REHVA Brussels Summit: Biographies of Speakers

Speaker Name: Ansgar Thiemann
Title and Organisation: Business Development Manager, DAIKIN

Ansgar Thiemann is currently a Business Development manager in economics and in mechanical engineering at Daikin. Ansgar began working at a Private Bank as technical manager of test facility for heat recovery ventilation and heat-pumps. He then joined the Daikin group in 1999. His experiences consist of working in different Daikin entities in various positions. For example, Ansgar manages and consults in Sales, and is also a section manager for the environment research center.

Speaker Name: Dr Christine Lemaitre
Title and Organisation: CEO, DGNB

Dr. Christine Lemaitre was born in Gießen, Germany in 1975 and studied structural engineering at the University of Stuttgart from 1995 to 2000. After working in the USA for two years as structural engineer, she started in 2003 working at the Institute of Lightweight Structures Design and Construction at the University of Stuttgart as a research and teaching assistant. In 2007, she started as a project manager for R&D at Bilfinger Berger AG in the area of resource efficient buildings. She completed her PhD thesis on adaptive lightweight structures in 2008. In January 2009, she took on the role as director certification system of the German Sustainable Building Council. Since February 2010 Dr. Christine Lemaitre is the CEO of the German Sustainable Building Council. Since 2016, she is board member of the World Green Building Council (WGBC as well as a member of the Advisory Council for Baukultur of the State of Baden-Württemberg.

Speaker Name: Christian Schauer
Title and Organisation: Head of the Drinking Water Department, Viega

Dr. Christian Schauer has 15 years of experience in environmental analysis, water treatment, disinfection, drinking water hygiene, water quality and microbiology. Prior to his current role as the head of Viega’s drinking water department, he worked as a senior sales manager in the hygiene and health industry for Grünbeck Water Treatment GmbH. He also held senior sales manager roles in research and development for Herlisil GmbH and for Feldmann Chemie. He has a degree in chemistry from Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich.

Speaker Name: Frank Hovorka
Title and Organisation: REHVA President and Director of Technology and innovation of the French federation of real estate developers (FPI)

As the president of REHVA (Federation of European Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Associations). Franks career is dedicated to sustainability integration into urban and building projects. Consequently, he worked on financial tools dedicated to real estate communication between stakeholders in order to develop impact and risks assessment. Frank’s role is to develop the impact analysis and solutions of their developments. E.G (energy efficiency, GHG impact, LCA and LCC, financial performance indicators….) Prior to this position, Frank worked for the “Caisse des depots” group in charge of the real estate sustainable development policy and investment policy in French regions.

Speaker Name: Ilari Aho
Title and Organisation: Vice President, UPONOR

Ilari Aho, is responsible for Uponor Group’s strategic research and innovation management, new business development, standardisation and legislation, and corporate responsibility functions. Ilari currently serves as Vice Chair of World Green Building Council, Board Member and Treasurer of the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP), Executive Council member of the European Heating Industry Association (EHI), Vice President of ENCORD (European Network of Construction Companies for R&D) and member of the Industry Advisory Forum of CEN-CENELEC. He is also the chairman of Working Group Drinking Water Policy at TEPPFA (The European Plastic Pipe and Fittings Association) and represents TEPPFA in the European Drinking Water (EDW) industry alliance.

Speaker Name: Jessica Stromback
Title and Organisation: Managing Director, Joule Assets

Jessica is Managing Director of Joule Assets Inc. In this role, she oversees the management and operations of the company, as well as the smooth rollout and operations of its service offerings, including Community Choice Aggregation, Community Distributed Generation and the deployment of the eQuad platform in Europe. For the eQuad service offering she supports the development of investment portfolios within the energy efficiency and Demand Response industries. She also acts as project manager and directs public projects developing renewables, demand response and energy efficiency resources for the company. Jessica is also co-founder and Board Member of Smarten. As Board Member, she actively works with European policy makers and industry representatives to enable demand side participation throughout the European energy markets, through information, dynamic pricing, automation, and demand response. The Smarten’s vision is to promote the active participation of flexible demand side resources in European electricity markets – to ensure consumer benefits, increase security of supply and reduce carbon emissions.

Speaker Name: Johann Zirngibl
Title and Organisation: Consultant on European Directive (EPBD), Standards (CEN and ISO) and European projects.

