Contributors to the Emerging Investigators issue

The contributors to this special Emerging Investigators issue of JEM are profiled below. We couldn't resist asking some of these outstanding up-and-coming environmental scientists the following questions. As you will see their answers make thought-provoking reading:

1. What interested you about this field of research?

2. What are the greatest difficulties you face as a researcher working on environmental issues?

3. In your opinion, what is the most important research question in environmental science?

Roman Ashauer

Roman Ashauer is currently conducting research at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. After studying Geoökologie and Environmental Sciences at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany and Trent University, Canada he joined the EcoChemistry team at the University of York, UK, where he received his PhD in 2007.

Roman Ashauer develops ecotoxicological effect models, with a focus on toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic models. Besides the exciting scientific possibilities offered by a modelling based approach to ecotoxicology, Roman Ashauer is also motivated by the opportunity to create improved tools for risk assessment of chemicals. In 2007 he won the SETAC-CEFIC Innovative Science Award. When he is not in the lab or at the computer, Roman Ashauer enjoys rock climbing in and around the Alps as well as travelling and reading science fiction or autobiographies.

1. At first I was mainly interested in mechanistic effect modelling for fluctuating exposure concentrations. Now I'm more excited about the new possibilities that TKTD modelling offers as a conceptual framework. We can investigate systematically why species differ in their sensitivities and also get a better grip on predicting toxicity of untested compounds.

2. The greatest difficulty is one that is not specific to environmental issues: how to carry out research on “big questions”, which require a longer time horizon to investigate, when positions for researchers are mostly non-permanent.

3. What are the effects of exposure to many micropollutants for long durations, especially considering that we know nearly nothing about the response of the majority of organisms to chemical pollution?

Elza Bontempi

Elza Bontempi received her PhD in Material Science in 2001. From 2005 she has been Associate Professor of Fundamental Chemistry at the University of Brescia. Her environmental research activity is mainly focussed on the development of new techniques for heavy metals analysis and entrapment. For this purpose she is responsible for the Brescia University of COSMOS (LIFE08 ENV/IT/000434) project (http://www.cosmos.csmt.eu) concerning stabilization of heavy metals contained in fly ash. She is author of more than 110 refereed research papers (ISI source) including 3 reviews articles, and more than 200 conference presentations at national and international level. Elza has authored two patents related to the environment: one concerning a new method for metals entrapment and one regarding a new technology for air particulate matter filter analysis. Elza's photo shows her wearing a jewel made in COSMOS recycled inert.

1. My interest is mainly devoted to the possibility of exporting some of my experiences developed during my research to the environmental field. For example in my laboratory a new promising procedure for air particulate matter filter analysis, based on total reflection X-ray fluorescence (a technique originally developed for chemical analysis of semiconductors and thin layers) was developed. This methodology is much more sustainable than the standard ones.

2. In my opinion, many people working in the environmental field are not so open to new technologies. For example researchers working in materials science often prefer to use standardized techniques for contingencies, rather than to pioneer new methodologies.

3. It is very difficult to answer this question, because each field of environment science is fundamental. Moreover, at this particular moment, I think that science has the duty of pushing humans to reduce consumption of natural resources in order to preserve our world. For this aim scientists have to work not only to develop new technologies, but also to increase the social acceptance of their work.

Scott Carver

Scott Carver is a disease ecologist with broad interests in environmental determinants (natural and anthropogenic) of pathogen transmission. He has undertaken his research on a range of zoonotic and wildlife pathogens in New Zealand, Australia and North America. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University studying a suite of pathogens that occur in wild felids (some of which also infect humans), and how prevalence of these pathogens are influenced by urban development and cross species transmission from domestic cats.

1. My interest in this field developed around a desire to understand how environmental and ecosystem health can be influenced by humans and, conversely how human wellbeing is deeply connected to environmental and ecosystem health.

2. Arguably the most challenging aspect of working on the environmental issues, zoonoses and health is disentangling the complexity of links between candidate environmental variables and attributing causality in pathogen transmission.

3. Given increasing dominance of humans over many of the earth's ecosystems, changes in climate and the rise in emergent pathogens, it is important for scientists to ask under what situations are environmental changes likely to manifest in undesirable changes in ecological states; such as changes in biodiversity, health, and other ecosystem services.

David M. Cwiertny

David M. Cwiertny is an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Riverside. He holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and a BS in Environmental Engineering Science with a Minor in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the faculty at UC Riverside, he conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Iowa in a joint appointment between the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Chemistry. His research focuses on the fate of pollutants in natural and engineered aquatic systems and the development of innovative, materials-based strategies for the advanced treatment of water and wastewater.

