Dr. George P. Cobb is a professor at Baylor University, where he serves as Chair of the Department of Environmental Science. Prof. Cobb is an American Chemical Society Fellow and a Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Fellow. He previously served as Chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Environmental Chemistry and President of SETAC North America. He currently serves in various roles within the American Chemical Society.  He is a member of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals and an ad hoc member of the Board of Scientific Counselors. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of South Florida. Throughout his career, Prof. Cobb has used novel sampling and analysis techniques for biotic and abiotic media to evaluate toxicant transport, transformation, and biological exposure processes. His exposure assessments within agricultural monocultures have also been integral parts of data packages for regulatory consideration of pesticide registration and reregistration. His research has also evaluated novel airborne transport processes that distribute synthetic anabolic steroids near concentrated animal feeding operations. The Cobb research group has also performed novel exposure and effect assessments of nanomaterials, metals, chlorinate hydrocarbons, and explosives in the environment. His most recent work includes monitoring and evaluating paraben’s chemical transformation in Texas wastewater.

Professor John P. Giesy was born in Youngstown Ohio in 1948 and is currently a dual citizen of Canada and the USA. He obtained a B.S. Degree, Summa cum laude with honors in Biology from Alma College, M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Limnology from Michigan State University in 1971 and 1974, respectively.  He is a world leading eco-toxicologist and environmental chemist with a total of over a quarter of a billion dollars ($284,547,002 CAD) in funding for his career. He discovered the phenomenon of photo enhanced toxicity of organic compounds, such as PAHs. He was the first to report the occurrence of perfluorinated compounds in the environment. Recently he has been using e-DNA and e-RNA to assess presence and absence of aquatic species, including invasive species, and community structures as well as effects of chemical and physical stressors and measuring the virus that causes COVID-19 in domestic sewage. He was a Canada Research Chair and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of National Academy of Science of Canada in the Division of Earth, Ocean and Atmosphere. He served two terms as a chartered member of the US EPA Science Advisory Board and served two terms on the US EPA Board of Scientific Counselors. He is included in 40 biographical listings, including Who’s Who in Canada, Who’s Who in America, and Who’s Who in the World.  He was rated the No. 1 environmental scientist in Canada by the Globe and Mail Newspaper. He is also the recipient of many national and international awards including three major awards from the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC); the Founders Award, which is the highest award given globally; Environmental Education Award and Global Capacity Building Award as well as serving as president of SETAC and is now a SETAC Fellow. In 2014 he received Miroslaw Romanowski Medal in Environmental Science of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2019 he was made Doctor Scientiarum Ambitalium, Honors Causa, by Masaryk Univ. He has published 1385 peer-reviewed works and is the most cited author in the world in Ecology and Environmental Sciences, and most cited author at the U of S, with an Hirsch (H) index of 137 (Google Scholar®: based on over 85,170 citations to his works. His i10 Index (number of papers cited more than 10 times) is 1021 publications. He is the most cited author in the world in the combined fields of Ecology and Environment and has published more papers in the Journal Environmental Science and Technology than any other author. He was the Editor of Chemosphere for 27 years.

Chair of division of Chemistry and Environment of European Chemical Society (EuChemS), Member of the executive board of EuChemS, President of the Association of Greek Chemists

Professor Dr. Vladimir P. Beškoski, PhD in Biochemistry, performed his studies in Biochemistry at the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Chemistry (UBFC). He finished his PhD thesis in 2011 on study of the activities of a consortium of zymogenous microorganisms in the soil contaminated by crude oil and oil derivatives, and their application in bioremediation from laboratory, via pilot to industrial level. As Invited foreign researcher (supported by Japan Society for Promotion of Science), he spent more than a year at the Kobe University, Japan, conducting research on biodegradation of persistent organic pollutants in particular Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS). Since 2012 he works as a professor at the UBFC. He is the president of the Section for Environmental Chemistry of the Serbian Chemical Society and National representative in IUPAC, Division VI Chemistry and the Environment. Presently he is a Project coordinator for several national and international projects (PFAStwin – Horizon Europe; PhytoPFAS – Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia; VISION – Solvay Specialty Polymers Italy S.p.A.; Enviro-Improve – JICA; BEER+ZnHy – Innovation Fund of the Republic of Serbia). His field of research is: environmental biotechnology; microbial activities and their applications in biogeotechnology, bioremediation and agriculture; elucidation of the biochemical basis of bacterial degradation of persistent organic pollutants.

Oliver Bajt received his PhD from the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1994. He is a senior researcher at the National Institute of Biology, Marine Biology Station in Piran and an assoc. professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His research interests include the study of marine pollution and the degradation of organic compounds in the marine environment, especially photochemical degradation of organic pollutants. In recent years, he has focused on microplastic pollution. He was/is involved in many national and EU research projects. He is author/co-author of several professional and scientific papers dealing with pollution of the marine environment.

Biljana Petrovic was born in 1970 in Zaječar, Serbia. She received her PhD in Chemistry in 2005 at the University of Kragujevac, Serbia, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Živadin D. Bugarčić. She currently works as a full professor at the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Kragujevac. From January 2022. she became the Vice-rector for science at the University of Kragujevac.

Her research is focused on synthesis, characterization and study of the substitution reactions and interactions of different transition metal ion complexes (Pt(II), Pd(II), Pt(IV), Au(III), Ru(II/III) with biologically relevant nucleophiles, amino acids, peptides, nucleotides, proteins, etc. Until now she has published about 65 papers in different internationals journals in the field of bioinorganic chemistry, three chapters in the books, 5 papers in the national journals, one book and two practicums for the students of chemistry. She also has about 60 participations at different international and national scientific conferences. She was a supervisor of three defended PhD thesis and now one more PhD students is doing thesis under her supervision.

Pasquale Avino received his Master Degree in Chemistry in 1992 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1997. He was appointed as Post-Doc (1997-1998) at the Department of Chemistry of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in the Rowland (Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995) and Blake group. From 1999 until January 2018, he was appointed as Researcher at the ISPESL/INAIL Research Center and from February 2018 to January 2021 Prof. Avino was appointed as Three-years Term Researcher contract and from February 2021 he is Associate Professor in Analytical Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry at the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences of the University of Molise, Campobasso.

He is following the studies devoted to the development of innovative analytical methodologies for development and application of analytical and sampling methods for the qualitative and quantitative determination of chemical compounds (e.g., contaminants, pollutants, nutrients) in food, agricultural, biological and anthropogenic matrices.

He was the recipient of the “Group Achievement NASA Award” in 1998. In 1998 he was awarded with the “Next Generation Award” during the 22nd International Symposium on Chromatography. In 2003 he was the recipient of the “Environmental Sapio” Award for his research in the environmental field. In 2022 he received the Medal for Ecology from the Moldavian Chemical Society. Prof. Avino is author and co-author of different scientific publications including original papers published on national and international journals and books (from Scopus data-base: 202 papers, 3944 citations, h-index 38).