Karl Vrancken is Research Manager Sustainable Materials Management at VITO. He is responsible for the strategic management of VITO’s Materials programme. He also has a part-time position as professor at the University of Antwerp (Department of Bio-engineering), where he teaches sustainable resources management.

Karl has broad experience as a researcher and project manager in projects on sustainability assessment and transition, waste management and treatment, secondary raw materials, best available techniques (BAT) and integrated pollution prevention and control. He has also worked as a Detached National Expert with the European IPPC Bureau in Seville (Spain), where he was the author of the BAT Reference Document for the Foundries sector.

Karl is the initiator and chairman of the European Circular Economy Research Alliance (ECERA) and strategic advisor to the European Topic Centre on Waste and Materials for a Green Economy, a consortium of European organisations working in partnership with the European Environment Agency (EEA). During its start-up phase, he was interim Chief Operations Officer to the Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) EIT RawMaterials that was founded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

He is an expert speaker on circular economy in the media and at various national and international conferences.

PACE is a global community of leaders working together to accelerate transition to a circular economy. As Knowledge Lead, Ke oversees PACE’s content development and knowledge management. She led development of the PACE Circular Economy Action Agenda, which integrates insights from over 100 organisations and is designed to be a rallying call for business, government, and civil society. Ke has also been a driving force behind mobilising the PACE community to turn calls-to-action into actual, impactful action.

Prior to joining PACE, Ke accumulated over 10 years’ experience leading interdisciplinary research and innovation teams in both public and private sectors. Her work with these included setting up large European projects such as Horizon2020 CIRCUSOL. She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University and an Executive MBA from Rotterdam School of Management.

Lieze Cloots is Head of International Policy at OVAM, the Flanders region’s Public Waste Agency, for whom she has organised events such as the WRF’19 on Resources and Circular Economy held in Antwerp. Since 2017 she has been a member of the coordination group for the EU CE Stakeholder platform (ECESP), the European stakeholder network for circular economy that shares good practices, disseminates knowledge and stimulates dialogue and cooperation.

Lieze is the lead expert for Belgium on the European Circular Economy Action Plan. She has over 20 years’ experience in environment and sustainability policymaking and civil society action, at both national and international level. She has represented Belgium in UN negotiations on sustainable development, chemicals, GMOs, the Aarhus Convention and EU waste legislation.

Cloots has been legal advisor to the Belgian Federal Minister of Environment and was policy director for Bond Beter Leefmilieu, the federation of environment NGOs in Flanders. Lieze has also held board member roles for several Belgian and European organisations associated with sustainable development and is a full member of the Club of Rome EU Chapter. She holds a law degree from the Catholic University of Leuven and a master’s in EU law from the Université de Liege.

After completing her studies in Chemical Engineering in Germany, Susanne Karcher founded EnviroSense CC (an Environmental Consultancy) in Cape Town in 1999. Her company specialises in planning, development and facilitation of tailor-made governmental, industrial/commercial and residential “Integrated Resource and Waste Management” programmes ultimately geared towards pollution prevention.

Susanne is a qualified RECP (Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production) end-use level trainer with the NCPC and a founding member of the African Circular Economy Network. She also provides voluntary mentoring services as a member of the globally operating Circular Economy Club.

As a one-woman consultancy, and in her former role as the Chair of the Southern African e-Waste Alliance, Susanne specialised in furthering collaborative, safe and inclusive WEEE management at an early point in her career. In 2014 she was appointed as part of a national task team that developed a WEEE Industrial Waste Plan, which was only this year replaced by the formulation and introduction of WEEE EPR-based regulation for South Africa.

Since her first encounter with Empa visiting South Africa (back in 2003), Susanne systematically built and cultivated strong relationships with both Empa and the World Resources Forum in the years that followed. As part of an international round table led by the WRF, she contributed to the development of various signature research publications and projects including the ISO IWA Guidance Principles, the related “Worst to Good Practices” fact sheets and the UNEP “Eco-e Manual: Electronics Supplement”. Susanne also assisted the GIZ with SRI-led training initiatives in Ghana and South Africa.

At the end of 2020, Susanne was appointed by WRF and Empa as the National Coordinator for Phase 2 of the SRI South Africa project (2020-2023).

