Maarten Siebel PhD, MSc

Biography

Maarten A. Siebel is associate professor of Environmental Biotechnology with a PhD in Bioprocess Engineering from Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, U.S.A. His professional expertise and interest, although originally in the area of biofilms and microbial degradation of xenobiotic compounds has, for the last 15 years focused on cleaner production with gradually increasing emphasis on the application of cleaner production principles to water management.

Maarten is involved in the supervision of MSc and PhD research. In all studies, the analysis of system alternatives on the basis of Life Cycle Impact Assessment, both in the environmental, the financial and the social area, plays an important role. Topics of interest are related to:

• different aspects of smart water management, within water enterprises, within smaller communities, within cities,
• cleaner production applications in specific industries,
• the management of solid waste in urban or suburban areas,
• the application of industrial ecology systems.

Against that background, one of the PhD-studies is zooming in on developing a sustainable water management system for the West Bank of Palestine. Another PhD-study is concentrating on cleaning up family-size tanneries that are discharging their toxic wastewater in the Bogota River from which, only 150 km downstream of the discharge point, the Bogota water supply withdraws water for the production of drinking water.

MSc-studies were conducted for the optimization of the Solid Waste Management in different cities, and for the management of hospitals waste.

Maarten is in charge of various research and capacity building projects in other countries such as:

• India and China for the training of University staff in the area of waste management,
• Indonesia for the training of university staff in solid waste management,
• Guatemala for the setup of university teaching programs and the training of staff in aspects of water management.