Maria Kennedy, PhD is Professor of Water Treatment Technology at IHE Delft. She has over 24 years of experience in education, research, consulting and capacity development in water supply engineering. During the last 25 years, she has been involved in the supervision of over 100 MSc participants and 22 PhD research fellows in the areas of water quality, groundwater treatment, disinfection, advanced oxidation, surface water treatment, desalination and membrane related technology, natural treatment systems, water reuse, water transport and distribution and biological stability. She has over 100 publications in peer reviewed journals (h index = 30), and she has edited several books/book chapters on various aspects of water supply.

Professor Maria Kennedy is the current president of the European Desalination Society (EDS), and a member of the board of directors. She is also a member of the Science and Technology Board of the EU‐Joint Programming Initiative (JPI), and she is a jury member of several prestigious international technology events such as the USAID Water For Food Desalination Prize (2014‐2015) and the Aquatech Innovation Award.

In 1999, she set up an international short course on ‘Membrane Technology in Drinking & Industrial Water Treatment’, and since 2000 she has organized numerous international short courses in the field of desalination & membrane related technology e.g. in Jordan, Palestine, Oman, Bahrain, Israel, St. Maarten, Iran, Yemen, South Africa and Chile. She has been involved in capacity development, educational and research projects in water supply in Jordan, Palestine, Yemen, Iran, Costa Rica and Chile. She has also been director of several capacity development projects in the Middle East region.

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