WWEM 2018 - Conference Programme

Dr Andrew Mayes has a degree and PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Bath, but has spent most of his research career at the university of East Anglia, working on diverse projects involving custom-designed polymers and materials and developing analytical techniques and chemical sensors based on their properties. He also has an interest in spectroscopy and imaging and has applied this to develop new approaches to fluorescent detection and nanoscale analysis. All this has come together in the last few years in the pursuit of novel approaches to identify microplastics in environmental samples, where his group has been leading the way in developing new fluorescence tagging approaches based on Nile Red for rapid visualisation and counting of plastic particles in various sample matrices.

Dr. Joep van den Broeke is technical consultant at Eijkelkamp Soil and Water, a company that provides solutions for soil and water sampling and analysis. Dr. van den Broeke has extensive experience in water quality and sensor related R&D and has worked with technology developers, suppliers and end-users in development, implementation and operation of (online) water quality monitoring systems. He specialises in optical measurement systems. Dr. van den Broeke has participated in numerous major international research projects on water and sensors, including EU projects TECHNEAU and SmartWater4Europe, and he was the principal investigator for the Global Water Research Coalition project "Compendium of sensors and monitors in the global water industry". Dr. van den Broeke holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Utrecht University (the Netherlands).

Mathieu Muller has a PhD degree in microbiology and biotechnology from the University of Montpellier, France. After a 5-years career in the academic research at the French National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA), he joined the Envolure start-up company in 2010. After 2 years as a R&D engineer, he became the head of the R&D team. Since 2014, he is the scientific and technical manager of the Envolure company which was taken over by the Franco-Italian AMS Alliance group in 2015. Envolure and AMS Alliance are now part of the KPM Analytics company (USA). Mathieu Muller is specialised in environmental chemistry and microbiology and took part to several research programs dealing with the behaviour of trace organic contaminants in sewer networks and wastewater treatment plants as well as the development of innovative analytical tools for biological or physicochemical characterisation of the organic matter in wastewater and sewage sludge. He co-authored about ten papers in peer reviewed journals. He is also co-author of several patent applications included patent applications about the Enverdi® BOD kit which is the topic of his WWEM oral communication.

Dr. Xize Niu is the founder and director of SouthWestSensor (SWS) Limited. SWS is a start-up company dedicated to the development of innovative sensors, with water chemistry sensors as a main service and product lines.

Dr Xize Niu is also an Associate Professor within Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton. His group is currently focused on scientific and engineering challenges in developing wearable/portable chemical sensors for healthcare and environmental monitoring, especially for real time and continuous detection of chemical variations in body or environmental fluids. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers with 2400 citations. He has given many invited talks including RSC microfluidics 2018 and Pittcon 2018.

Dr.-Ing. Dennis Bakir runs the independent, commercial research company "Institute for applied SME-Innovation" [IN²]. His main area of action is best described as an inventor and implementer for modern solutions, finally used by willing-to-change SME's. His staff is dominated by engineers, technicians as well as business economist, to ensure multi-faceted and market-fit developments. For Dr.-Ing. Bakir academia is a shining and valuable source of knowledge, while the IN² acts as a research-promoting partner, among others directly authorized by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Gary Fones joined the University of Portsmouth in 2006 as a Senior Lecturer in Marine Biogeochemistry and was promoted in 2013 to Reader and in 2017 to Professor of Environmental Aquatic Chemistry. Previous to this he held a number of research posts at the University of Southampton, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (USA) and Lancaster University. He has a background in oceanography (BSc and MSc) and environmental analytical chemistry (PhD). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (Water Science Forum committee member and Co-Editor of the WSF newsletter), the Editor-in-Chief of the journal 'Continental Shelf Research' and is a core member of the NERC Peer Review College. His main research interests are water and sediment quality monitoring using in-situ passive samplers for trace metals, nutrients and polar organic contaminants. Other research interests include trace metal and nutrient sediment water interactions (including sediment resuspension), benthic fluxes, transformations and benthic-pelagic coupling. He has worked on a number of NERC funded projects (Macronutrients and Shelf-Sea Biogeochemistry) and currently works closely with a number of UK water supply companies on integrating passive sampling monitoring into their catchment management strategies.

Ray Perkins is founder and CEO of Anatune and has led the company since its formation in 1996. Ray is strongly focused on making analytical chemistry work better, through collaboration with customers on innovative approaches to current problems.

Ray has built a well-respected, customer-oriented business, centred around a well-equipped analytical chemistry laboratory in Cambridge - staffed by a team of experienced chemists. With a team of 24 staff to support, much to his disappointment, Ray doesn't get much hands-on instrument time anymore!

John Quick been working as an analytical chemist in the water and environmental sector for 30 years. He has previously worked for Thames Water, the Environment Agency and Severn Trent Laboratories. He has specialist knowledge of the analysis of environmental samples for trace level organic pollutants using modern analytical techniques and recently led development of a series of methods for the ultra-low level detection (sub ng/L) of organic pollutants in surface waters and sewage samples to meet the requirements of the UK Chemical Investigation Programme (CIP) and the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). He is currently working on the miniaturisation and automation of analytical methodology using robotic techniques.