PACE is a global community of leaders working together to accelerate transition to a circular economy. As Knowledge Lead, Ke oversees PACE’s content development and knowledge management. She led development of the PACE Circular Economy Action Agenda, which integrates insights from over 100 organisations and is designed to be a rallying call for business, government, and civil society. Ke has also been a driving force behind mobilising the PACE community to turn calls-to-action into actual, impactful action.

Prior to joining PACE, Ke accumulated over 10 years’ experience leading interdisciplinary research and innovation teams in both public and private sectors. Her work with these included setting up large European projects such as Horizon2020 CIRCUSOL. She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University and an Executive MBA from Rotterdam School of Management.

Lieze Cloots is Head of International Policy at OVAM, the Flanders region’s Public Waste Agency, for whom she has organised events such as the WRF’19 on Resources and Circular Economy held in Antwerp. Since 2017 she has been a member of the coordination group for the EU CE Stakeholder platform (ECESP), the European stakeholder network for circular economy that shares good practices, disseminates knowledge and stimulates dialogue and cooperation.

Lieze is the lead expert for Belgium on the European Circular Economy Action Plan. She has over 20 years’ experience in environment and sustainability policymaking and civil society action, at both national and international level. She has represented Belgium in UN negotiations on sustainable development, chemicals, GMOs, the Aarhus Convention and EU waste legislation.

Cloots has been legal advisor to the Belgian Federal Minister of Environment and was policy director for Bond Beter Leefmilieu, the federation of environment NGOs in Flanders. Lieze has also held board member roles for several Belgian and European organisations associated with sustainable development and is a full member of the Club of Rome EU Chapter. She holds a law degree from the Catholic University of Leuven and a master’s in EU law from the Université de Liege.

After completing her studies in Chemical Engineering in Germany, Susanne Karcher founded EnviroSense CC (an Environmental Consultancy) in Cape Town in 1999. Her company specialises in planning, development and facilitation of tailor-made governmental, industrial/commercial and residential “Integrated Resource and Waste Management” programmes ultimately geared towards pollution prevention.

Susanne is a qualified RECP (Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production) end-use level trainer with the NCPC and a founding member of the African Circular Economy Network. She also provides voluntary mentoring services as a member of the globally operating Circular Economy Club.

As a one-woman consultancy, and in her former role as the Chair of the Southern African e-Waste Alliance, Susanne specialised in furthering collaborative, safe and inclusive WEEE management at an early point in her career. In 2014 she was appointed as part of a national task team that developed a WEEE Industrial Waste Plan, which was only this year replaced by the formulation and introduction of WEEE EPR-based regulation for South Africa.

Since her first encounter with Empa visiting South Africa (back in 2003), Susanne systematically built and cultivated strong relationships with both Empa and the World Resources Forum in the years that followed. As part of an international round table led by the WRF, she contributed to the development of various signature research publications and projects including the ISO IWA Guidance Principles, the related “Worst to Good Practices” fact sheets and the UNEP “Eco-e Manual: Electronics Supplement”. Susanne also assisted the GIZ with SRI-led training initiatives in Ghana and South Africa.

At the end of 2020, Susanne was appointed by WRF and Empa as the National Coordinator for Phase 2 of the SRI South Africa project (2020-2023).

Karl Vrancken is Research Manager Sustainable Materials Management at VITO. He is responsible for the strategic management of VITO’s Materials programme. He also has a part-time position as professor at the University of Antwerp (Department of Bio-engineering), where he teaches sustainable resources management.

Karl has broad experience as a researcher and project manager in projects on sustainability assessment and transition, waste management and treatment, secondary raw materials, best available techniques (BAT) and integrated pollution prevention and control. He has also worked as a Detached National Expert with the European IPPC Bureau in Seville (Spain), where he was the author of the BAT Reference Document for the Foundries sector.

Karl is the initiator and chairman of the European Circular Economy Research Alliance (ECERA) and strategic advisor to the European Topic Centre on Waste and Materials for a Green Economy, a consortium of European organisations working in partnership with the European Environment Agency (EEA). During its start-up phase, he was interim Chief Operations Officer to the Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) EIT RawMaterials that was founded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

He is an expert speaker on circular economy in the media and at various national and international conferences.

Karl Vrancken is Research Manager Sustainable Materials Management at VITO. He is responsible for the strategic management of VITO’s Materials programme. He also has a part-time position as professor at the University of Antwerp (Department of Bio-engineering), where he teaches sustainable resources management.

