Sebastiaan Van Herk, PhD, is Partner & Director at Bax & Company where he leads the Climate & Environment and Data & Smart Cities clusters. He has 17 years of experience in accelerating innovation and international collaborations to create value from science and technology. Since 2004, he has defined, coordinated and delivered R&D, innovation, business and policy projects for various multinational companies and SMEs, national, regional & local governments, and research institutes. These include over 50 European and global collaborative projects with well over €100M in innovation funding, that have guided and mobilised multiple public and private investments in urban and infrastructure projects. His current project portfolio comprises climate adaptation, healthy cities, water and land management, nature-based solutions, liveable cities, the circular economy, sustainable procurement, infrastructure and sustainable construction, smart cities, digital public infrastructure, blockchain, open-source and open data.