William Arnold is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and the Joseph T. and Rose S. Ling Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the fate of organic chemicals in natural and engineered aquatic systems. He received his S.B. in Chemical Engineering from MIT (1994), M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Yale (1995), and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University (1999). He then joined the U of MN faculty. He is a Past President of Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) and an Executive Editor for the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters. He co-wrote a Water Chemistry textbook, with the 2nd edition now available: https://www.amazon.com/Water-Chemistry-Processes-Composition-Engineered/dp/0197651895/
Brandy Toner is a Professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate at the University of Minnesota. Her scientific discipline is geochemistry. There are many types of geochemists and Brandy’s research focuses on the chemical form and mobility of metals in the environment. This is important because metals are both necessary for life (like iron) and toxic (like arsenic or mercury). Brandy is a first generation college student and currently the only woman Professor in her department, but hopefully, that will change soon! As a kid, Brandy wanted to be an astronaut but motion sickness was a serious problem and the centrifuge was not an option. Instead of space exploration, some of her research takes her on expeditions deep underground or deep underwater. Photo: Brandy getting ready to dive to a deep-sea hydrothermal vent in the submersible Alvin.
Yu-ping (Yo) Chin is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Delaware. His research focuses on the fate of contaminants in the environment and the role of dissolved organic matter (DOM, which happens to be among the largest pool of organic matter on the planet) in the carbon cycle. In particular, Yo focuses on these processes in remote regions of the planet such as the Arctic, Antarctica, and North Dakota in the prairies (North Dakota is hard to reach!). It is these remote places that are most affected by climate change and he is interested in seeing how rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns change the fate of contaminants and DOM alike.
Photo: Photo-op at the Arctic Circle, Alaska.
Jon Cox is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Delaware and President of the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research. He is a community-engaged collaborative artist and works primarily in the field of photography on the local, national, and international levels. Cox’s work has taken him to all seven continents covering social and environmental issues, where he hopes to make a positive change. He is a National Geographic Explorer and has co-authored two books with Indigenous communities in Tanzania and Peru.
Michael Wilkins
Research in the Wilkins lab focuses on interactions between microorganisms and their local environment. Microorganisms can catalyze a huge range of reactions, many of which directly or indirectly affect the chemistry and physical structure of the region they inhabit. We currently study some of these processes in a variety of different environments, with links to contaminant remediation (e.g. uranium), elemental cycling (carbon, sulfur), and hydrocarbon degradation (e.g. deep shale formations). Current field sites include shallow aquifers in Washington State and Colorado, prairie pothole lakes in North Dakota, and deep subsurface shale formations in southeastern Ohio. In the laboratory we use a suite of tools that span the disciplines of microbiology, geochemistry, and mineralogy. Genomic and proteomic tools are used to interrogate microbial communities, with these data subsequently interpreted in the context of geochemical measurements from the environment.