Karl has broad experience as a researcher and project manager in projects on sustainability assessment and transition, waste management and treatment, secondary raw materials, best available techniques (BAT) and integrated pollution prevention and control. He has also worked as a Detached National Expert with the European IPPC Bureau in Seville (Spain), where he was the author of the BAT Reference Document for the Foundries sector.

Karl is the initiator and chairman of the European Circular Economy Research Alliance (ECERA) and strategic advisor to the European Topic Centre on Waste and Materials for a Green Economy, a consortium of European organisations working in partnership with the European Environment Agency (EEA). During its start-up phase, he was interim Chief Operations Officer to the Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) EIT RawMaterials that was founded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

He is an expert speaker on circular economy in the media and at various national and international conferences.

Lieze Cloots is Head of International Policy at OVAM, the Flanders region’s Public Waste Agency, for whom she has organised events such as the WRF’19 on Resources and Circular Economy held in Antwerp. Since 2017 she has been a member of the coordination group for the EU CE Stakeholder platform (ECESP), the European stakeholder network for circular economy that shares good practices, disseminates knowledge and stimulates dialogue and cooperation.

Lieze is the lead expert for Belgium on the European Circular Economy Action Plan. She has over 20 years’ experience in environment and sustainability policymaking and civil society action, at both national and international level. She has represented Belgium in UN negotiations on sustainable development, chemicals, GMOs, the Aarhus Convention and EU waste legislation.

Cloots has been legal advisor to the Belgian Federal Minister of Environment and was policy director for Bond Beter Leefmilieu, the federation of environment NGOs in Flanders. Lieze has also held board member roles for several Belgian and European organisations associated with sustainable development and is a full member of the Club of Rome EU Chapter. She holds a law degree from the Catholic University of Leuven and a master’s in EU law from the Université de Liege.

PACE is a global community of leaders working together to accelerate transition to a circular economy. As Knowledge Lead, Ke oversees PACE’s content development and knowledge management. She led development of the PACE Circular Economy Action Agenda, which integrates insights from over 100 organisations and is designed to be a rallying call for business, government, and civil society. Ke has also been a driving force behind mobilising the PACE community to turn calls-to-action into actual, impactful action.

Prior to joining PACE, Ke accumulated over 10 years’ experience leading interdisciplinary research and innovation teams in both public and private sectors. Her work with these included setting up large European projects such as Horizon2020 CIRCUSOL. She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University and an Executive MBA from Rotterdam School of Management.

After completing her studies in Chemical Engineering in Germany, Susanne Karcher founded EnviroSense CC (an Environmental Consultancy) in Cape Town in 1999. Her company specialises in planning, development and facilitation of tailor-made governmental, industrial/commercial and residential “Integrated Resource and Waste Management” programmes ultimately geared towards pollution prevention.

Susanne is a qualified RECP (Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production) end-use level trainer with the NCPC and a founding member of the African Circular Economy Network. She also provides voluntary mentoring services as a member of the globally operating Circular Economy Club.

As a one-woman consultancy, and in her former role as the Chair of the Southern African e-Waste Alliance, Susanne specialised in furthering collaborative, safe and inclusive WEEE management at an early point in her career. In 2014 she was appointed as part of a national task team that developed a WEEE Industrial Waste Plan, which was only this year replaced by the formulation and introduction of WEEE EPR-based regulation for South Africa.

Since her first encounter with Empa visiting South Africa (back in 2003), Susanne systematically built and cultivated strong relationships with both Empa and the World Resources Forum in the years that followed. As part of an international round table led by the WRF, she contributed to the development of various signature research publications and projects including the ISO IWA Guidance Principles, the related “Worst to Good Practices” fact sheets and the UNEP “Eco-e Manual: Electronics Supplement”. Susanne also assisted the GIZ with SRI-led training initiatives in Ghana and South Africa.

At the end of 2020, Susanne was appointed by WRF and Empa as the National Coordinator for Phase 2 of the SRI South Africa project (2020-2023).

PACE is a global community of leaders working together to accelerate transition to a circular economy. As Knowledge Lead, Ke oversees PACE’s content development and knowledge management. She led development of the PACE Circular Economy Action Agenda, which integrates insights from over 100 organisations and is designed to be a rallying call for business, government, and civil society. Ke has also been a driving force behind mobilising the PACE community to turn calls-to-action into actual, impactful action.

