Awards Presented at the SETAC Europe Annual Meeting in Rome
Michelle Bloor, SETAC Europe Awards Chair, and Annegaaike Leopold, SETAC Europe Awards Immediate Past Chair
Award recipients pause during the opening ceremony at SETAC Rome.
It was a pleasure and an honor for Annegaaike Leopold to present this year’s SETAC Europe and Global awards to young and senior scientists during the opening ceremony of the SETAC Europe 28th Annual Meeting. The Awards Committee worked hard to evaluate all the nominations and felt fortunate to be able to experience the sense of joy and pride that was expressed by all of the award winners. We will take this opportunity to thank all the nominees and nominators for their work, and we look forward to having even more nominations to choose from next year. We have followed the order in which the awards were presented during the ceremony in the following listing of awards.
The 2018 Rifcon Best Publication Award went to Mélanie Douziech for her work on “Quantifying variability in removal efficiencies of chemicals in activated sludge wastewater treatment plants – a meta-analytical approach” at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The award was presented by Michael Faupel of Rifcon.
The SETAC Europe LCA Young Scientist Award, sponsored by Lenzing and Springer Nature, went to Rickard Arvidson from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Arvidson was recognized for his outstanding contribution for advancing the life cycle assessment (LCA) of emerging technologies, especially in the form of a methodological paper for prospective LCA, which presents empirical evidence gathered over a series of case studies. The resulting definitions and recommendations are considered instrumental for future research and the practical application of prospective LCA for emerging technologies, where the production scale and future changes in background systems are crucial elements.
The SETAC Europe/EDANA Award for Lifetime Achievement in LCA is conferred biannually. This year, the award was presented by Gil Stevens (EDANA) to Michael Hauschild of the Technical University of Denmark. Hauschild is widely recognized for his outstanding contributions to life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). He is especially known for his leading roles in the development and documentation of the EDIP midpoint impact assessment method (one of the first full LCA methods), for advancing the consensus on the assessment of toxic impacts in LCIA (OMNIITOX/USEtox), and for analyzing the social impacts in LCA. Throughout these activities, Hauschild is not only recognized and lauded as a very competent and outstanding scientist but also as a congenial colleague to collaborate and work with professionally. Hauschild has a very impressive publication record on LCA, which spans a diverse range of contributions with tangible impact and has shaped many aspects of LCA as we know it.
The SETAC Europe/NOACK Laboratorien Environmental Education Award was presented by Christian Maess on behalf of NOACK Laboratorien to Marco Vighi from the IMDEA Water Institute, Spain. Throughout Vighi’s long career he has inspired a vast number of Ph.D. students, and many of these are now professors themselves working in universities around the world. Other past students work in European organizations such as EFSA, EMA, ECHA and the JRC of Ispra or for international environmental consulting agencies (Dow Agrochemicals, DuPont, Pioneer, Ramboll, etc.). Up to the early 1980s, Vighi’s scientific activities mainly focused on applied hydrobiology and eutrophication of marine and fresh waters. In the last three decades, however, his research activities moved toward ecotoxicology. He has in fact published more than 160 scientific papers and books on applied ecology and ecotoxicology. It was wonderful to see many of Vighi’s “scientific children and grandchildren” populating the meeting rooms of the Rome Convention Centre La Nuvola this year!
SETAC Global Executive Director Charlie Menzie had the pleasure of presenting the SETAC Journals Best Paper awards, which recognize innovative or creative papers with transparent, reproducible, rigorous and relevant science published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (ET&C) or Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (IEAM).
The IEAM Best Paper Award went to Wayne Landis, Western Washington University, United States, for his paper “A general risk-based adaptive management scheme incorporating the Bayesian network relative risk model with the South River, Virginia, as case study.”
Douglas Sponsler, Penn State University, United States, was presented with the ET&C Best Paper Award for “Mechanistic modeling of pesticide exposure: The missing keystone of honey bee toxicology.”
Keith Solomon, University of Guelph, Canada, has been honored with the Global Partners Capacity-Building Award, which recognizes his contribution toward building capacity in the environmental sciences within countries with developing economies. In his long career, Solomon has made many major contributions to capacity building in the science of ecotoxicology and risk assessment through his tireless and dedicated teaching and mentoring activities, and his invaluable contributions to the global scientific community. Some of these efforts have been through activities in SETAC but others have been through other organizations.
During the SETAC Europe 28th Annual Meeting in Rome, 204 young scientists competed for the Best Poster and Platform Presentation Awards sponsored by ECETOC and SETAC Europe. A big thank you to all judges for making this possible!
Hanna Joerss, Helholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Germany, received the Best Poster Award for her poster on “Occurrence and distribution of legacy per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) and fluorinated alternatives in coastal waters of the German North and Baltic Seas.”
The Best Platform Award went to Michael Bertram from Monash University, Australia, for his presentation titled “Exposure to the widespread androgenic steroid 17β-trenbolone alters behaviour in fish.”
Our warmest and heartfelt congratulations to all the award winners, and thank you for your outstanding contributions to SETAC’s scientific community!
Check out the SETAC Europe and the SETAC Global awards, and submit an awards application at www.setac.org.
Authors’ contact information: michelle.bloor@port.ac.uk and aleopold@calidrisenvironment.com
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