Plenary Speakers
Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday
Monday
Dr. David Sedlak
Dr. David Sedlak is an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
He received his B.S. in Environmental Science at Cornell University and then went on to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and received his Ph.D. in 1992 in Chemistry, specifically Water Chemistry, with his dissertation titled “Abiotic Oxidation of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)”. After receiving his degree he was a postdoctoral fellow at theSwiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland. In 2003, he received a Fullbright Senior Scholar award and traveled to the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Dr. Sedlak has published over 40 papers on water contaminants, the fate of contaminants in wastewater treatment, and more recently the fate of pharmaceuticals through the wastewater process. He also serves on the editorial board of Environmental Science and Technology and Environmental Technology and is a member of the Drinking Water Committee of the US EPA Science Advisory Board.
Tuesday
Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon
Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at University College, University of Toronto.
He was born in Victoria, British Columbia and received his B.A. in political science from Carleton University in 1980 and his Ph.D. from MIT in international relations and defense and arms control policy in 1989. He then moved to the University of Toronto to lead several research projects studying the links between environmental stress and violence in developing countries. Recently, his research has focused on threats to global security in the 21st century and on how societies adapt to complex economic, ecological, and technological change.
His books include The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (Knopf, Island Press, 2006), which won the 2006 National Business Book Award, The Ingenuity Gap (Knopf, 2000), which won the 2001 Governor General's Non-fiction Award, and Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton University Press, 1999), which won the Caldwell Prize of the American Political Science Association.
He lives in a small town in a rural area outside of Toronto, Canada, with his wife Sarah and son Benjamin.
Wednesday
Dr. Nora Savage
Nora Savage is an environmental engineer with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, DC in the Office of Research and Development. Her focus areas include nanotechnology, pollution prevention and life cycle approaches for emerging technologies. She is one of the Agency representatives on the Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council that implements the activities and strategies of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Other activities include serving as the Vice Chair of one of the Technical Coordinating Committees in the Air & Waste Management Association, involvement in various other technical and scientific organizations, and writing. She has authored or co-authored several articles on nanotechnology in leading journals, including the Journal of Nanoparticle Research and Toxicological Sciences.
Currently, she serves as the lead for the EPA's internal effort to develop a nanotechnology research strategy. Her primary responsibility in this role involves developing opportunities to enable the EPA to continue to protect human health and the environment in a proactive way as nanotechnology and engineered nanomaterials continue to develop and evolve. Efforts to accomplish this goal include coordinating an intramural team established to develop a specific, prioritized research strategy, formulating solicitations for extramural research support that meets current and future Agency policy and regulatory needs; coordinating research priorities and needs with other agencies to ensure critical research gaps are met and duplication avoided; and forming collaborations and liaisons with EPA staff and representatives from other federal agencies, academia and industry to ensure stakeholder concerns are articulated and considered.
Thursday
Dr. Deborah Swackhamer
Dr. Deborah L. Swackhamer is Interim Director of the University of Minnesota’s new Institute on the Environment, and a Professor of Environmental Chemistry in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health. She is on leave from her position as Co-Director of the Water Resources Center. She received a BA in Chemistry from Grinnell College ( Grinnell, IA) and a MS and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Water Chemistry and Limnology & Oceanography, respectively. After two years post-doctoral research in Chemistry and Public & Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, she joined the Minnesota faculty in 1987. She has studied the processes affecting the behavior and fate of persistent toxic chemicals such as PCBs, dioxins, and pesticides in the Great Lakes for the past 20 years, including sediment accumulation, source determinations, water column processes, and foodweb bioaccumulation. Her current research includes projects investigating the bioaccumulation, exposure and impacts of environmental estrogenic chemicals.
Dr. Swackhamer currently serves on the Science Advisory Board and the Board of Scientific Coucilors of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Science Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission of the US and Canada.She also serves on the Advisory Board for the National Undersea Research Program of NOAA for the North Atlantic-Great Lakes region. Dr. Swackhamer was appointed by Governor Pawlenty to serve on the Minnesota Clean Water Council. Dr. Swackhamer is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal Environmental Science & Technology and chairs the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Environmental Monitoring. She was recently named a Fellow in the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK. Dr. Swackhamer received the Harvey G. Rogers Award from the Minnesota Public Health Association in June, 2007.
