 22 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Since 2021 is also a member of the Advisory Council for the HydroHUB Initiative of the World Meteorological Organization.

Jay Wilson - OTT Hydromet

Jay is responsible for driving new business development for the development and execution of large projects in meteorology and hydrology sectors.  She also works with development partners to identify mutually-beneficial areas of collaboration.  Prior to OTT Hydromet, Jay worked at the World Meteorological Organization, where she spearheaded creation of the Project Management and Implementation Division and oversaw +180M USD portfolio and managed the relationships with the project funding and implementing partners.  She also managed the development of multi-million dollar projects and programmes globally, with particular focus in Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific. Jay also oversaw the day to day operations of the African Ministerial Conference for Meteorology, a joint WMO-African Union Commission initiative to promote hydromet services in the Africa. Prior to this, Jay worked in the US with various R&D companies designing printed circuit boards for antenna, television and radio communication systems, broadband wireless internet protocol system, and high-speed (fiber optic) communications applications.  Jay has a Bachelor’s Degree in International Business Management from California State University, Northridge.

Harry Dixon (Chairperson) - UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH)

Harry leads the Water Resources Systems Group at UKCEH. He is a hydrologist specialising in the measurement, management and assessment of hydrometric data. He has extensive experience of working in the UK and internationally on projects related to the collection and management of hydrological data and information. Harry is a member of the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Hydrological Coordination Panel and chairs the Global Hydrometry Support Facility (HydroHub) Think Tank.

Evan Baddock - National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA)

Evan Baddock has had 35 years of experience as a principle field technician, QA & Training manager for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand. Over this time he has managed field hydrology, climate and water quality, maintaining data archives, running projects and collaborating with international colleagues. Latterly, he works as QA manager maintaining the ISO 9002 standard across the companies environmental monitoring, training staff and developing extensive online training resources and courses for NIWA, Pacific Islands and WMO.

Shawn Boyce - Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology

Mr. Shawn Boyce heads the Centre for Water Resources, Hydrology, Geoscience and Earth Observation Applications at the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) where he is employed as the Chief Hydrologist. He joined the CIMH in 2006 following the completion of a post graduate degree in Sustainable Management of the Water Environment from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom from where he graduated with distinction. Mr. Boyce also holds an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from the University of the West Indies and worked in Barbados as a civil engineer for three years prior to joining the CIMH. Mr. Boyce’s primary roles at the CIMH include (i) the management of the hydrology training programme, (ii) implementation of research and development activities, projects and programmes and (iii) execution of business development interests. He also supports the development and maintenance of impact-based forecasting workflows and the commissioning of early warning systems for use by National Meteorological and Hydrological Services. Other interests include surface and groundwater modelling and earth observation applications.

Davide Ceresetti - Hydrologist, Water Department, République et Canton de Genève

Davide Ceresetti is in charge of hydro-meteorological measurements at the Cantonal Water Office of the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland, since 2018. He obtained a master's degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy (2005), complemented by a PhD in hydro-meteorology (2011) on multi-scale properties of extreme precipitation at Grenoble-Alpes University. Since 2011, he has been involved in water engineering projects in Switzerland (as Development Manager in "Hydrology, Hydrometry and Basin Management") for a large Swiss engineering firm, where he has developed projects in urban drainage network design, stream revitalization, flood risk maps, with a strong focus on numerical modeling. In 2016 he obtained the Certificate of Advanced Studies in Water Management and Policy at the University of Geneva. He is currently in charge of the real-time management of the hydro-meteorological surveillance platform of the canton of Geneva, managing a team of 6 collaborators and ensuring the operation and data flow of more than 60 measurement stations. He is involved in the working group in charge of hydro-meteorological forecasting and flood protection for Geneva Canton. In addition Dr. Ceresetti is an expert in traditional flow measurement methods: mechanical and electromagnetic current meters, saline and fluorescent tracers, ADCP (doppler profiler). He is currently developing alternative methods for stream flow measurement (video camera methods, use of fluorescent tracers).

Christophe Cudennec - International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS)

Christophe has 28 years of experience in hydrology and management of related resources, demands, territories, risks and interfaces across a variety of hydroclimate and geographic settings. He holds a degree of “ingénieur agronome” and a PhD and habilitation in hydrology. He has added to his academic track an extensive international experience including 1.5 years in Iceland, 3.5 years in Tunisia, and research/capacity development projects in many regions throughout the world in the frame of bilateral, European and World Bank projects. Since 2011, he is the Secretary General of the IAHS – the International Association of Hydrological Sciences – facilitating worldwide scientific cooperation, knowledge exchange and outreach, and interacting with various global and UN programs and policy processes.

Rita Chen - SonTek, a Xylem Brand

Rita Chen works as an application engineer for SonTek, a brand of Xylem.  She is a technical expert for acoustic doppler current profilers (ADCPs) and velocimeters (ADVs).  She is heavily involved in testing, product improvement, data analysis, and external event representation. 

