International Conference on Microplastics, Nanoplastics & Human Health.

Jacob de Boer

Topic: Plastic Pollution – Human Health vs. Environment

Jacob de Boer is emeritus professor. From 2006-2022 he was Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Prof. De Boer has worked for 49 years on the environmental contamination and analysis of polychlorinated biphenyls, flame retardants,
perfluorinated compounds, PAHs and other contaminants. In 1998 he won the Excellent Scientist Award of the Wageningen University. In 2015 he was honored as one of the most cited scientists in his field (Top 1%) according to Thomson & Reuter. He has (co)coordinated a large number of European research projects, including the CleanSea project , the first European research project on microplastics, and many research projects for other international organizations and industries. He organized numerous international interlaboratory studies on contaminants including microplastics.

Amy O'Higgins

Topic: Microplastic Exposures at the Beginning of Life

Amy O'Higgins is Associate Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at The Coombe Hospital, Dublin and Director of the UCD Centre for Human Reproduction.  She graduated from UCD with a BSc in Chemistry and worked in analytical chemistry before studying medicine.  She specialized in Obstetrics & Gynaecology in Ireland and completed sub-specialist training in Maternal-Fetal Medicine with the University of Toronto in Mount Sinai Hospital, Canada.  Her clinical and research interests include diabetes mellitus and metabolic health in pregnancy as well as maternal and fetal complications of pregnancy.

Elvis Genbo Xu

Topic: Unraveling Micro and Nanoplastics: Towards a "One Health" Perspective

Dr. Elvis Genbo Xu is an Associate Professor and Sapere Aude Research Leader at the Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark. Xu’s research combines state-of-the-art techniques from environmental toxicology, aquatic biology, omics, and bioimaging to understand the impacts of emerging pollutants.
His recent micro(nano)plastics findings are covered in Nature, Science, and 500+ global media. He has secured over two million euros in research grants and published 100+ peer-reviewed articles in PNAS, ES&T, Water Res, etc. He also serves as an editorial board member for Water Res X, Eco-Environ Health, J Hazard Mater, Front Environ Sci Eng, Environ Syst Res, and Managing Guest Editor of Environ Inter on “Micro(nano)plastic & Health”.

Kevin Thomas

Topic: Advancements and challenges in assessing human exposure to nanoplastics and microplastics.

Professor Kevin Thomas is Director of the at Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS) The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia. Kevin is an environmental health scientist with a particular interest in understanding the environmental exposures associated with contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) with the goal of protecting environmental and human health. Kevin also leads the Minderoo Centre- Plastics and Human Health at UQ and is Deputy-Director of the Australian Research Council Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Hyphenated Analytical Separation Technologies (HyTech). His current research is focused on understanding human exposure to plastics pollution and developing mass spectrometric analytical methods for characterizing plastics and other CECs, assessing community-wide health status through analysing wastewater (wastewater-based epidemiology) and establishing alternative approaches to exposure monitoring.

Professor Aoife Gowen

Professor

Dr Amy O'Higgins

Associate Professor

Dr Clare Reynolds

Assistant Professor (Ad Astra Fellow)

Dr Rajat Nag

Lecturer/Assistant Professor

Dr Anna Molter

Lecturer/Assistant Professor

Dr Leonard Koolman

Lecturer, Technological University Dublin, Ireland

Dr Abhrajyoti Tarafdar

Research Scientist

Ms Nazan Altun

Research Assistant

Dr Tamírís Da Costa

Lecturer/Assistant Professor

Dr Xiaohui Lin

IRC Postdoctoral Fellow