Tom Pankratz is a Texas-based independent consultant and the editor of the GWI’s weekly Water Desalination Report. He has served as an expert advisor on some of the world’s largest and most technically advanced desalination projects. He has also been appointed to serve on committees by the US National Academy of Sciences, World Health Organization, Middle East Desal Research Center, Australia’s National Center of Excellence in Desalination and Rice University’s Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment systems center. A former vice president of CH2M Hill (now Jacobs), and the director of corporate projects for USFilter/Veolia Water, he has authored several water-related books, and has been the chapter author of numerous others. For the past 17 years, he has organized and moderated Global Water Intelligence’s Technology Idol event, which showcases early-stage desalination technologies. He has also been a judge for the Sheik Zayed Sustainability Prize for Water, the Middle East Desalination Research Center Desalination Research Challenge, the Global Prize for Innovative Desalination, the European Desalination Society’s Balaban Technology Award, and multiple US Department of Energy’s Water Grand Challenge technology competitions, and Bureau of Reclamation Technology Award committees.