 Hello everyone welcome to the 40th Friday, I am happy to be your moderator for today, so today we are going to have a nice conversation with a young water professional from Denmark and I know you are going to enjoy it so just stay tuned. I am Jacobo Mengo, I am from Ghana, I work with the Ghana Water Company Limited as an assistant water quality assurance officer and I am studying remotely at the University of Calgary, I am studying a master of science in civil engineering with specialisation in environmental engineering. Thank you and stay tuned for the rest of the interview. So our guest for today's 45th day is Dr. Ines Breather, she works as a product and process manager at Sehoko Yuo Water, a ground force company, she has an industrial PhD and she is passionate about data science and international collaborations. She is also a board member and treasurer of the International Water Association, the young water professionals in Denmark. She is also a board member of the IW specialist group on design, operation and management of drinking water treatment systems. Welcome Dr. Ines Breather. Hi Jacob and please don't say doctor again. Just say Ines, I am fine with that Sehoko. That is fine, you work for it so I will continue saying it. Okay, so today we are going to have a nice conversation with you for you to give us more insight into your journey in the water industry. So I know that you are originally from Portugal but now you are living in Denmark. So how did that happen? Well it's actually a very interesting story because I basically had someone who believed in me and offered me an opportunity. I finished a master in civil engineering in Portugal and then I did some studies in Denmark and I went back to Portugal and it was very difficult to find a job at that time. I was doing some preparation of kids for exams and things like that but I couldn't find a job in my field. And then I contacted an old professor from the university here in Denmark and he gave me the opportunity for a job position of three months. And it was a bit hard at that time because I had around 60 students and I was in doubt of what would be the right thing to do. But I decided to grab my things and go for a three month position for a water chemistry research group and that's how everything started. Wow, that's interesting. It's nice to know how you are able to use your network to figure out the challenges that you find yourself in at a particular time. So that is really wonderful. And you did an industrial PhD. How different is that from the normal PhD that we know? Well, an industrial PhD requires a different mindset and a bit more, I would say, resilience towards the translation of knowledge between these two worlds. So in an academic PhD, your focus is on academic research. You have fundamental research behind it. You probably spend a lot of time in the lab in my case because it was chemistry and bioscience. And when you add the industrial partner, you certainly have very practical questions or the need of showing that your hypothesis or your results will work in a full scale unit and setting. So that's the first difference. The second one is that you find yourself reading much more research that is applied research and there's sometimes difficulties between academic journals that have academic research behind it or applied research that there are journals that are okay with publishing applied research. And for me, it came to a point where I could see that there was also a different way that students would get perceived by where they publish published and that that didn't fit well with me. So, for example, I could find some industrial PhD students that were having troubles in publishing their research because they couldn't find a good enough journal, they would say, for academic journal that would accept industrial data. And then on the other side, it was more difficult for them sometimes with the industrial partners to publish data that the industrial partner was okay with publishing as well. So there's advantages because you fully immerse in this transition of knowledge, but there's also some challenges with you have to publish three or four papers before you can get your PhD degree and it can be challenging to find where to publish. Okay, that is nice. So, would you recommend a lot of people going to industrial PhD? Yeah, definitely in the water sector. I don't know if you had a follow up on that, but for me it was clear that in the setting that we are today, the need for publishing more applied research is immense and making journals accessible and open access is also very important. One thing that, for example, IWA has done a lot right so all journals under IWA publishing are now open access and that means that me that now that I'm sitting in the industry, I can easily access to the latest research regarding water and that makes my job easier to translate that knowledge into practice. That is great. So, tell me, after studying an industrial PhD, how do you apply it to your work in your water? Yeah, so at IWA I'm sitting as a product and process manager and so that means that I'm responsible for a technology that includes several products and then I'm responsible to understand how it works, how the sales departments are perceiving it and what they know about it. If service teams have any feedback on the performance of that product and then of course if looking at the horizons or different markets, how should that product be developed. So that means that I have to not only continue to develop this skill of translating knowledge from different people and different groups of people, but also with being very close to what are the current challenges across the globe. And what is the latest technology telling me so I can apply it directly to the product? That sounds like an interesting job. I'm sure a lot of people will like to do that so I just advise you to do more of an industrial PhD so that you can have nice roles to work in. How is your everyday life? My everyday life, well, I wake up around 5.45, now I'm working from home currently so I actually go for a walk