Rahmah Elfithri – UNESCO

Rahmah Elfithri is the Chief of Section for Capacity Development and Water Family Coordination (CDW) in the Division of Water Sciences, UNESCO in Paris since April 2022. She worked for the Global Water Partnership Southeast Asia in Jakarta as Deputy Regional Coordinator since July 2021. She was previously Visiting Professor at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and has more than 15 years of research/academic experience at the Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI). She also has been coordinating the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and Sustainable Ecosystem Management Research Groups in UKM since 2007. She holds Ph.D. in Environment and Development (Integrated Water Resources Management) from the UKM. She is a Founder Member of International Association of Water, Environment, Energy and Society (IAWEES) since 2018, Executive Direction Board Member of International Society for Ecohydrology (ISEH) since 2019, Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) Core Member of UNESCO-IHP Ecohydrology since 2019 and Steering Committee (SC) Member of UNDRR’s Global Risk Assessment Framework (GRAF) since 2020.

Ilse Gayl – AEM

Ilse Gayl is a technology entrepreneur and environmental risk management strategist. Today she does corporate development and leads wildfire strategy at Advanced Environmental Monitoring (AEM.eco).  Ilse has worked for 30+ years to manage weather- and water-related risk, first co-founding and leading OneRain and later acquiring High Sierra Electronics. Both companies' hydrologic early warning and water management solutions were the start of AEM's global enterprise. Ilse also serves as a council member on the Hydrometeorological Industry Association (HMEI) and as a member of the NOAA Science Advisory Board's Environmental Information Services Working Group. Previously, she was a founding board member of the National Hydrologic Warning Council and served on the University of Colorado's Telecommunications graduate program advisory board.

Alexandre Hauet - Electricité de France

After a Master's degree and a thesis in river hydraulics (2006), focused on flow measurement by image analysis, at Grenoble Alpes University, Alexandre Hauet worked as a researcher in France (CNRS, INRAE) and abroad (University of Iowa). He joined Électricité de France (EDF - DTG) in 2008 as a hydrometer engineer. Since 2012, he is in charge of the development of materials and methods related to hydro-climatological observation (water level, flow, rain, snow, temperature) at EDF, with a specialization in flow and current measurement (ADCP, dilution, non-intrusive methods, associated uncertainties). In 2020, Alexandre worked one year for NVE (Ministry of Energy, Oslo, Norway) on hydrometric issues. He co-develops Fudaa-LSPIV, a free software for video-based streamgauging and co-manages the French-speaking professional network Groupe Doppler Hydrométrie.

Salvador Peña Haro - Photrack AG

Salvador Peña Haro holds a PhD from the Technical University of Valencia, Spain, on the subject of Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering during his studies he developed hydro-economic models. He worked at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, in the Institute of Environmental Engineering (IfU) as a Post-doctoral researcher on integrated modeling. He has worked for more than 20 years on different topics related to water monitoring, modeling and management in different countries. Currently he is the Chief Technology Officer at the start-up photrack Ltd where they are developing new image-based technologies for environmental monitoring.

Mark Randall - Queensland State Government

Mark Randall has over 15 years' experience in managing and maintaining an extensive network of hydrometric monitoring stations for the Queensland government (Australia), developing key skills in the collection, validation and analysis of hydrometric data. Since 2010, Mark has played a key role in developing and managing Australian national industry guidelines as a member of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Water Monitoring Standards Technical Committee (WaMSteC). These guidelines set data collection standards of operation for hydrometric monitoring across state government and private monitoring organisations. In 2016, Mark began applying and validating image velocimetry techniques for calculating stream velocity and discharge using quadcopter drones and fixed cameras. In 2021 Mark led the development and publication of the first Australian national guideline document governing the application of these methods and has provided training and guidance to monitoring agencies around the world.

Sumit Sen - Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

Sumit Sen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Hydrology and also serves as Head in the Centre for Excellence in Disaster Mitigation and Management at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. His research activities involve field and modeling experiments to investigate water movement through various components of the watershed and to understand runoff generation mechanisms at various scale. He has also been conducting research on understanding springs as part of the larger Himalayan hydrology and water security. During the WMO HydroHub Second Innovation Call (November 2020 to April 2021) he worked with Riverlabs UK and University of Birmingham to operationalize LIDAR based non-contact water level sensors within the Central Water Commission in India.

Nick van de Giesen - Delft University of Technology

Nick van de Giesen received the Kandidaats B.S. degree and the M.Sc. degree in land & water management from Wageningen Agricultural University in 1984 and 1987, and the Ph.D. degree in agricultural and biological engineering from Cornell University in 1994. After a postdoctoral position with the West Africa Rice Development Association, he was a Senior Researcher for six years with the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn (Germany) where he was the Scientific Coordinator of the Global Change in the Hydrological Cycle Volta Project. Since 2004, he has been with the Water Resources Section of the Delft University of Technology, where he currently holds the “Van Kuffeler” Chair of Water Resources Engineering. Since January 2015 he is chairman of the Delft Global Initiative. He is co-director of the Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory and member of several international scientific advisory boards. He is scientific head of Sustainable Development Goals route of the Netherlands National Science Agenda. His research interests concern new environmental observation methods, such as Distributed Temperature Sensing, and computational hydrology.