Two CRC for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC) PhD candidates, Paul Satur from Monash University and Tracy Schultz from The University of Queensland, have presented their research to nearly 200 peers at the fourth International Water Associations’ Young Water Professionals Conference in Sydney.

Paul won the award for best paper presentation for his talk on ‘Social inequality and water use practices in Australian communities’ and Tracy was named in the top eight presentations for her talk on ‘Connecting people with sustainable urban water management through images.

The students said the event, hosted by the Australian Water Association and International Water Association on 18-19 February, was an excellent opportunity to meet and discuss their research with other young scientists and industry employees.

Paul, a PhD candidate liked with the CRCWSC project Understanding social processes to achieve water sensitive futures (Project A2.1), said “the diversity of skills, knowledge and passion in the room made for an exciting and enriched two days of discussion, collaboration and networking”.

“There was the acknowledgement and consensus of our existing strengths in multidisciplinary collaboration, flexibility and adaptability in the face of climate variability and technological advancements, and an emphasis on the need to shake things up through encouraging innovation and risk taking for future change,” he said.

Tracy, who is working with the CRCWSC project on Engaging communities with Water Sensitive Cities (Project A2.3), said “some of the more interesting presentations focused on the current shift in thinking away from ‘wastewater treatment processes’ to thinking about it more as a ‘resource recovery treatment process’”.

“It was a great insight into the work being conducted in the water treatment processes sector by young water professionals.”