1. My interest in the field of water and wastewater treatment stems from society's growing need for reliable and efficient strategies that promote water sustainability through reclamation and reuse. Current water supplies are challenged by a growing population, stressors from global climate change, and both traditional and emerging pollutant classes. These challenges motivate my research group to conduct work focusing on the optimization of traditional treatment approaches and the development of new technologies that may one day enable an increased reliance on reuse practices.

2. “Scale-up” is certainly a challenge. It requires a great deal of effort to make results obtained at the bench-scale in a laboratory meaningful for much larger, full-scale engineered systems, and even then you can still fall short. Similarly, it can be difficult to find the appropriate research balance between the need for fundamental understanding of process mechanisms and an appreciation for practical aspects of an optimized engineering application. These issues are further complicated by the diverse nature of multi-component, “real-world” environmental systems.

3. As a community, we must address how to develop safe, clean, and long-lasting drinking water supplies that are accessible to all populations around the globe. This must be done in a manner that utilizes appropriate technologies for specific communities, and does not compromise environmental quality or quality of life.

Martin Elsner

Martin Elsner received his Diploma and PhD from ETH Zürich, Switzerland. He became fascinated by stable isotope studies when conducting his PhD with Professors René Schwarzenbach and Stefan Haderlein at EAWAG, and subsequently, working for two years as a DFG postdoctoral fellow with Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar at the University of Toronto, Canada. In January 2006 he became Helmholtz Junior Research Group Leader in the Institute of Groundwater Ecology at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany. His research group uses stable isotope fractionation to study environmental transformation reactions of organic contaminants, with a particular focus on pesticides and chlorinated hydrocarbons.

1. I was excited to discover that stable isotope analysis of organic contaminants can tell us the story about how these compounds are naturally degraded. Changes in isotope ratios are like a footprint of the degradation reaction that is imprinted in the remaining contaminant fraction. Coined by the kinetic isotope effect of the underlying transformation mechanism, this isotopic information is just waiting to be read. This approach – using isotopes as “spies” to tell us how their contaminant has been degraded – immediately struck me as a very powerful approach, one of the most innovative and exciting recent developments in environmental chemistry.

2. While environmental research receives support in Germany and is regarded as important by the public, environmental problems are often greatest in developing countries. To establish fruitful collaborations with researchers from those countries, I find that different cultural backgrounds and different levels of education need to be overcome. For this, I have not yet found the right channels and got to know the right people.

3. I find that our greatest challenge is the sustainable use of our natural resources – only this will allow us to accommodate the world's population of future generations. Although the focus is currently on energy, water may be an even more important and, potentially, scarcer resource in the future. I expect that every aspect related to water use will be essential to tackle this enormous challenge: research on groundwater contamination, groundwater quality (including groundwater ecology), wastewater and drinking water treatment, water reuse and innovative water use concepts.

Kathrin Fenner

Kathrin Fenner is a senior scientist at Eawag and lecturer in Environmental Chemistry at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. She graduated in Physical Chemistry from the University of Zurich in 1997. Between 1997 and 2001, she carried out her PhD thesis in the area of chemical risk assessment at ETH Zürich. From 2002–2010 she held a position as assistant professor (“Oberassistentin”) at ETH Zürich/Eawag in the research group of René Schwarzenbach. The goal of her research is to develop improved methods for chemical risk assessment with a specific focus on the prediction of biotransformation rates, transformation products and their fate in the environment. In her research, she combines statistical and process modeling with targeted laboratory and field studies and modern analytical methods to study biotransformation as a function of chemical structure and environmental conditions.

1. Developing improved methods to assess the risk of chemicals in the environment, and in doing so find the right balance between state-of-the-art science and practicality.

2. Obtaining funding for applied research from research agencies that mostly fund fundamental research.

3. What is the optimal level of detail versus simplification in which inherently complex environmental processes/systems should be studied to provide robust, but also timely scientific evidence to support environmental policy making and risk management?

Tamar Kohn

Tamar Kohn is an Assistant Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), where she heads the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory. Her research goal is to understand and exploit natural processes that lead to improved water quality in natural and engineered surface water systems. She is particularly interested in the sunlight-mediated oxidation of micropollutants and waterborne viruses. Prior to her position at EPFL, Tamar obtained an MSc from ETH Zurich in Environmental Sciences (1999), a PhD from Johns Hopkins University (2004), and she was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley until 2006.

1. My motivation to do research in the field of water quality and treatment arises from the fact that this topic is both scientifically challenging and highly relevant to society and the environment. We are in a privileged position to work on pressing and interesting problems using exciting science.

2. Because environmental systems are often poorly characterized and very complex, it is difficult to formulate scientific statements that are universally valid. Moving from a single-system, single-condition approach to generally applicable scientific principles is a very challenging aspect of environmental science.

