UPCOMING WORKSHOP
DETAILED PROGRAM
June 7, 2021 - Paper to Practice: Challenges In Applying Guidelines For Cyanobacterial Toxins
Ingrid Chorus, WHO
Interpretation and Application of New WHO Guidelines for Cyanotoxins
Janice Lawrence, UNB
Challenges Of Monitoring Toxic Benthic Cyanobacteria In A Large Canadian Watershed
Elisabeth Janssen, EAWAG
CYANOMETDB - Cyanobacterial Secondary Metabolites Beyond Traditional Toxins
Stéphanie McFadyen, HEALTH CANADA
Canadian/Federal Perspective On Cyanotoxin Regulations
Mike McKay, UWINDSOR
Great Lakes Canada/US Perspective
June 8, 2021 - Priority Freshwater HABs Research In A World Of Pandemics
Irena Creed, RAEON
The Evolving Use of Sensor Networks In HABs Research
Charles Greer, NRC/MCGILL U
How Can The History Of Cyanobacterial Blooms Inform Future Freshwater HABs Research
Lewis Molot, YORK U
The Future of CHABs Management: P vs N and P vs Redox/Internal Loading And Beyond
Paul Sibley, UGUELPH
Microcystins In Freshwater Environments: Ecotoxicology And Risk Assessment
Susie Wood, CAWTHRON INSTITUTE
New Zealand Perspective Studying/Regulating Benthic Cyanobacteria
Ingrid Chorus, WHO
Interpretation and Application of New WHO Guidelines for Cyanotoxins
Janice Lawrence, UNB
Challenges Of Monitoring Toxic Benthic Cyanobacteria In A Large Canadian Watershed
Elisabeth Janssen, EAWAG
CYANOMETDB - Cyanobacterial Secondary Metabolites Beyond Traditional Toxins
Stéphanie McFadyen, HEALTH CANADA
Canadian/Federal Perspective On Cyanotoxin Regulations
Mike McKay, UWINDSOR
Great Lakes Canada/US Perspective
June 8, 2021 - Priority Freshwater HABs Research In A World Of Pandemics
Irena Creed, RAEON
The Evolving Use of Sensor Networks In HABs Research
Charles Greer, NRC/MCGILL U
How Can The History Of Cyanobacterial Blooms Inform Future Freshwater HABs Research
Lewis Molot, YORK U
The Future of CHABs Management: P vs N and P vs Redox/Internal Loading And Beyond
Paul Sibley, UGUELPH
Microcystins In Freshwater Environments: Ecotoxicology And Risk Assessment
Susie Wood, CAWTHRON INSTITUTE
New Zealand Perspective Studying/Regulating Benthic Cyanobacteria
SPEAKER PROFILES
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Ingrid Chorus
Ingrid Chorus headed the Department on Drinking Water and Swimming Pool Hygiene of the Federal Environment Agency of Germany, which also acts as a World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre. She thus has extensive professional experience in the areas of managing drinking water to keep it safe for human consumption as well as protecting water resources. Her specific focus has been on phytoplankton ecology and on toxic cyanobacteria, combining research and policy development. Most recently, she supported WHO in the derivation of cyanotoxin guideline values, and together with Martin Welker she edited the second edition of the WHO guidebook “Toxic Cyanobacteria in Water”, published in March 2021. |
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Irena Creed
Irena Frances Creed is a Professor of the School of Environment and Sustainability, Associate Vice-President Research, and Special Advisor to the President on Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan. She earned her bachelor of science, master’s and PhD degrees at the University of Toronto. Prior to coming to USask in September of 2017, she was a professor and Canada Research Chair at Western University. As an ecosystem scientist, her wide-ranging research interests include planetary health, climate change, ecology, hydrology, biogeochemistry, sustainability, communities-at-risk, and the science-policy interface. She has researched environmental issues across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Irena has co-authored six national and international reports and 150 peer reviewed publications, including recent publications in top journals such as Nature Geoscience, Nature Sustainability, the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, Global Change Biology, and Frontiers in Environmental Science and Ecology. In addition, she has contributed to two international peer-reviewed reports on the state-of-science— one for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the other for the Global Forest Expert Panel and the International Union of Forest Research Organizations based in Austria. Irena has given over 40 invited, plenary, and keynote addresses in the last five years alone. Irena currently holds adjunct positions at Western University and at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Her work has been recognized with many awards and honours, including receiving an honorary doctorate from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden and being inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2019. Irena was also awarded the Royal Society of Canada’s 2020 Bancroft Award and is only the second woman to receive this award since the awards were initiated in 1968 to honour outstanding contributions to earth sciences. |
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Charles Greer
Charles Greer is a Principal Research Officer and the Group Leader of the Genomics and Microbiomes Group in the Energy, Mining and Environment Research Centre (EME) of the National Research Council of Canada. He served as the Director of Research and Development at EME-Montreal from April 2011 to May 2013 and again from November 2014 to June 2015. He is an adjunct professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences of McGill University since 1992 and the Biology Department of the University of Sherbrooke since September 2014, and an Editor for the Canadian Journal of Microbiology. He is a microbiologist/microbial ecologist working on the biodegradation of organic pollutants, bioremediation, phytoremediation and monitoring microbial community structural and functional diversity related to ecosystem processes using metagenomics and metatranscriptomics. He has worked extensively in the Arctic on bioremediation projects and the effects of climate change, and in the marine environment examining natural attenuation as a remediation strategy to address oil spills. |
