He studied Civil Engineering at the TU Braunschweig, Germany, worked as a post doc for 1 year at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. Until his retirement in 2008  he was Director of the Institute of Waste Resources Management at the Hamburg University of Technology, Germany. He is one of the prominent researchers in the field of waste management and provided in particular fundamental scientific contributions on sustainable landfilling, in-situ aeration of landfills, anaerobic digestion, composting and treatment of contaminated soil. He coordinated several international and national research projects, held WM courses in Bangkok and Padova, Italy and became in 2006 Visiting Professor at Institute of Technologies and Applied Science in Havanna,  Kuba. From 2009 until 2011 he was director of the R3C Research Center at the Nanyang University of Technology, Singapore. He is co-organiser of several national and international conferences and has published more than 300 scientific papers and co-edited 8 books. He was the co-founder and chairman of IWWG (International Waste Working Group) and received in 2009 the award “A Life for Waste”. In 2019 he became Honorable Doctor at the Technical University of Crete. He is partner in the Consultancy “Prof. Stegmann and Partners” in Hamburg, Germany.

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