Dr Kathy Ridgway has over 25 year's laboratory experience as an analytical chemist. She started her career doing pesticide residue analysis, before moving on to work on a wide range of food contaminants at Unilever Research. During this time, she completed a PhD at the University of Loughborough focussed on alternative extraction techniques. Following over 10 years at Unilever, she worked as a technical specialist in Taints and off-flavours at Reading Scientific services limited (RSSL). She now works as an Applications Chemist at Anatune on automation of sample preparation protocols and alternative extraction techniques.She has published several papers, contributed to several book chapters, written magazine articles and presented her work at international conferences.

Dr Kevin Nott is the product manager and applications specialist for the MQC+ analyser. He completed his first and Master degrees in chemistry at the University of East Anglia (1991-1995) which included a research project at the Institute of Food Research. He then studied for his Doctorate at the University of Cambridge (1995-1999) for which he investigated NMR relaxometry and imaging (MRI) applications in the food industry. After working as a post-doctoral researcher, he joined Oxford Instruments in May 2005. Since then he has been primarily working on bench-top (also known as time domain) NMR applications for quality control and research in the food, agriculture, polymer, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, water and other industries.

Laura's background is in analytical forensic science, and her Ph.D. (at the University of Strathclyde, UK) focused on the chemical fingerprinting of environmental contamination using GCxGC-TOF MS. Following roles in application support and product marketing for Markes International's TOF MS and software portfolios, she joined SepSolve in October 2017, where she oversees marketing activities across the full product range, with a particular focus on GCxGC.

Maj Frederiksen is a consultant at the Danish Technological Institute (DTI) working with sensors for environmental monitoring including air and water monitoring. She has a PhD in nanoscience from Aarhus University, Denmark, and has worked at the centre for Bioengineering and Environmental Technology at DTI for the past five years. Her focus has been on testing and implementing sensor solutions related to environmental monitoring and indoor air quality. Maj has worked in several national and international research and development projects in close collaboration with industry partners and with a focus on ensuring the implementation of the developed solutions.

Marco Ruijken is the Owner/ Head of Research of MsMetrix, Maarssen the Netherlands. MsMetrix develops informatics solutions for LC/MS and GC/MS Data Analysis in the area of: Metabolite Profiling, Metabolomics, Screening and Degradation Profiling. Our mission is to be the premier provider of fast, affordable, user-friendly and reliable software in the above application fields. His educational background is in Chemometrics/Statistics and Processing of complex data. Current research topics are advanced deconvolution in GC/MS and GCxGC/MS with the focus on Differential Analysis. Furthermore, we are specialized in implementing ideas or requirements from universities or companies into our existing software tools.

Paul is a member of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry and has over 30 years practical experience in the separation and characterisation of macromolecules and particles by SEC, FFF, light scattering and viscometry. He has spent most of that time in the analytical instruments industry working for long periods with Viscotek Corporation (USA), Malvern Instruments (UK) and now currently with Postnova Analytics (Germany) where he is the UK Managing Director.

His background and experience covers all aspects of the separation and characterisation of proteins, polymers and particles using a wide variety of techniques with an emphasis on multi-detection, flow-based techniques to yield the maximum information per analysis.

Having worked for over 5 years within high throughput contract Environmental testing laboratories Peter understands the pressures of the modern laboratory. This experience, combined with a detailed knowledge of TOC instruments gives him the ideal perspective to understand industry trends and offer practical cost-saving solutions with the highest data integrity.

Raquel da Cruz Barros obtained her MSc in Biochemistry at University of Porto. Her Master program included an internship, in the field of organic chemistry at University of Barcelona. Due to her growing interest in biotechnology, she sub sequentially enrolled in a new master program, this time in Biomedical Engineering also at University of Porto, that included an internship at i3S Institute, Porto, Portugal. After she moved to the Netherlands to pursue a PhD in Medical Sciences at the Biomedical Engineering department in the University of Groningen, where she graduated in 2018.

The dynamic environment of multidisciplinary collaborations between the university, small and large companies but also academic medical centers was the trigger for her switch from academic research into the industrial side of science.

In 2016 she started as a R&D engineer at Wellinq, developing sensor platforms for (continuous) ions monitoring. Now she is also responsible for the development of cutting edge technologies towards the improvement of catheters performance.

Ruth is a Forensic Chemist, with a PhD in mass spectrometry (MS). Her interest in MS (particularly hyphenated techniques involving chromatography) started in the pharmaceutical industry, which provided the basis of her PhD (2008) and postdoctoral research on biomolecule elucidation and instrument development with Prof Brenton at the Institute of Mass Spectrometry at Swansea. In 2011 she was appointed as a Lecturer in Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) specialising in analytical methods, pharmaceutical, environmental and forensic analysis, including quality management systems and professional laboratory practice and Director of Postgraduate programmes (MSc, MRes, PG Dip., PG Cert.) in Applied Analytical Science (LCMS) in 2016. Ruth trains staff and external parties in LC-MS working with multinational companies, government agencies and SMEs in supporting innovation-led education and research.

