Unfortunately, there is little public or political awareness of groundwater and the capacity of the expert groundwater community in most countries to solve groundwater problems is limited.
The Groundwater Project is an innovation aimed at increasing awareness and providing a framework for capacity building and problem solving, but many other innovations are urgently needed to reverse the trajectory.
Water Talks: 2023 Opening Lecture: Groundwater is the Key to a Sustainable Earth will be presented by: John Cherry, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Leader of the Groundwater Project, Recipient of the 2020 Stockholm Water Prize and Lee Kwan Water Prize, 2016.
Agenda
3:30-4:00
p.m.
Doors
Open, Theatre
of
the
Arts,
Modern
Languages
Building
4:00-5:00
p.m.
Lecture
5:00-6:30
p.m.
Reception
Speaker Bio
Dr. John Cherry’s research pioneered the field of “contaminant hydrogeology”. He holds geological engineering degrees from the University of Saskatchewan, University of California Berkeley, and a PhD in hydrogeology from the University of Illinois. He joined the faculty at the University of Waterloo in 1971 and retired in 2006 as a Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He co-authored the textbook “Groundwater” with R.A. Freeze (1979) and co-holds several patents, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Foreign Member of the U.S. Academy of Engineering. He was the Chair of the Canadian Expert Panel on the environmental impacts of shale gas development. He has received awards from the USA, UK, Switzerland, Canada, Singapore (Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize, 2016), IAH President’s Award (2019) and the 2020 Stockholm Water Prize. He is currently a Principal Investigator at the G360 Institute and Project Leader for the Groundwater Project (gw-project.org) a project aimed at democratizing groundwater education globally. He is the Director of the University Consortium for Field-Focused Groundwater Contamination Research.