Recycling and Sustainable Waste Management

Dr. Velimir V Vesselinov is the CTO and co-founder of EnviTrace. Before that he was a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory for more than 20 years. Before coming to the U.S., he was a tenured professor at the University of Mining and Geology, Sofia, Bulgaria. He has an M.Sc. degree in geological engineering (geology/geophysics/hydrogeology; University of Mining and Geology, Sofia, Bulgaria) and a Ph.D. degree in engineering hydrology with a minor in applied mathematics (University of Arizona, Tucson). Over the years, he has been the PI of several multi-year, multi-million, multi-institutional research and software development projects. Partners on these projects included leading industry, academic, and research institutions. His work under these projects addressed research problems related to geologic carbon storage, climate change, environmental management, water resource management, geothermal exploration, and enhanced oil recovery. His work involved the development of novel theoretical methods and software related to data analytics, statistical analyses, model diagnostics, decision analysis, risk assessment, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. One of his codes has received 2 R&D100 awards. He is also a holder of a recently released machine-learning patent and the lead author of a series of ML research papers. He has published more than 100 papers with an h-index of 30.

Prof. Dai-Yeun Jeong is the Director of the Asia Climate Change Education Center and Emeritus Professor of Environmental Sociology at Jeju National University, South Korea. He earned his BA and MA in Sociology from Korea University and a PhD in Environmental Sociology from The University of Queensland, Australia. He has served as President of the Asia-Pacific Sociological Association, Teaching Professor at The University of Sheffield (UK), and Member of the Presidential Commission on Sustainable Development of the Republic of Korea. He has represented South Korea at the UNFCCC and OECD environmental meetings. Prof. Jeong has authored 13 books, including Environmental Sociology, and published over 60 research papers. He has also led more than 100 environment-related projects supported by national and international organizations.

Hussain Aziz Saleh is a professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Geo-information Technologies (GTs) for disaster management at Damascus University in Syria. He received his 1st PhD in Geomatic Engineering and the design of GPS networks using AI from the University of East London (UEL), UK, 1999, and his 2nd PhD in disaster management and its relationship with spatial, urban and environmental planning from Ghent University (UGent), Belgium, 2017. Dr. Saleh’s research focuses on using GTs and AI in the smart city modeling to solve practical real-life problems (e.g., optimal management of water resources, disaster management and their relationship to sustainable development, sustainable waste management, early warning systems, climate changes, etc.). He has published 120 scientific papers in his area of research in international peer-reviewed journals, conference books, seminars and workshops. Dr. Saleh previously appointed as General Director of the Higher Commission for Scientific Research in Syria. He received the European Union Humanitarian Award for Scientific Research for the Marie Curie Fellowship Award, UK, 2001, and the Arab MENA Challenge of the European Satellite Navigation Competition, 2013, Germany. He awarded in December 2022 the Distinction Shield of the Engineering College at Baghdad University, Iraq.