Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health

Associate Professor of Hydrogeochemistry and Environmental Geochemistry (2006-Present), at Dep. Earth Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy).

Environmental Advisor (Soil and Water Quality) for many international projects, I study the anthropogenic processes that have significantly influenced the geochemistry of water and soil quality in many regions. 

Potentially toxic element (PTE) contaminations are considered too hazardous because of toxicity, persistence, bioaccumulative behaviour and the risk they pose to human health. Many areas all over the world are data-poor and have poor accessibility. Share these results improved our knowledge of the occurrence of trace elements in soil and in drinking water in all area where water resources play a fundamental role—because of their scarcity—and where the climate is harsh. 

Try to examine the human health risk assessment for the PTEs in drinking water is a challenger even for the European country.

Muhammad Zaffar Hashmi received Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Zhejiang University, China. Currently he is working as Assistant Professor at Department of Chemistry, COMSATS University Islamabad. Dr. Hashmi has research interest to develop treatment technologies to control Environmental and Industrial Pollution; to understand toxicology mechanisms of PCBs and to develop novel methods for monitoring of environmental pollution. Dr. Hashmi is book series editor with Elsevier: Advances in Environmental Pollution Research and Springer: Emerging Contaminants and Associated Treatment Technologies. 2018 Mustafa Science and Technology Foundation Iran awarded KANS Prize (OIC Countries). Dr. Hashmi is Associate Editor with Arabian Journal of Geosciences, Environmental Geochemistry and Health. Dr. Hashmi published 12 Books with Springer and 2 book with Elsevier, 23 book chapters with Springer and 110 research articles with a cumulative impact factor of 450+ and h-index=30. Dr. Hashmi is Member of Pakistan Academy of Sciences and fellow of national and international societies. He has served as Consultant for Indus River Disaster Management Plan in WWF. 

Melina Abdou is an environmental geochemist graduated of an Erasmus Mundus MSc in Marine Environment and Resources and a PhD in Geochemistry and Ecotoxicology. Passionate about aquatic ecosystems, her main research interests are the study of trace element biogeochemical cycles in estuarine and coastal environments. She focuses her research work on emerging trace metals such as platinum and rhodium. She studies these contaminants from the assessment of their emission sources in urbanized coastal areas to their fate in recipient waters including their transfer to wild living organisms (marine algae and bivalves). Accordingly, her work combines field observations in representative European coastal sites to laboratory exposure experiments under controlled conditions. After post-doctoral activities at the University of Geneva, Switzerland and the CIIMAR Research Centre, Portugal, she is now working at the University of Bordeaux, France in research project management.

I am a research environmental geochemist, with an analytical chemistry background. Currently researching “anti-microbial resistance in the real world”, which explores the influence of historical industrial significance and its pollution-related effects on multiple-antimicrobial resistance in bacteria, and how it currently impacts public-, agricultural, and environmental health.

I am incredibly passionate about a “one health” and interdisciplinary approach when tackling environmental research, with a particular focus on anthropogenic pollutants, their movement within earth systems, and this impacts antimicrobial resistance and climate change.

Previous research includes the use of analytical chemistry and speciation methods to aid waste management, water quality and environmental issues. This includes emission abatement, cleaning technologies and process principles including chemical environmental cycles, sustainable resource management, environmental pollution, regulatory testing, environmental impact assessment, soil science, water pollution, and inorganic chemistry.

My experience in analytical chemistry, speciation methods, environmental impact assessment, sustainable resource management, water quality, and soil science, has lent its hand well to my new recent ventures.

I seek to break new ground by synthesising geochemical analytical techniques with microbiological approaches to elucidate the complex interactions within contaminated estuarine ecosystems and subsequent impact on pathogenicity. This includes using interdisciplinary research, combining geochemical analysis with prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbiology, and policy to understand contaminated estuarine ecosystem, and the role they play in the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance. This includes evaluating the environmental impact of pollution on climate change and human pathogen exposure. My work emphasizes biogeochemical monitoring and ecosystem remediation, with particular attention to human and environmental health impacts.

Martin Gaberšek is an environmental geochemist at the Geological Survey of Slovenia. His main research interest is urban geochemistry, with a focus on geochemistry of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in soil, stream sediments, various types of dusts, and solid airborne particulate matter. Important aspect of his research is identification of anthropogenic sources of inorganic particulate matter by using electron microscope techniques. 

Dr Felicia Funmi  Ajayi is a Geoscientist with speciality in the area of Applied/Environmental Geochemistry and Soil Mineralogy. She is a Lecturer at the Department of Geology, University of Ibadan. She graduated from the University of Ibadan with a B.Sc. in Geology in 1998. After graduation, she worked in the industry for some time and returned to the University of Ibadan for an M.Sc. Degree in Mineral Exploration and a Ph.D Degree in Applied/Environmental Geochemistry in the years 2010 and 2019, respectively. While running her Master’s degree progamme, she won the JDA/ADDAX Petroleum and Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF) Postgraduate Scholarships in 2008 and 2009, respectively. She was a University of Ibadan Postgraduate School Scholar from year 2014 to 2016, working as a Research Assistant in the Department of Geology, and was later employed as a Lecturer in the same Department in November,  2016. Felicia is a member of Nigeria Mining and Geosciences Society (NMGS) and an active member of SEGH. Dr Ajayi is an early career researcher who has co-authored a number of articles published in referred journals and conference proceedings, both locally and internationally. Her research work focuses on the geochemical evaluation of wetlands’ quality and functionality. 