3. Our ability to create and maintain access to chemically and microbially safe water is one of the most relevant research areas in environmental sciences and engineering. Great progress has been made toward novel water treatment solutions using high-end methods. However, much more work is needed to ensure good water quality at reasonable cost, using approaches that are accessible to a larger segment of the world's population.

Tonni Agustiono Kurniawan

Presently Tonni Agustiono Kurniawan is a Marie Curie experienced researcher at University of Eastern Finland (UEF). He completed his BSc at Bogor Institute of Agriculture (Indonesia) in 1998. In 2001 he was awarded the Asian Development Bank Scholarship to pursue his MSc degree in Environmental Technology at Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology of Thammasat University (Thailand). When reading for his PhD at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2004–2007), he applied a number of environmental technologies to remove refractory contaminants from leachate from local landfills. His PhD project studied local water pollution problems partly caused by the generation of leachate.

1. We are interested in the field of landfill management for a number of reasons. As we know, landfill is one of the most widely employed methods for the disposal of municipal solid waste around the world. Landfill solid waste generates not only greenhouse gases (CO₂ and CH₄) that contribute to global warming, but also landfill leachate that causes contamination in the aquatic environment. Unless immediately tackled, these environmental problems will de-rail our progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goals.

2. As the applications of nanotechnology for environmental remediation have gradually changed the world, this technology has already started to affect our lives. However, much work still needs to be conducted in developing nanomaterials universally suitable for leachate treatment. To synthesize nano-adsorbents applicable for removing refractory compounds from leachate, chemical analysis on their functional groups need to be undertaken first to assist the manipulation of their molecular structures during synthesis that would enable them to be reactive when deployed in ex-situ slurry reactors. In addition, analytical methods are relatively limited in identifying various target compounds in leachate. The complexity of leachate may reduce the possibility of identifying a number of contaminants, as overlapping peaks will become the main concern.

3. Safe and clean water is a key strategic resource and asset that needs to be protected as a basis of a healthy society and a thriving economy. However, it is difficult to balance between the world's economic growth and environmental protection. As economic growth is intrinsically linked to clean and protected environment, the most important research question in environmental science is ‘how to attain a win-win goal of economic growth and natural conservation/environmental protection without sacrificing either in the battle against global water pollution.’ Both need to be tackled in concert to address an increasingly globalized economy. To achieve a sustainable green economy in the long-term, environmental protection should not be regarded as an obstacle, but as a tangible contribution to facilitate economic development.

Jonathan Martin

Jonathan Martin trained as a toxicologist and environmental analytical chemist at the University of Guelph (PhD) and the University of Toronto (Postdoctoral), and is now an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta. His research program focuses on developing analytical methods in support of hypothesis-driven environmental fate studies of emerging persistent contaminants. Current trainees are working on projects relating to detoxification of oil sands process water, or sources of perfluorinated compounds. All co-authors of his review article in this issue are PhD students in his group.

1. Perfluorinated acids are the most environmentally persistent chemicals I know of, and they seem to break all the traditional rules of environmental chemistry. Since they are also among the most prominent contaminants in humans and wildlife, understanding where they come from, where they go, where they end up, or what toxicological effect(s) they might have, are all highly relevant topics… even my Mom thinks it's interesting!

2. My greatest difficulties are not so much in the “doing” of the science, but rather in the translation of the results to real world influence. As an environmental chemist it is most rewarding when your data influences public policy, but more often than not the science will take a back seat to economics, domestic politics, or international diplomatic negotiations. Keeping these external pressures in mind is difficult when communicating the science, but by ignoring them we may risk having the science thrown off the bus entirely. Maybe the back seat ain't so bad.

3. Most environmental chemists are guilty of tackling one chemical, or one chemical class, at a time. This is the natural tendency because chemicals are also regulated in this way. However, human and wildlife exposure occurs to a complex mixture of contaminants at the same time. I give a lecture every year in the area of developmental toxicology, and having recently become a father I must say I think often about how the real-world chemical soup might have adverse effects on the delicate process of human development. Even though the effects might be subtle, they will likely be irreversible and could take a generation to overcome.

Haruhiko Nakata

Haruhiko Nakata studied Environmental Chemistry at the Graduate School of Agriculture, Ehime University for 6 years (1992–1998) under the supervision of Professors Ryo Tatsukawa and Shinsuke Tanabe. He analyzed persistent organic pollutants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organoclorine pesticides in Baikal seals collected from Lake Baikal, Russia. The results were summarized in several publications including his PhD thesis. In 1998 Haruhiko moved to Kumamoto University as an assistant professor, and now he teaches five classes of ‘Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology’ as an Associate Professor. During 2002 and 2004 he stayed at Michigan State University and the State University of New York at Albany, USA under the supervision of Professors John P. Giesy and Kurunthachalam Kannan as a visiting scientist.

