On December 2nd WRL

On December 2nd WRL prof.Juhna and assoc.prof. Rubulis with colleagues from Netherlands (Martijn Bijmans – Wetsus Manager Europe, Pieter de Jong – EU Liaison Officer at Wetsus and Eric Vos – Economic department in programme water technology at Province of Fryslân) meet representatives from Ministry of Education and Science of Latvia. The host persons were Līga Lejiņa (State Secretary at Ministry of Education and Science of Latvia), Agrita Kiopa (Deputy State Secretary on of the Higher Education, Science and Innovation Department) and Santa Šmidlere (Expert in Department of the Structural Funds Issues).

Representatives from Netherlands provided insight in to Wetsus and cooperation in research with Province of Fryslân, companies from Europe and worldwide. Later on representatives of Wetsus and RTU explained possible cooperation routes between both parties in the light of upcoming ESIF programme.

Excursion in Green World Group

November 26th staff of Water Research laboratory were in excursion in Green World Group. Green World Group is is a global leader serving municipal authorities and private companies with cost-effective and comprehensive solutions for waste management. GWG combines UK and Finnish technology with Latvian manufacturing and logistics, them products are offered in a wide range of high quality configurations tailored to each customer’s unique requirements. Their main goals is metal manufacturing, waste care products, waste to energy and plastic manufacturing.

In time of meeting GWG propose Water Research laborotory to get involve in new projects.

Cooperation for Development

On Wednesday November 25th members of WRL Tālis Juhna, Kristīna Tihomirova and Jānis Rubulis joined the forum «Cooperation for Development» organized by the Department of Business and Innovation at RTU. The forum was organized as a panel discussion of researchers and administrative personnel from RTU and representatives from Latvian municipalities. The objective of the forum was to discuss development guidelines for cooperation between both parties. In the forum were represented cities of Daugavpils, Liepāja, Valmiera, and municipalities of Ādaži, Bauska, Cēsis, Dobele, Madona, Ogre and Ventspils.

Read more (latvian)

Director of International Relations Department at RTU

Following the visit of Tālis JUHNA and Inese Džarcāne (Director of International Relations Department at RTU) to Colombia in beginning of November, there was arranged return visit of Mrs. Dora María Carmona Garcés from Pontifical Bolivarian University (PUB) to WRL. The researcher Dora Carmona is representative of Environmental Research Group (GIA) and she’s research area is related with soil remediation from heavy metals.

During the visit of Dora Carmona in WRL on 23th November 2015, assoc.prof. Jānis Rubulis did presentation of main WRL projects and showed available prototypes and scientific equipment.

Finally Mr.Juhna, Mr.Rubulis and guest researcher discussed about possible future cooperation’s in field of water and wastewater sector (cotutelle model PhDs, research projects with Colombian industry partners).

Pontifical Bolivarian University (La Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana) is a private university in Colombia with its main campus in Medellín. Environmental Research Group (Grupo de Investigaciones Ambientales) involves several research directions: Atmospheric Research, Water Quality, Environmental Management, and Waste Management and Recovery.

Water quality management in cities

From 3rd to 6th November 2015, Tālis JUHNA was visiting leading universities in Colombia, he gave several lectures to students on “Water quality management in cities” and has established relationship for jointed project proposal for upcoming ERAnet -LAC project calls and beyond this.

Presentation available here

BioMicroWorld Conference in Barcelona

From 29th to 30th October were BioMicroWorld Conference in Barcelona. Conference is a well-established forum that has brought together researchers in the applied microbiology field every two years since 2005. This forum is aimed at communicating current progress in the fields of environmental, industrial, food, or medical microbiology, as well as in microbial biotechnology or technology development. Being a truly international meeting (with all editions having been attended by researchers from more than 40 countries), it also aims at serving as an instrument for building bridges to strengthen global collaborations in many microbiological issues that are global in nature. From Water research laborotory in this conference were Brigita Dalecka. She presented «Comparison of various DNA extraction methods for Fusarium solani detection and enumeration with real-time PCR».

Water – a Taste of Innovation

On the 22nd October 2015, Irish Latvian Chamber of Commerce jointly with the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce in Latvia organised Afternoon networking «Water – a Taste of Innovation»  that was kindly co-hosted by the Netherlands Embassy. The Networking gathered together specialists in the water industry – professors, contractors and employers as well as bottled water producers. Water research laboratory team was represented by Prof.Juhna and assoc.prof. Rubulis. Mr. Juhna in own speech pointed out previous cooperation with research institution/universities and companies from the Nederlends and highlited signing of MoU with Wetsus and activities related with development of Center of Excellence for Smart Engineering Technologies (CoESET).

Photo from irlat.com

Жизнь сегодня

On 20th October in Latvian television programme «Жизнь сегодня» were story about drinking water in Riga and it’s quality. Kamila Gruskevica showed how were determined drinking water quality in laboratory.

Full video watch here.

Review of Existing and Emerging Biological Contamination Detection Tools for Drinking Water Distribution Systems (DWDS) Online Monitoring

On 17th to 19th of October Sandis Dejus presented the paper «Review of Existing and Emerging Biological Contamination Detection Tools for Drinking Water Distribution Systems (DWDS) Online Monitoring» at the 7th Eastern European Young Water Professionals Conference in Belgrade, Serbia.

More about conference here.

Biofiltration process at a full scale WTP

From 10th to 11th October 2015, Kamila Gruskevica and Kristina Tihomirova participated in Third International Conference on Advances In Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering- ACSEE 2015 in Zurich, Switzerland. Kamila also had a speach on the topic of Application of organic matter fractionation technique for evaluation of coagulation – biofiltration process at a full scale WTP.

The conference materials are available here and the paper here.