Integrated Human Practices

Trevi Environmental Solutions: Peter Vandeputte

Trevi Environmental Solutions tackle all environmental challenges, regardless whether it concerns water, soil, air or energy. Trevi has more than 30 years experience with wastewater treatment, using several different techniques. Considering their expertise in wastewater treatment, we contacted them for further insights.

The talk with Trevi was our first contact with stakeholders. During our conversation, Peter explained how a bioreactor works and how bacteria can be used for metal removal. He mentioned some of the metals that are commonly found in Belgium, such as Zinc and Copper and some companies that would possibly have metals in wastewater.

DEME Group Waste Manager: Laurent Dossche

DEME group is a world leader in the specialized domains of dredging, marine infrastructure, solutions for the offshore energy market, environmental works and concessions. Regarding wastewater, they have considerable experience in the design, construction and operation of industrial wastewater plants.

This meeting was also more focused on understanding the methods that are commonly used to treat metal contamination and the types of metals that are commonly present. According to Laurent, the physical chemical methods are most commonly used and lead is the most prevalent contaminant in Belgium.

Nuoro: Jan Bos Van Hemelrijck and Kris Gorissen

Nuoro is an engineering office focused on water technology. All of their workers have prior experience working with water technology companies. At Nuoro, 50% of the team is dedicated to research and development, while the other 50% focuses on equipment installation.

During our meeting with Jan and Kris, two water experts, we presented our project, and they believed it could be a good solution, especially because our approach doesn't rely on chemicals. According to them, regulations surrounding chemical use are becoming stricter, which creates a need for new technologies. Additionally, the concentration limits are becoming harder to meet, and many current methods struggle to achieve low concentrations because the metals are complexed. Therefore, our bacteria must be specific enough to remove metals even at low concentrations.

Regarding one of our ideas (using gel beads to trap our bacteria) they mentioned that it's important to consider the cleaning process, as customers will not want to clean the system every week.

As for metal recovery, it only makes sense if it's financially viable. This depends on where in the process the technology is applied. If it’s mainly at the end, where the goal is to remove metals in low concentrations, recovery may not be cost-effective.

Aurubis: Karen Van Dyck

Aurubis is the largest copper producer in Europe and the world’s leading copper recycler. We decided to reach out to them because, as a metal processing company, they face significant challenges with metals in their wastewater. Additionally, their recycling efforts align with promoting a circular economy.

We scheduled a meeting with Karen, their water treatment specialist. During the discussion, we focused on understanding which metals are commonly present in their wastewater. Those are copper, lead, tin, nickel, thallium, cadmium and arsenic. Karen highlighted that for cadmium, in particular, the limits are getting stricter, which makes it harder to achieve using the traditional physical-chemical methods.

From a sustainability perspective, Karen emphasized that minimizing the use of chemical additives is always better. She also pointed out the importance of managing the resulting sludge. In many cases, wastewater reuse becomes impossible due to excessive lime being added during treatment. In this context, our project could provide an effective solution for enabling wastewater reuse.

Carmeuse: Jurgen Vanden Bon and Monica Hernandez Rodriguez

Carmeuse is a global manufacturer of lime and limestone products used for many applications.

We conducted a meeting with Jurgen (EU market manager) and Monica (technical expert in environment EU), where we presented our project and received some feedback. They found our idea interesting, especially for the recovery of expensive metals. Working on a project involving a circular economy is promising, though it is not very common.

Regarding the metals we should focus on, they mentioned copper, zinc, cobalt, and vanadium (especially in the Netherlands and Belgium). To make metal recovery viable, we need to focus on rare and expensive metals. Focusing on those metals would build a solid business case. They also mentioned that some metals are difficult to remove with current methods, which is where our project could offer a solution.

In terms of sustainability, they appreciated the closed-loop aspect of the project but pointed out that the burning step for metal recovery is not ideal.

Veolia: Sam Varga

Veolia is a group that designs and provides innovative, practical solutions for water, waste, and energy management. In water management, Veolia controls all stages of the water cycle and is equipped to solve numerous challenges. They offer more than 350 technologies to address various water management issues.