1. My interest is to find the emerging contaminants which are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic in the environment. I would like to provide important environmental issues of emerging pollutants, such as the status of contamination, geographical distribution, temporal trend, and source identification in order to control and manage these compounds.

2. Sample collection. In order to understand the bioaccumulation profiles of emerging chemicals, I have collected many species of marine organisms, such as bivalves, crustaceans, fish, birds and mammals. Most of the difficulties in sampling are in collecting marine mammals because these animals cannot be collected easily. Therefore, it is very important to keep good relationships with domestic fisherman and government officers in order to be informed to be notified of accidental catches by fishing nets of marine mammals.

3. Unfortunately, I have no clear answer for this question now. I would like to find the answer to this question in my future research.

Thomas G. Preuss

Thomas G Preuß received his diploma (2001) from the University of Tübingen and his PhD (Ecotoxicology, 2006) from RWTH Aachen University. His dissertation was awarded the best dissertation by the SETAC-GLB, and received the Borchers plaquette by RWTH Aachen University. Since 2007 Thomas has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at RWTH Aachen University (Institute of Environmental Research). His research has been focussed on the prediction of effects from anthropogenic stressors on biological systems by developing simulation models covering all levels of biological organization. He is chair of the SETAC advisory group “Mechanistic effect models for environmental risk assessment”.

1. Ecological risk assessment has to be based on scientific knowledge. To a great extent knowledge gaps exist in assessment and extrapolation of effects measured on the individual level to populations and communities. This is due to the complexity emerging from interactions of individuals and populations and how this complexity with several feedback loops changes the behavior of biological systems under chemical stress. Complex models, especially individually-based population models, reflect this complexity and make it possible to detect what patterns emerge directly from the interactions of the individuals. For these questions toxicants with different mechanisms of action provide a great opportunity to investigate the relevance of different kinds of effects on the population level. As a final outcome a tool is provided to forecast effects of chemical stressors on populations and communities.

2. Environmental science has been split up into several disciplines, which now coexist mainly side by side. But multidisciplinarity is essential to capture the most relevant questions in environmental science. Currently multidisciplinarity is hindered by separation of the scientific communities, differences in terminology and also still by limited funding opportunities in this field.

3. In my opinion the challenge in environmental science is to understand how several multiple stressors (e.g. pesticides, endocrine disruptors, changing environmental conditions, for example due to climate change or land use) together will affect populations and ecosystems in order to maintain not only the ecosystem function, but also the biodiversity of the ecosystems. Therefore it is essential to understand how effects which we measure at standardized optimal conditions on the individual level can be extrapolated to populations and communities under variable non-optimal conditions in the field.

Tanja Schwerdtle

Tanja Schwerdtle is Full Professor for Food Chemistry at the University of Münster. Tanja studied Food Chemistry and received her PhD in 2002 from the Institute of Food Chemistry and Toxicology/University of Karlsruhe. She is Vice-President of the Gesellschaft für Umwelt-Mutationsforschung e.V. (GUM) and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Society on Minerals and Trace Elements (GMS). Her main areas of research include toxicological, biochemical and analytical investigations on the molecular mechanisms behind the neurotoxicity and carcinogenicity of metal compounds, with a special focus on arsenic, cadmium, manganese and mercury compounds.

1. The field of metal toxicology is absolutely fascinating to me. Many metals, including the trace elements, are on the one hand essential but on the other hand strongly toxic. Other metals, like arsenic, are strongly carcinogenic, however the underlying mechanisms are still not understood.

2. The combination of toxicological testing with speciation analysis to achieve an adequate risk assessment for the respective substance.

3. I am absolutely not sure about this.

Hidetaka Takigami

Hidetaka Takigami was born in Japan in 1970. He studied at the Faculty of Engineering in Kyoto University where he obtained his PhD in 1998. He was postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) in Tsukuba, Japan (2000–2001), researcher and then senior researcher (2001–2009). At present Hidetaka is Chief of the Substance and Material Management Section, Research Center for Material Cycles and Waste Management at NIES. His speciality is Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry especially with regard to persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

1. The complexity of the chemical world: chemistry provides a basis to biology. It was the interaction between chemicals and living things in the environment that mostly attracted me.

2. I sometimes feel that we are a long way away from seeing our (subdivided) research findings reaching a final solution. Integration of multiple disciplines is very important, but I sometimes feel that there is a barrier (difference in culture) between each field of study.

3. Is it really possible to build a sustainable society in the world? Are we really sufficiently sensible and future-oriented?

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