Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health

SEGH Membership Secretary & Treasurer

I worked at the British Geological Survey from 1989 on the Geochemical Survey Programme in Wales; then I managed BGS Enquiries until retirement. I joined SEGH in 1990 and with my late husband, Malcolm, organised SEGH1994 conference at BGS, Keyworth and we were heavily involved in SEGH1997 along with Pat O’Connor at the Geological Survey of Ireland in Dublin. I have enjoyed many SEGH conferences since then especially Zambia in 2018.

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.

Michael Watts is Head of Inorganic Geochemistry at the British Geological Survey and is an Associate Professor with the University of Nottingham through the joint Centre for Environmental Geochemistry. His research interests on geochemistry and ‘health’ interactions employs analytical chemistry for research on pollution pathways via ‘natural’ or anthropogenic geochemical sources and mineral nutrient dynamics in soil-crop-human/animal systems. Increasingly the research is multidisciplinary with greater emphasis towards challenges and partnerships in developing countries.

https://www.bgs.ac.uk/staff/profiles/4583.html

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. 

I hold a doctoral degree from the University of Sydney, NSW, Australia and have expertise in environmental and soil chemistry, with interest in carbon accounting and management for constrained ecologies, soil-linked human security, digital agriculture, and teaching in these domains for creating future leaders. Currently, I am working as a Fellow/Field Coordinator at the University of Queensland and liaising with industry and end users for on-site field demonstration for drought resilience. I have been the recipient of Endeavour Award 2015 – CSIRO, in Perth Western Australia and coordinating for Research, Development, and Extension organisations since 2003. I have built excellent connections with international donor/development organisations, not limited to United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO-UN), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Also, I published significant research outcomes in prestigious international journals, FAO-UN’s Technical Manuals and Atlases. I developed four Soil Fertility Atlases for one of the South Asian countries and contributed to developing Soil Atlas of Asia (the first ever Atlas for the region). The Atlases provide a comprehensive account of soil fertility status, soil classification, native best management practices, fertiliser use trends, and yields at farm-gate, with a management strategy. These Atlases are an important tool to promote Sustainable Soil Management and preserve soil health by targeting the public, decision makers, politicians, teachers and even scientists in other disciplines. I have been a Fellow/Casual Academic at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney. I am the focal person of FAO-UN Asian Soil Partnership (since 2017), an Associate Councilor of World Association of Soil and Water Conservation (WASWAC) – 2020-2023, Board Member of the Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health (SEGH), and am the Regional Director of Sustainable Agriculture, Water & Intelligent Ecosystem (UK-based Digital Network). I hold an Adjunct position of Associate Professor at the University of Peshawar, Pakistan. I have been working as a Teacher at TAFE and training community leaders to raise awareness of environmental issues.

Temitope Laniyan had all her university education in Geology at the Department of Geology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She started her working career as an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye in 2006 and rose to the position of Senior Lecturer in September 2018, before moving to the Department of Environmental Health Sciences of the University of Ibadan as an Environmental Geologist/Geo-Health specialist in September 2018. 

Her research activities cover the fields of Environmental/Medical Geology, and Geo-Health issues. She has used her knowledge to proffer solutions to various environmental challenges that affects public health; evaluated soils, waters (surface and ground), vegetables and rocks; by determining their heavy metal contents, bacteriological impact to deduce problems that could harm public health and also proffer various solutions to these problems.

Temitope has concentrated her research works on Environmental Geology in relation to Public health which is basically known as “GeoHealth”. To date, she has successfully supervised, 1 PhD, 9 M.Sc. and over 81 B.Sc. projects. She has to her credit one patent, over forty publications in peer-reviewed journals, books and refereed Conference Proceedings. She has presented several papers in International conferences in Africa and North America.

Temitope is a member of professional societies in Nigeria and Overseas  such as Nigeria Mining and Geosciences Society (NMGS), Nigerian Association of Hydrogeologist (NAH), International Medical Geology Association (IMGA), and International Society of Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE). She is also a member of the Nigerian Awareness and Action for Environmental Health (NINAAFEH), an NGO devoted to Environmental Sustainability.

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.

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. 

Sanja Potgieter-Vermaak is a Senior Lecturer in Analytical Chemistry at Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, UK. She heads the environmental change research group in the Ecology and Environmental Research Centre at MMU. Her research focus is on the health effects of air pollution (using various in-vitro techniques) and she has expertise in the monitoring and chemical characterisation of airborne particles for different geochemical origins, as well as indoor environments. The emphasis is specifically on the inhalable size fraction (using novel techniques e.g. InSEM-Raman) and source apportionment of transition metals. Dr. Potgieter-Vermaak published 91 papers in prestigious journals for e.g. STOTEN, Atmospheric Environment and Environment International. She has been the lead researcher in air pollution monitoring and characterisation projects in Belgium and produced several reports on the findings.

I am an elemental ecologist with broad interests in examining fluxes of elements through biological systems, ranging from molecular up through biogeochemical scales. My work combines controlled experimentation with ecosystem-level observations to examine the effects of supplies of essential and trace elements (termed the ionome) on organismal physiology and life-history, and to see how these responses, in turn, control the cycling of these elements through the biosphere. I am primarily a limnologist interested in connections between water and the land who bridges organismal and ecosystem-level studies using mass balance approaches. I have worked across riverine, pond, lake, and wetland ecosystems and am currently synthesizing work from my first postdoctoral position studying the effects of climate induced changes in ice sheet melt, sediment generation and wind-transport/deposition on lake geochemistry and biological responses in SW Greenland. In my current position, I am studying chemical “Rules of Life,” determining the effects of environmental elemental supplies on the ecology and evolution of a diverse range of aquatic organisms. I have over a decade of experience in measuring nutrient chemistry in aquatic ecosystems and specialize in generating and analyzing multi-elemental data in organisms from microbes up to vertebrates.

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. 

Akinade Shadrach Olatunji obtained a Bachelor of Science (Hons) from the University of Ilorin in Geology and Mineral Science in 1995, Master of Science in Mineral Exploration (Geochemistry Option) in 2000 and Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Geochemistry from the University of Ibadan in 2006. My research focuses on geochemical mapping of the distribution of elemental constituents of environmental and geologic media such as rocks, soils, sediments, road dusts, particulate matter and vegetation in Nigerian cities and urban centres. This has led to the generation of baseline geochemical maps for these several urban centres in Nigeria. The generated maps have become a veritable tool for planning and development of mitigation procedures where contaminations and pollutions have been identified. In addition, an assessment of the suitability of the urban soils and sediments for urban agricultural and gardening is ongoing Dr. Olatunji is a fellow of the Nigerian Association of Hydrogeologists (NAH), where he is serving as the 2nd Vice President, a fellow of the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society (NMGS), where he is a member of Council and the Society’s current General Secretary. He is a registered Geoscientist by the Council of Mining Engineers and Geoscientists. He is currently the General Assembly Chair of the International Medical Geologists Association, Nigeria (IMGA-Nigeria) and a Counselor in the Executive Committee of the International Medical Geology Association. Akinade is currently the President for SEGH.