We had the opportunity to meet with Sam Varga, the project manager for Benelux. He scopes, plans, coordinates, and executes projects related to wastewater and water reuse. During the meeting, we presented our project idea to him. According to Sam, our project has potential, but he envisions it being most effective as a polishing step when metal concentrations are low. This feedback helped us refine our approach to applying our technology.

He mentioned that current methods are inexpensive but cannot effectively achieve low metal concentrations. Regarding which metals to focus on, he suggested calcium, selenium, arsenic, aluminum, and iron, noting that aluminum is particularly difficult to treat.

We also asked for advice on how to make our project more sustainable. He explained that the incineration step is not the best solution, but if we decide to use it, he recommended drying and removing all the water before burning.

Waterleau: Joris Moors, Philippe Schnongs and Michel Caluwé

Waterleau is a world-leading water technology company, and they are experts in closing the water loop. Regarding wastewater, they use aerobic and anaerobic technologies. We decided to contact the company because they employ different types of technology, and we thought they would have a nice perspective on our project.

We did a meeting with Joris Moors (commercial leader), Philippe Schnongs (VP of process), and Michel Caluwé (head of the R&D department). They also mentioned that the parameters for some metals are getting strict, making the removal more complex. When the metals are removed, they are not recuperated and when the biomass has heavy metals present, it can not be used as a fertilizer. Based on that, they believe that our project can be a good idea.

They mentioned that they have no experience working with synthetic biology. They reinforced the importance of the bacteria not escaping with the water that is released, which adds complexity to the process. One solution is immobilizing the bacteria (in a membrane, for example), but this will impact which part of the process the method can be used.

One idea of an application that they mention is to increase the concentration of the sludge until there are enough metals to be recuperated. To facilitate the recuperation of the metals, they mentioned that it is easier to do it when you have only one metal instead of a cocktail. The discussion we had with them help us to reflect more about where can our project be a good solution.

Supetai Project by KICK KU Leuven: Defne Kincir

The Supetai project is a transdisciplinary and transcontinental cooperation between KU Leuven, Kenyan NGO Sabore’s Well, and Santa Clara University (USA). They developed a project to obtain drinkable water. Click here to learn more about the Supetai project.

We did a meeting with Defne from KU Leuven KICK to discuss about possibilities of collaboration between our team and the Supetai team. More about that can be found on our Sustainability page , especially concerning SDG 17.

KU Leuven: Griet Ceulemans

Griet Ceulemans is a KU Leuven lecturer and her course is called "Science and Sustainability: a Socio-Ecological Approach – Theory". Our team capitain Jena had a course with her and thought she could be someone with a lot of experience about sustainability.

We scheduled two meetings with Griet. The first one was mainly to introduce our project and in this meeting she gave us some feedback about our project description, focusing on the important aspect of sustainability. During the meeting she explained how the concepts related to sustainability (one example here is the Inner Development Goals) and how our project was focusing mainly on the technological and economical aspect, instead of the sociological aspect. During the meeting, she also reinforced the importance of reflecting about the negative sides of our project instead of only the positive ones.

The second meeting was mainly focused on our specific questions. There, we were able to discuss more about the concepts that she presented in our first meeting and understand them better. Our main reflections can be found on our Sustainability page .

Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij (VMM): Tania Verhoeve

The Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij , also known as the Flanders Environment Agency, is an agency of the Flemish government.

We held a meeting with Tania Verhoeve, who works on circular water (sustainable water use and water reuse) at the VMM. She shared useful links that helped us better understand the issue of heavy metal contamination in Belgium. The sectors known for higher emissions of heavy metals include the metal, chemical, and trade and services industries [2]. The metals that commonly exceed the limits are cobalt, uranium, arsenic, and zinc [3].

Tania explained how the limits for heavy metals are regulated in Belgium. These limits are proposed by the European Union, and Belgium is given several years to comply. In addition, each region must monitor the most common metals in its area and establish ecotoxicological limits for these substances.

This meeting helped us better understand how the limits are set and what companies need to do to discharge their wastewater.