for like half an hour, one hour and then I start working. I usually like to start around 7 and then I will have half an hour of my day to go through emails and then I have no notifications of my emails so that's the time that I have. And then I go through my work and that can be for example, checking if I have any pilot setups running, checking how they are doing, replying to troubleshooting cases, having meetings with cases that are not working or helping design some processes. Or I'm also pretty involved with the young world of professionals so sometimes I also have meetings on that sense, on that direction to try to include and expand the network here in Denmark. Then I will leave work around 3-4 usually and then I will just enjoy the afternoon with friends or dancing or learning a new language. Now I'm working on my Danish or reading a book, I'm in a book club as well. And then for now also in the engineers.org and so all the side projects that come in, you know what it is. And then I usually go to bed around, let's say, 10.30. Wow, that is a nice lineup of activities. And I'm very happy to know that young world of professionals have placed an important role in your everyday life. And I would advise everyone to also do the same because that is the only way that we can make contributions to the water industry as young people. So well done on that. Well, I would like to know two fun facts about you that your colleagues don't know. My colleagues don't definitely do not know that I dance human salsa, they don't know that. And they do not know that I know how to sail. They also don't know that. That is very interesting. I think I have to learn some of these things. Do you have principles or core values that guide your work in the industry? I think you touched upon a topic that is very important to me. And it was one of the reasons why I decided to be in the industry. For me, the core value is responsibility and responsible business in the water sector. And it was difficult. I didn't know if I could find that in the industry. I don't know. And when I started to look for jobs here in Denmark, I had meetings with several people from different companies to try to understand how they do business in the water sector. And I have to say that after a couple of conversations with the other time CEO of my company of the water, it was clear that I could trust how this specific company was doing business. And it was very simple. I just, you know, I did very sincere questions without being afraid of what the answer would be. For example, at that time, and this was beginning of 2019, I questioned their mission statement, the mission statement of the company. And that was because at the time everyone was talking about the SDGs. And a lot of water companies would include the SDGs in their own mission statement. And I asked the CEO at the time, why don't we have that as well? Why don't we showcase ourselves as a company that is working towards that goal? And his answer was, well, we were here before the SDGs and we will be here after the SDGs. That's the first thing. And the second thing is that if you read our mission statement, you can see that we are in alignment with the SDGs. So there's no need to change it. And that was very important to me because I felt that there was also a lot of, at that time, I don't know if now it's that frequent, but at that time there were a lot of companies that would showcase them or include the SDGs in their mission statements, kind of as a marketing tool, more than a strategy that was in the company and that was actually driving the energy and the plans of the company. So yeah, I was very happy about that. That's just an example of one of the ways that you can understand the company that you're working for. So I could see that the company was responsible and that was my core value and I could trust in it. In the end of the day, we put many hours of work for the company and we are helping the company to progress. And if we don't believe in it, for me it's just very difficult to spend that time and that energy. And I know I'm talking from a privileged position because I know that not everyone has the opportunity to choose who to work for. I know what it is. I was unemployed for many years and looking for any job that was given to me. But I do think that in those cases we can also start to make some change in different ways. That is very, very nice. I actually like the fact that you were proactive. You asked questions when you did understand certain things or you thought the way against your core values. And I think that is what we young professionals need to do. We don't need to be shy. We need to be bold to ask the difficult questions in order to understand what we are doing. So that our contributions can come out well because we know that we are not doing something that we don't want to do. So that is really nice. Yes, so you've told us about your work. You've told us about your fan side, your dance and all of that. So what song would you say will sum you up? I think that the song that would sum you up would be Don't Stop Me Now by the King. Wow. I think my audience are yearning to hear you sing it. Don't Stop Me Now by the King. Do you know how it starts? No, I'm bad with singing, I'm bad with music. That was not my question. You have to sing with me the chorus and then we can make it. Okay. So you just have to say Don't Stop Me Now and I will go for the rest. Don't Stop Me Now. I'm having such a good time. I'm having a ball. Don't Stop Me Now. If you want to have a good time, just give me a call. Don't Stop Me Now. You know the song. Thank you very much Ines for this time with you giving us insight into your water journey and then telling us the fan side of you so that we know that we are not always thinking about water that you also spend time during your leisure doing other things that make you happy. So thank you very much and thank you my audience for staying tuned and I know that you've learnt a lot. Keep staying tuned and then just watch out for the next 45 day interview. Thank you. Thank you Jacob. Bye. Thank you Ines.