Air quality, past, present and future

David Fowler’s research interests are mainly in the biogeochemistry of nitrogen, sulphur and carbon and specifically on surface-atmosphere exchange processes. These interests include some of the major regional environmental issues including photochemical oxidants, eutrophication, acid deposition, emissions of greenhouse gases and atmospheric aerosols. His published work includes 210 refereed publications and a similar output of other papers, reports and books. He has an Honorary Professorship at the University of Nottingham, became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1999, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2002, and in 2005 was awarded a CBE for services in Atmospheric Pollution research. 

Michelle Bell is the Mary E Pinchot Professor of Environmental Health at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, with secondary appointments at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale Environmental Engineering Program. Her research investigates how human health is affected by atmospheric systems, including air pollution and weather. Other research interests include the health impacts of climate change and environmental justice. Much of this work is based in epidemiology, biostatistics, and environmental engineering. The research is designed to be policy-relevant and contribute to well-informed decision-making to better protect human health and benefit society. She is the recipient of the Prince Albert II de Monaco/Institut Pasteur Award, the Rosenblith New Investigator Award, and the NIH Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) Award. Dr Bell holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Johns Hopkins University.

Dr Carly Stevens is a senior lecturer at Lancaster University where she has been working since 2012. Her research is related to impacts of global change on plant communities and soils. In particular she is interested in how atmospheric nitrogen deposition has impacted on ecosystems and the services they provide, across the world. This has included demonstrating the relationship between nitrogen deposition and plant species richness in the UK, western-Europe and the USA. Her research group works on a range of topics focused around plant ecology, soils and global change, including some interdisciplinary projects working with sociologists, historians and linguists. Dr Stevens received her BSc in 2000 from Nottingham University and her PhD from The Open University in 2004.

Lisa Emberson is a Professor of Environmental Science in the Environment & Geography Department at the University of York. She has over 20 years’ experience in the field of modelling soil-plant-atmosphere systems for assessment of the risk of impacts of air pollution and climate change. She has developed research activities in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America investigating the effects of a range of air pollutants (SO2, NOx, O3, SPM and fluorides) and climate change on both agro- and forest ecosystems with a view to investigating the subsequent impacts on social and economic systems. She continues to have an active research role in Europe, developing deposition methodologies for use within the UNECE Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution Convention and also sits on the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition providing advice on the benefit of action on Short-Lived Climate Pollutants in relation to agricultural productivity.

Anna Engleryd is a Senior Policy advisor at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. For the last 15 years she has been lead negotiator on air pollution for the Swedish Government in several international fora. Since 2014 she is the chair of the Executive Body to the UNECE Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution. She has a background in energy systems analysis and energy efficiency from the Swedish Energy Agency and served for many years as vice chair to the European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.

Roy Harrison is Queen Elizabeth II Birmingham Centenary Professor of Environmental Health at the University of Birmingham, UK, and also Distinguished Adjunct Professor at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. His research interests are in air pollution, especially airborne particulate matter. He has also been heavily engaged at the science/policy interface as a member of several government technical advisory groups for the Department of Health and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in the U.K. including until recently membership of Defra’s Science Advisory Council. He was a contributor to the World Health Organization Global Air Quality Guidelines and the Guidelines for Quality of Indoor Air. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2004 New Year Honours List and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2017. He is author of over 500 papers in the peer-reviewed literature, and is listed by Web of Science as a Highly Cited Researcher.

Since obtaining her MSc (Distinction) in Toxicology from Surrey University, Alison Gowers has worked on the hazard characterisation and risk assessment of chemical contaminants in the environment, within both consultancy and government departments/agencies. She currently works in the Air Quality and Public Health team at Public Health England. Her role includes leading the Scientific Secretariat which supports the work of the independent expert advisory Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP).

Professor Kelly holds the chair in Environmental Health at King's College London, where he is Director of the Environmental Research Group, Director of the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit on Environmental Hazards and Deputy Director of the MRC-PHE Centre for Environment & Health.  

Professor Kelly leads a substantial research activity which spans all aspects of air pollution research from toxicology to science policy. He has led studies of the urban airshed within London including the impact of the introduction of London’s Congestion Charging Zone and Low Emission Zone. Professor Kelly’s research is currently examining the toxicity of PM associated metals and quinones, diesel and biodiesel exhaust emissions, wood smoke and the identification of biomarkers of exposure. A new area of investigation is ambient microplastics including heir identification and potential health effects.   

Professor Kelly has published over 350 peer-reviewed papers as well as many conference papers and books (as author or editor) on the toxicology and health effects of ozone, nitrogen dioxide and particulate pollution. In addition to his academic work Prof Kelly is past President of the European Society for Free Radical Research and past Chairman of the British Association for Lung Research. He has provided policy support to the WHO on air pollution issues and he is Chairman of COMEAP the UK’s Department of Health’s Expert Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants.  

Dr Kalpana Balakrishnan obtained her undergraduate degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and subsequently her doctoral and post-doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University, USA.

She is a leading global environmental health scientist in India, spearheading research and academic efforts in the areas of health effects of air pollution and chemical risk assessment. Her primary scientific contributions are centered on (i) developing novel exposure assessment approaches to characterize the complex exposures experienced by rural and urban populations in low and middle income countries (LMICs) and (ii) designing and conducting strategic epidemiological investigations in India that leverage across the national and global pools of evidence to catalyze policy level actions.