One Drop Foundation: Ernenek Duran

One Drop Foundation is an international non-profit organization based in Montreal that focuses on water initiatives.

We had the opportunity to meet with the Co-founder of One Drop, Ernenek Duran, where we presented our project and received feedback. During this meeting, he shared valuable ideas for our business plan. He mentioned that there is a large market for our project, including companies dealing with heavy metals in wastewater and companies that need metals (we can sell them the metals). Additionally, one of his suggestions was to charge higher prices to well-funded companies, enabling us to subsidize projects for communities affected by metal contamination.

Regarding sustainability, he explained the importance of mapping the system to better understand it and gather more information on how to develop a more sustainable and effective project. To achieve this, he mentioned the ABC for Sustainability methodology, where A represents infrastructure, B stands for behavior change, and C refers to capital.

Due to their "Social Art" project, we also discussed ideas for inclusivity. According to Ernenek, art is a powerful way to bring people together, as it places everyone on the same level with no hierarchy. One idea is to create a mural collaboratively with the people involved. These ideas are being considered for inclusion in our upcoming outreach activities.

Ekoli: Sirarpi Vardanian

Ekoli aims to give every child the opportunity to explore, create, and experiment in the field of science. As an organization dedicated to making science engaging and accessible, Ekoli hosts hands-on workshops in schools, ensuring that children from all backgrounds can experience the scientific world.

During our meeting, Sirarpi gave us some tips on how to do better workshops. The tips are: make the content of the workshop comprehensible, use simple language, interact with the children, and go to the schools instead of asking for them to come to us.

Young Belgian Society for Microbiology: Charlotte van de Velde

The Young Belgian Society for Microbiology is committed to taking microbiology out of the laboratory and into the real world. They are responsible for organizing the International Microorganism Day (IMD), which took place on the 21st of September.

During our meeting with Charlotte, she gave us ideas on how to have a good and interactive stand for the event. Our final idea for the IMD was doing a pipette competition.

Tim ´tJoncke

Tim is an expert and coach in public speaking. He reviewed our PowerPoint which we used for the Bielefeld meetup and gave us some tricks to optimize it. He also gave Jena some input on how to give engaging presentations and which story structure to use. This helped us in conveying our message in an understandable but strong way during the iGEM meetups.

Prof. Susana Rocha

Susana Neves Rocha is a Professor in the Faculty of Sciences at KU Leuven, specializing in interactions between materials and biology.

She was one of the professors that we interviewed for our series "Woman in Science". Click here to see more about this project.

Prof. Conny Aerts

Conny Aerts is a Professor at KU Leuven and the Program Director of the Master in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

She was one of the professors that we interviewed for our series "Woman in Science". Click here to see more about this project.

Prof. Nadia Everaert

Nadia Everaert is an Associate Professor at KU Leuven, leading the Nutrition and Animal-Microbiota EcoSystems (NAMES) lab. Her research focuses on microbiota colonization, gut health, and gut function in monogastric species like poultry and pigs.

She was one of the professors that we interviewed for our series "Woman in Science". Click here to see more about this project.

Dr. Mitty Casulli

Mitty is a Biomedical Engineer, specializing in electrochemical sensors. She is now doing her postdoc at KU Leuven with a focus on bioresorbable sensors.

She was one of the postdocs that we interviewed for our series "Woman in Science". Click here to see more about this project.

Green Light For Girls: Melissa Rancourt

Green Light for Girls (G4G) is a well-established international non-profit organization, with its global headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and offices in the US. Driven by a passion for empowering girls, they aim to inspire confidence and share the excitement of science in all its forms!

Our team conducted a meeting with Melissa from G4G to ask for feedback on how to make science more inclusive and how to optimize our outreach activities.

Besides that, G4G will organize an event in October and two of our team members will be present as mentors.

Dr. Caroline Jonas

Caroline is a physicist and is doing her postdoc research at KU Leuven. She is trying to understand the very early universe by combining quantum physics together with gravitational physics.

She was one of the postdocs that we interviewed for our series "Woman in Science". Click here to see more about this project.

