Peter Kelemen is Arthur D. Storke Professor of Geochemistry at Columbia University, where he moved in 2004 after 17 years at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Hegraduated from Dartmouth College in 1980, and received hisMSc and PhD (1987) from the University of Washington in Seattle. Kelemen’sresearch focused for many years on chemical and physical processes duringreactive transport of magma in the Earth’s mantle and lower crust (“theplumbing system of volcanoes”), and how this affects the composition andstructure of oceanic, volcanic arc, and continental crust. In recent years, hehas also been studying the evolution of continental upper mantle, the role ofdensity instabilities on crustal evolution, the deeper parts of earthquakes, andreactive transport of low-temperature fluid through mantle peridotites. Inaddition to his research work, Kelemen was a founding partner of DihedralExploration, consultants specializing in “extreme terrain mineral exploration” inBC, Alaska, and Greenland from 1980-1992, and has taken part in severalmountaineering expeditions in Peru, India, and Pakistan.
James A. Davis is a Senior Research Geochemist/Engineer at the U. S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, CA, directing field and laboratory research on chemical reactions at the mineral-water interface and the transport of metal contaminants and radionuclides in groundwater. His research has examined geochemical processes at multiple scales, from molecular-scale studies by X-ray absorption spectroscopy to large field-scale investigations. Other research interests include carbonate chemistry, permeable reactive barriers for groundwater remediation, spectroscopic characterization of amorphous mineral phases and contaminants at mineral surfaces, and the spatial variability of hydrologic and geochemical properties in aquifers.
Josep (Pep) Canadel is the Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project (GCP), whose scientific goal is to develop a complete picture of the global carbon cycle, including biophysical and human dimensions and their interactions. Pep has authored many influential papers on carbon exchanges, storage management, and dynamics in terrestrial systems. In 2007, Pep was a member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Fourth Assessment Report) that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Dr. Rod Ewing is the Donald R. Peacor Collegiate Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Michigan. He has faculty appointments in the Departments of Nuclear Engineering &Radiological Sciences and Materials Science & Engineering, and is an Emeritus Regents’ Professor at the University of New Mexico, where he was a member of the faculty from 1974 to 1997. Ewing is the author or co-author of over 600 research publications and the editor or coeditor of 14 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals. He has been granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of excess weapons plutonium. He is a founding Editor of the magazine, Elements. He has received the Hawley Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada in 1997 and 2002, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of Americain 2006 and the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006 and a Honorary Doctorate from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2007.
Laurent Charlet is a Distinguished Professor, Universite Joseph Fourier Grenoble I in France, and an expert in contaminant geochemistry, particularly with respect to arsenic and selenium. Author of more than 120 publications, his research encompasses both molecular-scale modeling and field-scale descriptions of hydrogeology and contaminant availability. He has established research and education programs in Laos and Cambodia. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Hydrology, and manager of several French and EU research initiatives. In 2007, Laurent received the CNRS Silver Medal, one of France’s highest research honors.
Who:Jerry Schnoor, Allen S. Henry Chair in Engineering and the Co-Director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, University of Iowa
Professor Jerry Schnoor is the Allen S. Henry Chair in Engineering and the Co-Director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa. Jerry is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (elected in 1999) for his research using mathematical models in science policy decisions. He chaired the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ORD Board of Scientific Counselors, 2000-2004, and is a member of EPA’s Science Advisory Board and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences (NAEHS) Council. Schnoor is considered one of the founding fathers of phytoremediation, using plants to help clean the environment. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the leading international environmental journal, Environmental Science and Technology, and his other research interests include water quality modeling, environmental observatories, sustainability, and global change.
Martin F. Polz is an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is an environmental microbiologist and received his Masters and Ph.D. from Harvard University where he also conducted his postdoctoral research. His research group at MIT studies the dynamics that govern microbes’ interactions and evolution to understand the role of individual populations within the community, the range of genomic similarity that defines a functional unit, and what mechanisms govern diversification of microbial populations in the environment. His research group addresses these questions using a combination of quantitative molecular approaches, genomics, physiology and modeling. He is an editor of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews and among his many honors and awards are the Anna Vaughn Foundation Fellowship, the Gilbert Winslow Career Development Chair and the Doherty Professorship in Ocean Utilization.
Alfred M. Spormann is a Professor at Stanford University in the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, and (by courtesy) Biological Sciences and Geological & Environmental Sciences. He is a microbial physiologist and biochemist who received his Ph.D. from the Philipps-University, (Marburg, Germany) and conducted postdoctoral research in the Departments of Biochemistry at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) and Stanford University. Among his honors and awards are the Otto Moensted Visiting Professorship (2003; Danish Technical University, Lyngby, DK), the Charles Lee Powell Foundation Research Award (2000-2002), an NSF CAREER award (1998), and a Terman Fellowship Award (1995; Stanford University). He is an editor of Applied and Environmental Microbiology and Archives of Microbiology and has served on several editorial boards and committees (including Annual Review of Microbiology). Currently, he is the director of the Hopkins Microbiology Course (Pacific Grove, CA), and was director of the Stanford Biofilm Research Center and co-director of the Microbial Diversity Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.
Kevin Rosso is a Staff Scientist and an Associate Director in the Chemical and Materials Sciences Division at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and in the Environmental Dynamics and Simulation Directorate, Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at PNNL. Dr. Rosso’s research is centered on elucidating the relationships between the atomic and electronic structure of crystalline materials with their reactivity and physical properties, particularly at interfaces, using various concepts and tools of surface science, chemistry, solid state physics, and crystal chemistry. His recent research is focused on unraveling rates and mechanisms of biogeochemical electron transfer towards a better understanding of subsurface contaminant transport. Dr. Rosso has published 80 peer-reviewed publications and several book chapters on various molecular-scale aspects of mineral/water and mineral/microbe interface chemistry.
Eldad Haber is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Emory University. He received his Ph.D in Geophysics and Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia (1997), working with Doug Oldenburg, followed by postdoctoral research in Computer Science with Uri Ascher. Since 2002, he has been on the faculty at Emory. His current research focuses on the field of scientific computing, with projects investigating computational inverse theory, computational electromagnetics, and medical image registration.