Jayanta Kumar Biswas is Full Professor and Ex-Head at the Department of Ecological Studies and International Centre for Ecological Engineering, University of Kalyani, India. He obtained M.Sc. in Zoology, M.Phil. in Ecology and Ph.D. for his work on ecotechnological management of aquatic systems. His spectrum of interdisciplinary research interest and expertise spans the following areas: Soil and water contamination (toxic metals, metalloids and emerging contaminants); Microbial remediation & phytoremediation; Ecological engineering & ecotechnological applications; Ecotoxicology; Environmental microbiology & nanobiotechnology; Sustainability. A consistent rank holder all through his academic career Professor Biswas received many scholarships, awards and fellowships including Fellow, National Institute of Ecology (FNIE); Fellow, West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology (FAScT); Fellow, National Environmentalists Association (FNEA); Fellow, Zoological Society of India (FZSI); Fellow, Zoological Society, Kolkata (FZS); Senior Scientist Award & Gold Medal (ZSI); Best Research Paper Award (AESA); Shrimati Saroma Sanyal Memorial Prize (The Institute of Engineers, India); Outstanding Reviewer Award (Chemosphere (Elsevier) & Environmental Geochemistry and Health (Springer); Senior Research Fellow (ICAR); National Merit Scholarship (MHRD, GoI), etc. He is credited with publishing 7 books and >170 original research papers in reputed international journals. He has editorial affiliations to many journals of international repute: as Associate Editor: Environmental Geochemistry and Health (Springer); Environmental Chemistry Letters (Springer); Ecotoxicology (Springer); Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology (Springer); as Advisory Board Member: Ambio (Springer); Heliyon (Cell Press/Elsevier); iScience (Cell Press/Elsevier); and as Editorial Board Member: Science of the Total Environment (Elsevier); Environmental Technology & Innovation (Elsevier), etc. 

Carlos E. Monteiro holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering and has a background in Oceanography. Currently, he is an integrated researcher in the Environmental Biogeochemistry group at Centro de Química Estrutural (CQE), Instituto Superior Técnico (IST)-University of Lisbon (UL). His work is focused on Environmental Geochemistry and Oceanography. His research is mainly focused on trace element geochemistry in aquatic systems and urban surroundings: sources, distribution and fate, speciation and reactivity, elemental fluxes, bioaccumulation and biotransformation, with a special emphasis on priority pollutants and emerging metallic contaminants mainly from the group of Technology-Critical Elements (TCEs). In addition, his research interests are also focused on the development and/or optimization of proper analytical methods their determination in complex environmental matrices, including the search for green innovative strategies to tackle environmental sample pre-treatment and element analysis.

In the past five years, he has published several articles in reputable international peer-reviewed journals and is the co-author of two book chapters in a volume dedicated to coastal and marine pollution. He has actively participated in the organization of several scientific events, and has disseminated his research work in 35 international/national events, with >50 communications. He has been providing tutorial support to undergraduate students and co-supervising MSc students. Concurrently, he has been actively engaged in collaborating with institutional programmes for scientific dissemination and outreach to a broader audience. 

He has been involved in several competitive national/international projects (e.g., from the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT), Interreg Atlantic Area, EU COST Actions) and within his professional activities he has interacted with more than 100 scientists worldwide.

Faith holds a PhD in Environmental Health (Food Toxicology and Nutrition), Master of Science in Community Nutrition and Bachelor of Science in Environmental Health. Faith has practiced as a Public health officer in the Ministry of Health and is currently a lecturer and Head of Department of Public Health at the School of Health Science, University of Kabianga, Kenya where she teaches, does research and mentorship. She is a registered Public Health Officer and associate Public Health Nutrition expert with Public Health and Technicians Council, Kenya (PHOTC) and Kenya Nutrition and Dietetics Institute,respectively. Her research interests focus on iron and other micronutrients, considering their interactions with toxins and toxicants and how this may impact upon maternal and child health. Understanding these relationships will provide a basis for future health interventions. She has vastly published in referred journals, book and book chapters are also in progress. She has won various grants, awards and fellowships, the most recent being Africa Research Fund, to strengthen health research in Africa.

She has further been a health consultant in various organizations including the Africa Medical Research Foundation (AMREF). 

Faith does community service in maternal and child health and nutrition and this is her greatest passion. Faith reaches out to the community to reduce maternal and child morbidity and mortality through routine community outreaches using community units as a platform. Results of the community interventions carried out in maternal and child health arepublished, disseminated and policy formulated and rolled out to the national and international levels. Faith hopes for zero maternal and child mortality as a result of poor nutrition or disease through research and designing interventions. Faith hopes that she will further translate her current research findings into policies. Faith networks widely in institutions, individuals from different disciplines, backgrounds and nationalities.