Neurodiversity Belgium: Beverley Sinton and Lora-Elly Van Neuwenhuysen

Neurodiversity Belgium is an organization that supports neurodivergent individuals of all ages, including those with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and dyspraxia. They collaborate with schools and educators, providing evidence-based information about these conditions. Their goal is to help children and adolescents reach their full potential in the school environment.

We recently had a meeting with Beverly Sinton and Lora from Neurodiversity Belgium. They shared valuable resources that we used to develop our Inclusivity Guide. One of the key resources was the "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines" [4]. During the meeting, they also gave us general tips, some of which we implemented in our wiki: adding descriptive texts to images, simplifying the language as much as possible, and avoiding rapid movements and flashes. They also emphasized the importance of incorporating sensory elements, which inspired us to create a tactile poster.

Additionally, we were planning a virtual meet-up, and they provided advice on how to make it more accessible. They suggested using Zoom, as it offers better accessibility features compared to other platforms. For slide presentations, they recommended ensuring good color contrast, and during registration, it’s important to ask if participants require any accessibility accommodations. Unfortunately, the meet-up didn’t happen due to low registration, but we have documented their advice for future online events.

Konekt: Stien Van Obbergen

Konekt is a community that is committed to providing a society where people with and without disabilities can live, learn, and work together. They achieve this through training programs, raising awareness, and collaboration with the world of education and employment.

We had a meeting with Stien Van Obbergen from Konekt, and in this meeting we discussed more about what is Konekt and what can we do to make our project more accessible. To help us with that, she shared with us some websites that we used when we were developing our Inclusivity Guide .

BeWise: Delphine Laboureur

BeWise is a non-profit organization that supports female scientists. They do different types of events, such as Leadership Night, Woman in Science Day, Lunch and Learn, and Mentoring programs.

We conducted a meeting with Delphine Laboureur, the vice president of BeWise. She gave us some tips on how to ensure gender equality in science. She emphasized that more people must ask this question and that the awareness of the situation is important. Besides that, she gave us some tips for the workshops. One idea that she gave us is to ask children to draw a scientist and hopefully they will draw a woman. Another important thing is to send a woman to lead the workshop, in order for them to have a role model and to do some hands-on activities.

Prof. Sara Nijs

Sara Nijs is a professor at the Faculty of Education Sciences at KU Leuven, and she specializes in special and inclusive education (ADHD and intellectual disabilities). She focuses on making schools more inclusive.

In our meeting, we explained how we were doing our workshops, and she gave us some feedback. One of the most important things is to follow the Universal Design for Learning [5]. Different guidelines offer suggestions that can be applied to make sure that all students can participate in learning opportunities. For people with autism, for example, it is important to do a slow presentation with more pauses. She also mentioned the importance of telling stories using materials. Touching materials can help people to understand better and is not only useful for blind people, but also many different groups. With this feedback, we decided to do a tactile poster of an E. coli that we can take with us to events. Click here to read more about our tactile poster.

Sara also gave some tips about the wiki. It needs to be as clean as possible and use easy language. To make the texts easy to understand, there is one organization that does that (Wablieft organization) and AI can also be used. For the images, it is important to always add a description of it.

Prof. Xing Yang

We interviewed Xing Yang, a KU Leuven Professor, for our series on "Woman in Science". Click here to see more about this project. Read more about her Xing Yang in the Experts section.

Prof. Devang Mehta

Devang Mehta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosystems at KU Leuven. He was already familiar with the iGEM project, having participated in it a few years ago.

In our meeting, we discussed racism in academia, a topic on which he gave a presentation. He shared a wealth of data, including findings from sources like ENAR and the Ginther studies. You can find more information in our Inclusivity Guide. Clickhere to access

We also asked him for tips on making our events and workshops more inclusive. For workshops, he suggested two ideas: "Skype a Scientist [6]" and "Draw a Scientist" (which was also recommended by BeWise). For events, he emphasized the importance of inclusive advertising and featuring diverse speakers.

Prof. Vitor Pinheiro, our PI

Vitor is an associate professor at KU Leuven, where he teaches the course Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, and he is our team PI. Throughout the year, he has helped us with the project by guiding us in choosing an interesting topic and supporting its development. After selecting our topic, we developed a plan to follow and presented it to him.

