On May 26, 2010, Sander Zwart successfully defended his PhD thesis "Benchmarking water productivity in agriculture and the scope for improvement" at the University of Delft. He used remote sensing and modelling to assess the spatial variation of water productivity of wheat at system and global level, and to provide a first explanation for the differences that were found. A water productivity database for the four main crops in the world (wheat, cotton, rice and maize) was established and published in an article that was cited more than 80 times since the end of 2009. SEBAL was applied to assess water productivity at system and regional scale, while the WATPRO model was developed to assess water productivity of wheat at global scale. A number of national news papers, such as the NRC Handelsblad and the Agrarisch Dagblad, paid attention to the main conclusions of Sander his PhD.

Sander started working at WaterWatch directly after his graduation in 2002 from Wageningen University. During his work at WaterWatch he gained a broad experience in integration and analysis of spatial data for regional applications such as water balances, irrigation performance monitoring and evaluation, and water productivity assessment. Sander finished his PhD in his free time while working at WaterWatch. From June 2010 Sander continues his career at the Africa Rice Centre in Benin.