Professor Helmut Rechberger was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Antwerp on March 30, 2022. In his justification for the award, Rector Herman Van Goethem mentioned "his ground-breaking contributions to the development of metrics to evaluate and optimize the sustainability of waste and resource management, and to that end the establishment of the connection between material flow analysis, classical thermodynamics and concepts of information theory, facilitating the transition to a circular economy".

Helmut Rechberger studied process engineering at the Vienna University of Technology and completed his doctorate under Prof.em. Paul H. Brunner, who was also present at the award ceremony in Antwerp. After research years at Yale and ETH Zurich, Rechberger took up what was then the world's first chair for resource management at TU Vienna in 2003. Since 2010, he has headed the Research Unit for Waste and Resource Management at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, and since 2020, the Institute of Water Quality and Resource Management.

Link to the video of the event consisting of masterclass and award ceremony: https://youtu.be/4-D6n7gI4fo, opens an external URL in a new window