Keynote Speakers

Dr. Faye Cruz
 Manila Observatory, Philippines
9:30 – 10:00: Tuesday, November 26th
Looking back and looking forward: Reflections from CORDEX Southeast Asia
Dr. Faye Cruz is a climate scientist and Head of the Regional Climate Systems Laboratory at the Manila Observatory in the Philippines. She is actively involved in atmospheric and climate research in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia, where she is currently Co-Chair of CORDEX–SEA (Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment–Southeast Asia). She leads the group’s latest APN-funded project titled “Climatic hazard Assessment to enhance Resilience against climate Extremes for Southeast Asian megacities” (CARE for SEA megacities). She is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Scientific and Technology Advisory Group (AP-STAG) of UNDRR. Her projects with scientists and various stakeholders involve the application of regional climate modelling and data analysis to provide enhanced climate change information for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.
Prof. Huang Bor-Shouh
 Institute of Earth Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
9:30 – 10:00: Tuesday, November 26th
Seismic broadband observations and earthquake hazard assessments in Vietnam – The twenty years of earth science cooperation from Taiwan
Dr. Bor-Shouh Huang is a senior scientist at the Institute of Earth Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. His research focused on the rupture processes of earthquakes using dense seismic arrays. Based on the strong motion observations, his studies dedicated for the source rupture and wave propagation of the Taiwan earthquakes. From 2005, he moved his works to deploy broadband seismic arrays in Vietnam, Laos, Philippines and Solomon Islands to investigate regional structures and seismic hazards. Currently, the cooperation to deploy seismic stations surrounding the South China Sea for the earthquake and Tsunami warning and to promote related research is his major task. He worked also on rotational seismology, earthquake related acoustic wave propagations and the total electronic content of the ionosphere response from earthquakes. More information on Dr. Bor-Shouh Huang can be found from https://www.earth.sinica.edu.tw/member/detail/24
Dr. Marine Herrmann
 LEGOS, Research Institute for Development (IRD), Toulouse, France
8:30 – 9:00: Wednesday, November 27th
Toward air-sea high-resolution regional coupling to better understand and forecast the Southeast Asia Climate
Dr. Marine Herrmann is a senior scientist at the French Research Institute for Development (IRD), LEGOS (Laboratory of Space Geophysical and Oceanographic Studies) in France. She is currently the co-director of the LOTUS international Joint Laboratory at the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH), Vietnam, and Head of the ECOLA (Open sea – coasts exchange) team at LEGOS. Her main interest concerns the understanding of regional marine systems, based on the development and use of regional ocean hydrodynamic models, coupled with biogeochemical, atmospheric, and sediment transport models, and used jointly with in-situ and satellite observations.
Prof. Georg Guggenberger
 Institute of Soil Science, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany
9:00 – 9:30: Wednesday, November 27th
Agricultural Soils as Climate Regulators
Georg Guggenberger is a trained geoecologist and soil scientist and holds the Chair of Soil Science at Leibniz University Hannover. In soils of many regions of the world, from the Arctic to boreal and temperate and steppe zones to the subtropics and tropics, he investigates fundamental processes of biotic and abiotic factors on the formation and stabilization of soil organic matter. Another important aspect of his work is the role of biodiversity in ensuring the various soil functions. Much of his work is performed in collaborative projects, where he seeks to overcome disciplinary boundaries in order to sustain soil health by identifying and adopting sustainable land use practices. From 2015 to 2018 he was highly cited scientist (Web of Science), and he has received national and international awards (e.g., Duchaufour medal of the EGU). He was president of the German Soil Science Society and is currently member of the senate of the German Research Foundation.
Dr. Frédéric Thomas
 UMR SENS, IRD, Cirad, Montpellier University, France
9:30 – 10:00: Wednesday, November 27th
Unlocking Colonial-Era Weather Data from Indochina: A Key to Understanding Climate Change in Southeast Asia
Dr. Frédéric Thomas is a historian of science and an environmental historian. His research has always focused on the history of the relationships between scientific knowledge and local knowledge in environmental management from the colonial period to the present day. He has studied these relationships in various fields: forest management, genetics and plant improvement, intellectual property on living organisms, the arrival of biotechnology in the production systems of developing countries, and more recently, climate change and sciences for sustainability.
His research methods and tools are situated within several schools: environmental history (Grove), social studies of science (Latour, Callon, Pestre...), anthropology of nature (Descola), ethics of nature (Larrère, Callicott), archaeology of knowledge, and governmentality (Michel Foucault). He has also been interested in theories of collective action (Ostrom, Shlager, Hess) and theories of justice (Rawls, Sen) and environmental justice (Dobson).
He has spent many years on assignment in Vietnam as part of the scientific cooperation between IRD and various research institutes of the Vietnamese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VAAS), and laboratories of the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH).
He published a lot of books and articles, notably Genes, power and profits. Public Research and Regime of Knowledge from Mendel to GMO, Quae, 2009, 619 p.; The power of biodiversity. Neoliberalisation of nature in the emerging countries, Quae, 2015, 295 p. (with important chapters analyzing the Vietnamese policy of biodiversity conservation); and, directly related to Vietnamese climate history, the chapter 2 of the GEMMES Report to COP 26 in Glasgow “Climate change and adaptation in Vietnam, Contribution from environmental history” https://www.afd.fr/en/ressources/climate-change-viet-nam-impacts-and-adaptation
Prof. Catherine N. Mulligan
 Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
8:30 – 9:00: Thursday, November 28th
Phosphorus Attenuation in Lake Water and Sediment Using Geotextile Filtration and Air-Induced Sediment Resuspension
Catherine N. Mulligan, PhD. is a Distinguished Research Professor at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the founder and Director of the Concordia Institute of Water, Energy and Sustainable Systems. Her research involves the treatment of soil, water, sediments and mining wastes. She has published more than 130 refereed journal papers and 8 books, in addition to Sustainable Practices in Geoenvironmental Engineering to be published as a third edition in 2025. She has supervised more than 75 graduate students to completion. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, Engineering Institute of Canada, Canadian Academy of Engineering and Royal Society of Canada (RSC) and recent winner of the RSC’s
Miroslaw Romanowski Medal for environmental accomplishments.
Prof. Alexei Sentchev
 Université du Littoral - Côte d'Opale, France
9:00 – 9:30: Thursday, November 28th
Lagrangian dispersion in the Red River plume region from drifting buoy observations and modeling
Alexei Sentchev is Professor of Physical Oceanography at the University of Littoral Cote d'Opale, in France. He received his PhD degree in Appl. Mathematics in 1991 from P.P.Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Acad. Sci of Russian Federation, and then, Habilitation to steer researchers (HDR) in 2010, in France. He has being studying coastal ocean dynamics for over 30 years and gone on to develop advanced expertise in modeling, observations of ocean dynamics and merging the data from observations with model outputs. He is one of the leading researchers using the remote sensing of surface currents by HF radars for characterizing the coastal circulation variability with the emphasis on practical applications such as transport and dispersion of materials in seawater or marine renewable energy. He has published over 60 research papers in peer-reviewed journals. He does editorial work, supervises PhD students (including Vietnamese PhD students) and does regular teaching at USTH, in Vietnam.