Prior to joining PACE, Ke accumulated over 10 years’ experience leading interdisciplinary research and innovation teams in both public and private sectors. Her work with these included setting up large European projects such as Horizon2020 CIRCUSOL. She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University and an Executive MBA from Rotterdam School of Management.

Lieze Cloots is Head of International Policy at OVAM, the Flanders region’s Public Waste Agency, for whom she has organised events such as the WRF’19 on Resources and Circular Economy held in Antwerp. Since 2017 she has been a member of the coordination group for the EU CE Stakeholder platform (ECESP), the European stakeholder network for circular economy that shares good practices, disseminates knowledge and stimulates dialogue and cooperation.

Lieze is the lead expert for Belgium on the European Circular Economy Action Plan. She has over 20 years’ experience in environment and sustainability policymaking and civil society action, at both national and international level. She has represented Belgium in UN negotiations on sustainable development, chemicals, GMOs, the Aarhus Convention and EU waste legislation.

Cloots has been legal advisor to the Belgian Federal Minister of Environment and was policy director for Bond Beter Leefmilieu, the federation of environment NGOs in Flanders. Lieze has also held board member roles for several Belgian and European organisations associated with sustainable development and is a full member of the Club of Rome EU Chapter. She holds a law degree from the Catholic University of Leuven and a master’s in EU law from the Université de Liege.

After completing her studies in Chemical Engineering in Germany, Susanne Karcher founded EnviroSense CC (an Environmental Consultancy) in Cape Town in 1999. Her company specialises in planning, development and facilitation of tailor-made governmental, industrial/commercial and residential “Integrated Resource and Waste Management” programmes ultimately geared towards pollution prevention.

Susanne is a qualified RECP (Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production) end-use level trainer with the NCPC and a founding member of the African Circular Economy Network. She also provides voluntary mentoring services as a member of the globally operating Circular Economy Club.

As a one-woman consultancy, and in her former role as the Chair of the Southern African e-Waste Alliance, Susanne specialised in furthering collaborative, safe and inclusive WEEE management at an early point in her career. In 2014 she was appointed as part of a national task team that developed a WEEE Industrial Waste Plan, which was only this year replaced by the formulation and introduction of WEEE EPR-based regulation for South Africa.

Since her first encounter with Empa visiting South Africa (back in 2003), Susanne systematically built and cultivated strong relationships with both Empa and the World Resources Forum in the years that followed. As part of an international round table led by the WRF, she contributed to the development of various signature research publications and projects including the ISO IWA Guidance Principles, the related “Worst to Good Practices” fact sheets and the UNEP “Eco-e Manual: Electronics Supplement”. Susanne also assisted the GIZ with SRI-led training initiatives in Ghana and South Africa.

At the end of 2020, Susanne was appointed by WRF and Empa as the National Coordinator for Phase 2 of the SRI South Africa project (2020-2023).

Karl Vrancken is Research Manager Sustainable Materials Management at VITO. He is responsible for the strategic management of VITO’s Materials programme. He also has a part-time position as professor at the University of Antwerp (Department of Bio-engineering), where he teaches sustainable resources management.

Karl has broad experience as a researcher and project manager in projects on sustainability assessment and transition, waste management and treatment, secondary raw materials, best available techniques (BAT) and integrated pollution prevention and control. He has also worked as a Detached National Expert with the European IPPC Bureau in Seville (Spain), where he was the author of the BAT Reference Document for the Foundries sector.

Karl is the initiator and chairman of the European Circular Economy Research Alliance (ECERA) and strategic advisor to the European Topic Centre on Waste and Materials for a Green Economy, a consortium of European organisations working in partnership with the European Environment Agency (EEA). During its start-up phase, he was interim Chief Operations Officer to the Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) EIT RawMaterials that was founded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

He is an expert speaker on circular economy in the media and at various national and international conferences.

Caroline Craenhals was born and raised in the recycling business. Her great grandfather saw there was value in discarded metals and founded Belgian Scrap Terminal. As she grew up, surrounded by heavy machinery, steel and port terminals, her choices in life were always inspired by the family business.

Caroline studied commercial engineering at VUB Solvay Management School and graduated with great distinction with her thesis “Management of automotive shredder residues”. After specialising further, in 2015 she was invited to join a select group of businesswomen from all around the world taking part in “The Women Entrepreneur Program”, an exclusive leadership programme at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Having accumulated years of management experience in the family recycling business’s branches around Western Europe, Caroline is now CEO and co-owner of Belgian Scrap Terminal Group, which supplies the global market with 1.5 million tonnes of valuable and natural resources via the Port of Antwerp.