Johann is an Engineer, Senior Scientist, and consultant on European Directive (EPBD), Standards (CEN and ISO) and European projects. His responsibilities involve working as a project manager in international research projects, European research programs (e.g. Intelligent Energy Europe, H2020 projects) Prior to this position received, he worked as a director for international development DEE CSTB / France. His research and development in the building sector involves energy efficiencies analysis of buildings and systems, low energy, low exergy and passive buildings, Innovative energy systems (renewables, energy supply, cogeneration, fuel cells) and environmental quality and environmental impact of products and systems.

Speaker Name: Josefina Lindblom
Title and organisation: Policy Officer, DG ENVI, European Commission

Josefina Lindblom is working at the European Commission for DG Environment, in the unit of Sustainable Production, Products and Consumption. She has been responsible for the work on "sustainable buildings" since 2011 and has managed the recent developments of Level(s), a common framework for the assessment of the environmental performance of buildings. She has previously worked in DG Research with specific support to SMEs and in DG Joint Research Centre, where she took part in research studies related to improved environmental performance of industry and how to design policy in this respect. She has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering Design from Chalmers Technical University of Gothenburg.

Speaker Name: Prof. Pawel Wargocki
Title and Organisation: Associate Professor, DTU

Pawel Wargocki graduated from Warsaw University of Technology. He received his PhD from the Technical University of Denmark, where he has been teaching and performing research ever since. He has more than 25 years of experience in research on human requirements in indoor environments. He is best known for his seminal work demonstrating that poor indoor environmental quality affects performance of office work and learning. Other work influenced requirements for ventilation and air cleaning. Recent research includes studies on emissions from humans, on sleep quality and on performance of green buildings, as well as gas-phase air cleaning and air quality in aircrafts. He has collaborated with leading research institutions, universities, and industrial partners around the world such as National University of Singapore, Jiaotong University in Shanghai, Syracuse Center of Excellence, United Technologies and Google.

Speaker Name: René B.J. Kemna
Title and Organisation: Director, VHK

Jr. René B.J. Kemna studied an M.Sc. in Industrial Design Engineering (Delft University of Technology, NL, 1981). Since 1984, he became the partner/co-founder of VHK engineering consultants in Delft/ Brussels, specialist in energy efficiency and eco-design of energy using products, amongst others working on and leading multiple preparatory studies for the European Commission on the EU Energy Label and Ecodesign measures, Ecodesign Impact Assessments and methodology studies, relating to a wide variety of products. He is also the project leader for the ecodesign preparatory studies on measures for space heating (combi) boilers and water heaters, to be concluded just before the REHVA-summit.

Speaker Name: Dr Stefan Plesser
Title and Organisation: synavision, QUANTUM / QUEST coordinator

Stefan Plesser is an expert in quality management for sustainable buildings. After several years of practice as architect and consultant for energy efficient buildings he joined the IGS – Institute of Building Services and Energy Design at Technical University Braunschweig (TUBS) in 2002 where he since built up the EQM - Energy and Quality Management Group with a team of about 10 researchers and practitioners. His scientific work comprises numerous monitoring projects of innovative buildings, the development of software tools for energy and quality management and research projects both on national and international level. Since 2008 he is scientific coordinator of the bi-annual icbp – International Conference on Building Performance in Berlin. Dr. Plesser is co-founder and managing director of the engineering office energydesign GmbH, Braunschweig (2005) and the software company synavision GmbH, Bielefeld (2010), a provider of quality management software for sustainable buildings.

Speaker Name: Stijn Verbeke
Title and Organisation: Senior Researcher, Vito

Stijn Verbeke is a researcher and project manager working at both research and technology organization EnergyVille/VITO and Antwerp University in Belgium. His work focusses on assessment methods for building and district energy performance. He holds a master’s degree in civil engineering (University Ghent) and a Ph.D. in applied engineering (University of Antwerp). At VITO/EnergyVille, he works as senior R&D expert and as a research lead in the team on building and district energy performance assessment. Stijn has collaborated on several research and policy support projects on sustainable buildings, communities and cities, for clients in Europe and the Middle East. Stijn coordinates the second technical study which supports the European Comission DG Energy in developing the ‘Smart Readiness Indicator’ (SRI) for buildings. He was also involved in the first technical support study as technical lead.

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