She has contributed to several national and international technical assessments concerned with air quality including the Global Burden of Disease and Comparative Risk Assessments, The IARC Monographs, The Global Energy Assessments, The World Health Organisation Air Quality Guidelines and India State level Burden of Disease Initiative. She is also a Fellow of the National Academy Of Medical Sciences, India.

She currently serves as member of the National Steering Committee on Air Pollution Related Issues for Health Effects for the Ministry of Health Government of India, and the Indian Council for Medical Research led National Task Force for assessment of impact of initiatives to promote clean household energy.

Paul Monks was born in St Helens in the UK. He received his BSc degree from the University of Warwick and his DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1991. In 1992 he took up NAS/NRC fellowship in Astrochemistry at NASA/Goddard before returning in 1994 to the UK to work a post-doctoral position at the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA. In 1996 he was appointed to a lectureship in Earth Observation Science in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Leicester, being promoted to a Readership in Atmospheric Chemistry in 2003 and a Professorship in 2007. He is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2004, he was awarded the EU Lillehamer Young Scientist award.

His primary research interests are the scientific questions underlying the role of photochemistry in the control of atmospheric composition; chemistry and transport, particularly the impact of long-range transport on chemical composition; the feedbacks between climate and atmospheric chemistry; organic complexity and the control of regional pollution and the measurement of the chemical composition of the troposphere from space.  He is the current co-chair of the IGBP-International Global Atmospheric Chemistry program and chair of the DEFRA Air Quality expert group as well as being a member of the UK Space Agency, Space Leadership Council and Natural Environment Research Council lead body (council).

Professor Dr Liu Xuejun is a senior Professor at China Agricultural University. He has been engaged in studies on nitrogen (N) cycling in particular on the N source, fate and their impacts on soil acidification, eutrophication and greenhouse gas emissions in major Chinese croplands. He has published more than 130 peer-reviewed SCI papers in a number of international top journals including Nature, Science and PNAS, with H-index 36. He has established long-term cooperative relationships with Hohenheim University (Germany), Rothamsted Research and Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UK), and Colorado State University and Stanford University (USA) as well as Wageningen University (Netherlands) in his scientific career. He was supported by the China National Funds for Distinguished Young Scientists (2014), the national Ten-thousand Talents Program (2016) and was chosen to be the 2016 Figure of the Scientific Chinese in Environmental Science and Light Industry. His current research interests are atmospheric N deposition, PM2.5 pollution, NH3 mitigation and environmental impacts of reactive N on food security, ecosystem and human health.

Professor Mei Zheng is from the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China and also serves as the vice dean of the Institute of Ocean Research at Peking University. Professor Zheng received her PhD from the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island in 2000 and worked at School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology from 2000-2010. She joined the faculty of Peking University in 2010. Professor Zheng’s research interests include urban air pollution, marine aerosol, sources of atmospheric fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and health impacts using chemical tracers and modeling tools. She has been actively serving in international organizations such as the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting committee, and the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) scientific steering committee.

Alastair Lewis is professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of York and a Science Director at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science. An active experimental scientist he has participated in field projects spanning polar regions to megacities, open oceans to tropical forests and is currently leading a major UK-China collaboration on air pollution in Beijing. He has been awarded both the Royal Society of Chemistry John Jeyes Prize for Environment, Energy and Sustainability and its SAC Silver Medal for Analytical Science. He has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and is a member of science advisory boards for WMO and UNEP. He has been a member of the Defra Air Quality Expert Group since 2012.

Alex Archibald is an atmospheric chemist, who focuses on using computer models and observations to understand how man-made and natural emissions affect climate and air quality. He is a lecturer and group leader for the atmospheric chemistry modelling group in the Department of Chemistry and is the Science Director of the UKCA model (www.ukca.ac.uk). In addition he is the atmospheric composition theme leader for the NERC ACSIS project (www.acsis.ac.uk), which is looking at the causes and effects of climate and atmospheric composition change in the North Atlantic region.

Dr Erika von Schneidemesser joined the IASS in 2012, where she pursues research on urban air pollution, including exploring and developing the measurement capabilities of small sensors, and the linkages between air quality, climate change, and mobility, in combination with science-policy initiatives, collaborating with city governments and NGOs to inform decision-making and research. Erika is a group leader at the IASS with a main focus on the project Climate Change and Air Pollution: Research Needs and Pathways to Policy Implementation (ClimPol).

Erika received her PhD in Environmental Chemistry and Technology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA in 2009. During her PhD and post-doctoral work at the University of Leicester, UK, Erika established a strong scientific background in atmospheric measurement techniques and data analysis focusing on urban aerosol, source apportionment, trends analysis, and the role of megacities for air pollution and climate change. In 2011 she was awarded an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellowship to work at the US National Science Foundation, where she honed her science-policy expertise.

Markus Amann is the Director of the ‘Air Quality and Greenhouse Gases’ programme at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria. He is coordinating the policy analyses on cost-effective emission control strategies for the clean air and climate policy proposals of the European Commission and the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution. He received his PhD in economics from Karlsruhe University, Germany, and has been appointed to the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and the Climate and Clean Air Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.