Under her watch, Belgian Scrap Terminal has evolved from a purely revenue-driven company into a value-driven one, with a genuine passion for recycling.

Caroline strongly believes in an ecosystem where collaboration, smart recycling and urban mining leave nothing to waste.

Steven Latré is a professor at the University of Antwerp and a director at the Imec research centre in Belgium. He leads the IDLab Antwerp research group (100+ members), which is performing applied and fundamental research in the area of communication networks and distributed intelligence. His personal research interests are in the domain of low-power machine learning and its application to wireless network optimisation.

Kris Broos graduated as an environmental engineer in 1999 and obtained a PhD in Applied and Biological Sciences in 2003 at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). After 5 years of environmental research at CSIRO Land and Water in Australia, Kris moved back to Belgium to work at VITO, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research.

With a track record of more than 35 SCI papers and strong involvement in several large EU projects (H2020, EIT Raw Materials, Interreg), Kris has become an expert on Sustainable Materials Management, particularly in the field of transformation of inorganic waste streams into new resources and products. The recycling of construction and demolition waste, metal slags and industrial waste streams are among his main focus areas.

Kris is currently exploring a new strategic research line on the use of sensor-based technologies and machine learning for the inline characterisation of heterogeneous waste streams.

An eco-entrepreneur, Stan’s passion for sustainability along with 20+ years of experience in the recycling industry has provided the knowledge needed to design and develop ever-innovative solutions for the recycling industry, the economy, and the environment.

Holger Berg is Co-Head of the Digital Transformation Research Unit and Vice Director of Circular Economy at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. His research interests focus on what digital transformation means to sustainable development, in terms of opportunities and influences, with particular regard to industrial transformation. Berg looks at these topics from the perspective of ecological-business benefits, technological implementation and political design.

Holger Berg is the author of several studies on the connection between digitalisation and sustainability, with a focus on circular economy. In his expert capacity, he supports various national and international organisations and advises governments and the EU on issues related to digital transformation and the circular economy.

Juan is an expert in industrial pollution and environment at the European Environment Agency (EEA). He leads assessments and policy support activities around the interface between industry and environment, as well as coordinating the monitoring and reporting of industrial emission data, notably the integrated reporting to the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) and the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) reporting requirements.

As part of his role, Juan manages projects to do with the role of consumer electronics in the circular economy and on unlocking Industry 4.0’s potential to reduce the environmental impact of production. Prior to working at the Agency, Juan was a principal consultant and project manager in a consultancy firm, where his work focused on assessing European and UK environmental policy, especially related to industrial emissions, chemicals, and air quality.

Almut Nagel is currently Seconded National Expert to the European Commission, Directorate General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology, in the unit CNECT.F.1 “Digital Transformation – Coordination of Digital Strategy and Green ICT”. She is policy officer in the field of Green Digital Transformation and works among other things on the European Digital Product Passport and with businesses of the European Green Digital Coalition towards methodologies to measure the net environmental impact of ICT solutions.

Matthias Kuom is currently Seconded National Expert to the European Commission, Directorate General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology, in the new unit CNECT.A.4 “Digital Transformation of Industrial Ecosystems”. Here he works on topics such as digital platforms for industry and implementation of Digital Innovation Hubs within the Digital Europe Programme. He drives forward the topics of Industry 4.0, Data Spaces as well as business models and innovation strategies in the data economy.

Susanne is Chief Innovation & Solution Officer at Spherity – a decentralised identity company. Her background is in security technology and she has 20 years hands-on, technical experience in cryptography. After leading technical teams of large German mobile network operators, she moved to more business-related roles, where she drove sales, business development, partnerships and roadmap activities for IT-security services and products.

Today, Susanne consults with companies on how to define IT-Security products & services and bring them to market. She is a strong believer that technology can help the climate goals to be reached and is currently engaged in defining the technical concepts for a digital, decentralised battery product passport to facilitate better recycling and reuse of batteries.

Khalil is a forward-thinking and results-driven professional with eight years of experience in manufacturing environments. He joined CELSA Group’s innovation team in 2017 as Innovation and Service Designer, where current focus areas are Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation.