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We cordially invite you to join the LEADERS & PEOPLE 2021 Virtual Symposium on Environmental Research and Career Training, July 20 - 22nd. This is a joint virtual symposium co-hosted by the Network on Persistent, Emerging, and Organic PoLlution in the Environment (PEOPLE Network) and The LEaders in wAter anD watERshed Sustainability (the LEADERS Program) for Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) training. This will be a good opportunity for our HQP to present their research, learn knowledge, get career advice, and enhance professional skills. The symposium will include keynote speech, HQP presentations, virtual workshops, career sessions, and a post-conference special issue in . 

Please register before July 19th via .

Program Book 

The symposium is free and open to the public. We encourage you to promote this in your research group and via your professional connections.

Thank you and look forward to seeing you at the symposium!

Speaker: Dr. Bing Chen, Professor Civil Engineering, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Title: “Marine Oil Spill Response and Cleanup: Review and Progress”

Abstract: An oil spill is a release of liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment due to human activities, and is a challenging pollution problem. The term often refers to marine oil spills, including releases of crude oil from tankers, offshore platforms, drilling rigs and wells, spills of petroleum products and by-products, and spill of any oily substance refuse or waste oil. From the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, BP Deepwater Horizon (Macondo) oil in 2010, to the Northeast Brazil oil spill in 2019, marine oil spills have been reported worldwide and have caused tremendous concern because of their significant negative and long-term impacts on ecological and socio-economic systems. The risk of marine oil spills has been increasing considering the growth of global shipping, deep-sea oil & gas operation, and diverse near/offshore activities. Response to a spill incident can be challenged by not only operational and technical limitations but also unfriendly environmental factors. The harsh marine environment (such as strong wind and wave, cold air and water, sea ice, and low visibility prevailing in the Arctic and Northern Atlantic Oceans) make response operations much more difficult and significantly reduce the window of response opportunity. There are wide recognitions of pressing needs in innovative research to improve response efficiency and capabilities. This talk will provide an overview of the current response practice, challenges and opportunities, and then introduce research progress in marine oil spill response decision making and cleanup technologies in the Northern Region Persistent Organic Pollution Control (NRPOP) Laboratory at the Memorial University in Canada. The key research topics mainly cover the simulation and AI aided response decision making, AOP based integrated on-site decanting technologies, and biosurfactant-based green treating agents as well as their lab testing and applications.

Bio: Dr. Bing Chen is Professor and Head of Department of Civil Engineering and Director of Northern Region Persistent Organic Pollution Control (NRPOP) Laboratory at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is also the founding Director of the global Network on Persistent, Emerging and Organic PoLlution in the Environment (PEOPLE Network). He is an elected Fellow of Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE), Fellow of Fellow of Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), and Member of Royal Society of Canada (RSC) College.

Dr. Chen is an internationally respected leader in environmental engineering research with exemplary achievements in environmental emergency (e.g., on/off shore oil spills) responses, water/wastewater treatment, AI-aided decision making, and environmental sustainability. He has produced over 400 technical publications and 7 patents/disclosures, gave over and trained over 70 thesis-based graduate students and PDFs. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) and has served as Senior Advisor of the United Nations Development Programme, Vice-President of the Canadian Association on Water Quality, Vice-President of Sigma Xi Avalon Chapter, Member of the Royal Society of Canada’s Expert Panel, Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Systems Research (Springer), Associate Editor of 2 journals, Editorial Board Member of 6 other journals, and adjunct/visiting professor of 6 institutions worldwide. He has given over 70 invited keynotes and guest lectures worldwide. He has received many awards such as Water Environment Federation A.S. Bedell Award and Terra Nova Young Innovator Award and diverse conference/paper awards. As a registered Professional Engineer, Dr. Chen has provided consulting service to governments and industry from environmental/water, oil and gas, petrochemical, shipping, fishing, mining, and agriculture sectors as well as NGOs and communities in Canada and worldwide.

 Speaker: Dr. Prameet Sheth, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Queen’s University

Title: “Sources of Multidrug Resistant Organisms – Throwing Everything at it Including the Kitchen Sink!”

Bio: Dr. Prameet Sheth is a Clinical Microbiologist at Kingston Health Sciences Centre (Kingston General Hospital) and the Director of Molecular Microbiology. In his role at KHSC, he oversees all the microbiological testing for patients that present to KGH and surrounding hospitals. He is also a Researcher and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology & Molecular Medicine and Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences at Queen’s University. Over the last five years he has developed a research program that is interested in infectious diseases. He has a MSc in Hematology from McMaster University and a PhD in HIV Immunology from the University of Toronto. He completed a Fellowship in Medical Microbiology and Bacteriology at the University of Toronto.

Flushed Intelligence- Detecting outbreaks using wastewater-based epidemiology 

• Stephen Brown, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Studies
• , Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Queen’s University
• , Associate Director Education and Outreach, Beaty Water Research Centre, Adjunct Professor, Department of Civil Engineering & School of Environmental Studies, ���˴�Ƭ 

Since the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was identified in late 2019, it has spread worldwide, infecting over 96 million individuals and resulting in over 2 million deaths, with numbers continuing to grow. Although the respiratory route is the primary transmission pathway of concern, SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in stool of infected individuals as well as in individuals where the illness has resolved, and the virus is no longer detectable in respiratory specimens. Accordingly, feces of COVID-19 infected patients may serve as a source of contamination or infection as well as a potential mechanism for community surveillance, including for asymptomatic carriers. Environmental surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in municipal sewage could act as an early warning system of outbreaks as well as identify high-risk communities (e.g. campus residents, correctional institutions, etc.), providing vital monitoring and predictive tools for early intervention in future waves of the COVID-19 outbreak. Community surveillance initiatives worldwide have already begun to demonstrate the ability to detect SARS-CoV-2 in raw sewage, even in low prevalence settings, and suggests that the quantification of the virus in wastewater provides the ability to monitor the prevalence of COVID-19 infections in the community. However, wastewater sample preparation and analysis methods require further development and validation. 

In this seminar, Beaty Water Research Centre (BWRC) affiliated faculty Drs. Stephen Brown (Chemistry & Environmental Studies), Sarah Jane Payne (Civil Engineering) and Geof Hall (Civil Engineering & Environmental Studies), will review the work and progress of others in this field, with a special focus on research groups in Ontario. They will discuss the work in progress at Queen’s (funded by the Ministry of the Environment Conservation and Parks) to establish a laboratory at the BWRC for validated testing of sewage water samples for SARS-CoV-2 as first step in Kingston to establishing sentinel surveillance system for COVID-19, which can also be applied to inevitable future viral outbreaks across Canada.