Advisory Board

Professor Yong Sik Ok serves as the Chair and Program Director of the Sustainable Waste Management Program for the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU). He also holds the esteemed position of President of the International ESG Association (IESGA). Professor Ok was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher (HCR) in three distinct fields: Environment and Ecology, Engineering, and Biology and Biochemistry for the year 2022. He has an h-index of 160, accompanied by over 20,000 annual citations and a portfolio boasting more than 110 highly cited papers. Professor Ok stands as the most cited scientist in Korea across various disciplines, showcasing his exceptional contributions to research. He maintains an extensive global professional network, serving as Editor-in-Chief of CleanMat (Wiley), a distinguished journal that publishes leading research on UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. Professor Ok serves as the President of the International Society of Trace Element Biogeochemistry (ISTEB).

Francisco Ruiz Allén has a degree in Chemistry and a Master’s in Environmental Engineering and Management. He has a special focus on geochemistry, hydrogeochemistry, chemical analysis, water/soil/waste management, environmental assessment, and closure and remediation. He has 25 years of experience in mining operations and environmental consulting. Throughout his professional career, he has held various positions of responsibility as a metallurgist, laboratory superintendent, and Senior Environmental Manager. As a consultant, he has led multidisciplinary teams and has participated in international teams, which have carried out studies and projects on environmental impacts and remediation for mining and civil works. He has been a member of the International Mine Water Association (IMWA) and the International Association of Geochemistry (IAGC).

Key skills:

• Environmental permitting.
• Impacts on soils, subsoil and waters.
• Environmental geochemistry & hydrochemistry.
• Water / waste management.
• Sampling and analytical techniques for ores, soils and waters.

Innovation Director of Ciuden (Cubillos de Sil, Spain) and Professor in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Seville, US (Spain)

Alberto Gómez-Barea is currently the Innovation Director of Ciuden (Cubillos de Sil, Spain) and a Full Professor in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Seville, US (Spain), where he has lectured Transport Phenomena, Chemical Reactors, Fuel Conversion, Renewable Energy, Environmental Technology and Modelling and Simulation of Energy and Chemical processes for more than two decades.

He has developed international research activities all over the world as a senior researcher and visiting faculty. Recent highlights include a stay as visiting faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA (6 months in 2019), University of Limerick, Ireland (2 months in 2015) and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden (1 year in 2014). He also spent quite some time as PhD student (2004-2005) as well as a Postdoc researcher (from 2006 to 2012) at Chalmers University of Technology. Since December 2022, he has been leading the technical activities of the current program on Green Hydrogen and Energy Storage and CCUS activities in Ciuden.

His areas of expertise include energy conversion and storage, mainly related to renewable energy and CO₂ capture. His research activities over the last 15 years have been focused on the thermochemical conversion of biomass and waste (gasification, pyrolysis and combustion), the synthesis of biofuels and bioproducts, thermochemical biorefineries based on syngas platform, as well as CO₂ capture by oxyfuel combustion in circulating fluidized beds. More recently, he has also been involved in hydrogen and syngas generation from renewable energy, mainly based on high-temperature solar technologies. New developments are based on new schemes using solar calcium looping gasification with solar thermal and PV technologies hybridized with electrolysis.

He advises industrial companies in the energy sector such as Abengoa, Inerco, Cepsa, Total Petrochemical, BP, etc. He heads the research group of solid thermochemical conversion within Bioenergy Group at the US. He has participated in more than 20 Doctoral Thesis and Project Evaluation Committees around the world and has been the president of the doctoral program for the Energy, Chemical and Environmental Doctoral program at US for the last 6 years. He has participated in 3 Frame Program European projects, 11 national public-funded projects and more than 40 R&D contracts with private companies. He has authored 65 papers in SCI (Q1 JCR) journals, several chapters in editor books, and more than 80 communications in international conferences (h-Index Scopus 34). He is part of the Steering Committee in various reputed international conferences (IC) including the IC of Fluidized Bed Conversion, the IC of Fluidized Bed Technology and the IC on Engineering for Waste and Biomass Valorization.

Director General of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG)

Dr. Manzo Daniel Maigari is a public and private sector pioneer, a veterinarian and an agribusiness expert with over 25 years of experience. He served in the private sector until 2015 when he was first appointed as Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry in Kaduna State until 2017, when he was made Commissioner of Commerce, Industry and Tourism. He was reappointed Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry in 2018 where he served until May 2019.

Dr. Manzo became the Director General of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG) at his appointment in October 2019 and operates from the Abuja Head office. He is an alumnus of The Lee Kuan Yew Institute of Public Policy, Singapore, the Business School Netherlands, Harvard, and Ahmadu Bello University Zaria.

He chairs the Nigeria advisory board of Agricultural Policy and Research in Africa (APRA), and is a member of the National Advisory of Advancing Local Dairy Development in Nigeria (ALDDN) and the National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Planning committee put together by the Honorable Minister for Agriculture in 2019.

Dr. Manzo is a member of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement National Action Committee. He has pioneered the establishment of many start-ups in the Agri-space and the creative industry, among which are Agrolog Ltd, an agribusiness company using innovation to pull the indigenous ginger cultivating communities of southern Kaduna out of poverty, and Grey-soft Technology Ltd, an ICT firm.

He is the Project Director of a policy advocacy project for smallholder Farmers under the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This project was introduced to advance agricultural commodity standards and ratings, develop a national integrated agribusiness agenda, and increase the profitability of agribusiness in Nigeria.

Dr. Manzo is also the Program Director for Micro Reforms for African Agribusiness (MIRA) in Nigeria. This program is aimed at strengthening the resolve of the public sector and policy makers for policy and regulatory reforms to attract local and international private sector investors thereby amplifying the efforts of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD).

He has held various leadership positions including:

• Chairman, State Steering Committee on Agricultural Productivity, Processing, Enhancement and Livelihood Support Project (APPEALS).
• Member, State Team Framework for responsive, inclusive and intensive land Agriculture (FRILA)
• Member, NEC Technical Subcommittee on Presidential Enabling Business Environment Committee (PEBEC). To mention but a few.