The 6^th International Conference on Efficient Water Systems (EWaS6), entitled: “Safeguarding Water & Health in a financially, socially and environmentally fragile era”, is the first scientific conference worldwide to be co-organized by Departments of Engineering and Medicine.

This fact ensures that EWaS6 will serve as a meeting ground, an interactive platform and a catalyst—bringing together for the first time globally, scientists who work with systems governed by the same basic principles and laws of operation, but who typically operate in parallel and in isolation.

It is well known that the natural sciences have greatly benefited from the realization that the systems they study can be analyzed, optimized, and more broadly approached through a seemingly unrelated discipline—bioscience. Genetic algorithms and neural networks are prime examples of how human biology can be utilized for the study of any hydraulic system, and beyond.

The human body is the most advanced hydraulic system in existence, where various types of fluids—both Newtonian and non-Newtonian (water, air, clean blood, “dirty” blood, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid)—flow. It contains the most efficient pump ever created (the heart), the most effective processing and purification systems (kidneys, liver), the most intricate neural network (brain, spinal cord), highly sophisticated airways and compressible air chambers (lungs), and autonomous valves of all kinds (blocking, check valves). On the other hand, medicine has significantly benefited from materials science and valve technologies inspired by mechanical hydraulic systems.

The conference aims to become the space where new interdisciplinary approaches are born, benefiting both fields involved.