After our presentation, he gave us some valuable advice. First, regarding our project, he emphasized the importance of having a clear narrative. After this feedback, we focused on gaining a deeper understanding of what we were proposing and reached out to several companies to verify if our project idea offered a viable solution.

As for the wet lab work, he recommended looking into colorimetric methods, such as the one for Copper, which we eventually incorporated into our project.

For the dry lab, he suggested that using AlphaFold would be a good approach for modeling. He also encouraged us to integrate more dry lab elements into our project, offering ideas like making the sequences more specific and then testing these new sequences in the wet lab.

In addition to this meeting, Vitor held weekly meetings with our Team Captain, Jena, helping her make key decisions for our project.

Prof. Benjamin Horemans, our secondary PI

Benjamin Horemans is a professor at KU Leuven, and his research focuses on engineering microbiomes for applications that benefit the bio-based circular economy.

We had a meeting with him after defining our project idea to validate it, and he provided us with valuable feedback, particularly regarding measurements. He mentioned the ICP-OES method for measuring, noting that depending on the concentrations, it can affect both the duration of the experiment and the cost. For the ICP-OES, we did not have enough time to realize it but it is in our future plans. When concentrations are high, it is also possible to use a spectrophotometer for measurements. Regarding NMR, he mentioned that it is very expensive.

For the tests, he suggested starting with synthetic wastewater, so we could be certain of the components. For our tests, we then decided to use complexing agents and metals.

As for metal recovery, he believes that the burning step is a good approach because we will eventually obtain a block of metals. Another possibility he mentioned is dissolving the bacteria with the metals in acid and then purifying it.

Prof. Xing Yang

Xing Yang is a Professor of the Department of Chemical Engineering at KU Leuven. Her research is mainly focused on purification and separation. This is mainly done by designing or applying synthetic membranes.

We had the opportunity to interview Xing Yang for our series "Woman in Science”, as already mentioned, and we also asked her some questions related to our project. During our meeting with her, she explained more about how membranes work and that they can be easily scaled up and they can be used continuously.

About the measurements, she also mentioned the ICP-OES technique. She informed us that samples with a single ion are easier to measure because the presence of other ions can lead to interference. As mentioned already, we did not have time to do this measurement but we will consider doing it in the future.

Talking about the sustainable point of view, it is important to reflect on what you want to achieve: a process that is more effective or cleaner. The concept of sustainability depends on the angle at which you see it.

Prof. Ilse Smets

lse Smets is an associate professor at KU Leuven, where she teaches the course "Waste Water Treatment and Resource Recovery." We scheduled a meeting with Ilse because she has extensive knowledge of the biological treatments used for wastewater.

We met with Ilse and Laurens Parret and received valuable feedback on our project. They had previously worked with cobalt, nickel, and copper, and found it difficult to achieve cobalt levels below the proposed limits.

They mentioned that water treatment systems are open systems, so they usually avoid working with GMOs due to the risk of bacterial escape. We shared our idea of using hydrogel beads to contain the bacteria, but Laurens pointed out that even with beads, bacteria can still escape. Based on this, we realized that using beads alone is not sufficient to contain our bacteria.

They also viewed our project as a good solution for a polishing step. However, metal recovery is only worthwhile when there are high concentrations of metals. Ilse also mentioned the acid technique for removing metals, similar to what Benjamin had suggested, but for this method, the metals need to be outside the cell. In our project, we focused on capturing metals inside the cell, but this is an interesting approach to explore in the future.

In terms of sustainability, using aggregates is a good option, as it allows for a clear separation between biomass and water. Having larger particles can also reduce the energy required for separation.

Prof. Arnout Voet

Arnout Voet is a Professor of the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular and Structural Biology at KU Leuven. He teaches Biomolecular Modelling and Bioinformatics courses

He advised us via email about our molecular dynamics plans and because of his advice we realised that it would not be feasible to get our desired programs working within the timeframe of iGEM. His advice allowed us to focus on other strategies in the dry lab.