Ruth's research focuses on pharmaceutical analysis and analytical technologies for medical/chemical analysis, with collaborators in academia, government agencies and industry. Recent research is concerned with environmental medicine, waste management and developing MS and sample preparation technologies, translating equipment and methods between the application areas. She has received grant funding (RCUK/charities) and supervised postgraduate research students.

Ruth is a Chartered Chemist, Chartered Scientist, Fellow of The Higher Education Academy and an active member of the British Mass Spectrometry Society, American Society for Mass Spectrometry and Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). She supports the Analytical Methods Committee of the RSC, generating teaching materials and good practice guides as a member and secretary of the Instrumental Analysis Sub-committee. She is also an RSC scheme accreditation assessor and an outreach Chemnet Ambassador.

Sian Davies is an analytical chemist working for 4 and half years in the Petrochemicals Industry at BP Chemicals Hull specialising in chromatography and associated techniques to investigate industrial problems and provide specification testing for plants. She gained a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Leeds and is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Most recently, Sian has gained experience in high resolution mass spectrometry investigating the characteristics of complex by product materials from petrochemical processes, with particular interest in waste water streams.

Srinivasa Rao Balivada is a researcher working with the Water-to-Cloud (W2C) project in India as its lead Scientist. He holds a PhD in Chemisty from Andhra University. For the past year, he has been working with the Institute for Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago and more recently with the Tata Centre for Development. His work mainly focuses on identifying point and non-point sources of water contamination using cyber physical systems and studying the effect of water quality on human health by analyzing the quantum and spread of pollution in urban hydrological systems. His team's novel approach lies in using geotagged mobilie sensors to generate heatmaps, which are then analyzed to study pollution levels. Some of his team's recent work can be accessed at https://thoreau.uchicago.edu

Prior to this, he was a research fellow at the Centre for Studies on Bay of Bengal at Andhra University. He has also worked on Ministry of Earth Science projects to study the impact of oceanographic parameters on fishery resources and other related remote sensing projects. He has also worked on ground water quality and its impact on kidney failures.

Priyank Hirani received his MSc in Analog & Digital Integrated Circuit Design from Imperial College London in 2013. After graduation, he worked for Mullard Space Science Lab (University College London) before joining the Young India Fellowship (YIF) in 2015. YIF enhanced his understanding of contemporary India - its heritage, international relations, governance challenges and public policies. For the past couple years, he has been working with the International Innovation Corps, a program housed at the Harris school of Public Policy, University of Chicago and more recently with the Tata Centre for Development.

Priyank leads the India operations for the Water-to-Cloud (W2C) program in India, working as its Program Manager coordinating between the science and the tech teams in India and at the Institute for Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, USA. Working with various government and non-government stakeholders, this is a river water quality monitoring project using a novel approach involving cyberphysical sensor networks and cloud-enabled data dissemination capabilities. He hopes to inspire data-driven decision making and effective policy discussions through availability of such real-time sensor data and visualisations. Some of his team's recent work can be accessed at https://thoreau.uchicago.edu

Dr Claire Gwinnett is an Associate Professor in Forensic and Crime Science and is the research lead for the Plastic Pollution and Forensic Fibres Research Group at Staffordshire University.

Dr Gwinnett has conducted world leading research in fibre examinations and microplastics for 15 years and has published over 50 conference papers and articles in the field. During this time she has patented new technologies to help in the retrieval of microfibres and works with research networks, police forces, NGOs, government bodies and industry to feed into improved methods for microplastic analysis. She was part of the first team to discover microplastics in deep sea sediment deep sea organisms with Oxford University and also the first to bring forensic science approaches to microplastic analysis.

Currently, she is a member of the UK Forensic Fibres group and UK Microplastic network and works internationally with leading organisations on microplastic analysis and plastic degradation studies.

For her work in microplastic analysis she has been recently awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship which will look to standardise plastic pollution analysis internationally.

Detlef started his career in 1990 at Dionex in Germany as Product Specialist for Ion Chromatography. Today, in his role as international expert at Thermo Fisher Scientific, he's responsible for the support of Ion Chromatography and the Environmental Markets in EMEA. Detlef holds a PhD in Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, and is working in the field or analytical separation and sample preparation techniques since 1984.

Paul has over 25 years experience in data acquisition and monitoring systems. Paul was a founding Director of Caption Data who have specialised in m2m and IoT solutions for industry. Over nine years Caption Data have deployed over 4000 systems in over 11 countries to a wide variety of sectors. Current focus is on working closely with major blue chip companies on scaling up with their IoT strategies and solutions.