Adrianus van Haandel has an M.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering from Eindhoven Technical University (1971), a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Cape Town (1981) and did a postdoc at Wageningen University and Research (1991). He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Cornell (2012), Gent (2014), Delft (2016), and Santiago de Compostela (2018). He works as a professor at the Federal University of Campina Grande and has done consulting work in several countries. He is the author of several books on wastewater treatment (activated sludge and anaerobic wastewater treatment).