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Elisabeth Janssen
Elisabeth Janssen's research is rooted in environmental and analytical chemistry of aquatic enzymes, natural toxins, and micropollutants. Her group has built an expertise for analytical solutions to study site-specific damage of biomolecules of varied complexity. Elisabeth's aim is to elucidate how long-lived these biomolecules are in aquatic systems and which transformation products are formed with a particular focus on photochemical and enzymatic processes. Elisabeth received her PhD in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University (2011) and finished postdoctoral research at the Natural History Museum in London and at ETH Zurich before starting as a research group leader at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) in 2016. |
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Janice Lawrence
Dr. Janice Lawrence completed her BSc (Marine Biology) and PhD (Biological Oceanography) at Dalhousie University. She carried out her PhD thesis investigating the source and dynamics of algal toxins in cultured shellfish. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at UBC studying the role of viruses in phytoplankton ecology, and joined UNB in 2003. Janice is currently examining the distribution of toxin-producing cyanobacteria in New Brunswick waterbodies using genetic tools. She also collaborates with colleagues in Norway to study the co-evolution of viruses and their hosts, and the fate of viruses in marine ecosystems. |
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Stéphanie McFadyen
Stéphanie McFadyen is a scientist at Health Canada. She is the Research Manager of the Water Quality Program and has been working on water quality and human health issues for more than 20 years. Her focus is on understanding and dealing with the health risks from substances–bacteria, viruses, parasites, chemicals, and radionuclides– in drinking and recreational water. She works closely with experts to develop guidelines and advice that are used as the basis of water quality standards to protect the health of Canadians. Stéphanie holds a BSc from Trent University, ON, Canada and an MSc from Carleton University, ON, Canada. |
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Michael McKay
R. Michael McKay is Executive Director and Professor at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor. Prior to that, he served on the faculty at Bowling Green State University (OH, USA) for 21 years where he held an endowed Professorship. Professor McKay received undergraduate- and graduate degrees in Biology from Queen’s University at Kingston (Canada) and McGill University (Montréal, Canada), respectively. Upon completion of his doctoral work, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and with the University of Delaware where he served concurrently at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, NY. From his roots in ocean science, Professor McKay’s research expanded to include large lakes on his return to the Great Lakes basin where his contributions to the field of environmental microbiology have advanced our current understanding of the dynamics of cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie, including the role of cyanophage as agents of bloom decline which threatens the security of our potable water supply. |
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Lewis Molot
Lewis A. Molot received his Bachelor and Masters degrees from the University of Toronto and his PhD in Oceanography from the University of Alaska in 1981. He was a Professor with the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change at York University for over 30 years and is now a Senior Scholar (i.e., he is somewhat retired). Prof. Molot is a member of the Provincial Lake Simcoe Science Committee and Chaired the Ontario EcoSchools program for 18 years, a program for schools and school boards centred on energy conservation, waste minimization and school yard naturalization. Prof. Molot is an aquatic scientist who has studied the impacts of eutrophication, acidification, ultraviolet radiation and climate change in lakes across Ontario. His current research focuses on the relationship between anaerobic (defined by oxygen and nitrate depletion) sediments and cyanobacteria bloom formation and the implications for preventing and mitigating blooms. |
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Frances Pick
Frances Pick is a Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa and past Chair of the Department of Biology. She holds a PhD in Botany from the University of Toronto specializing in limnology with a minor in biochemistry. Her research focuses on the factors affecting the structure and function of primary producers (cyanobacteria, algae, macrophytes) in lakes, rivers, urban ponds and wetlands. These factors and how they interact include nutrients, hydrology, pesticides, food web alterations and invasive species. Over the past two decades, she has been studying how climate change is affecting these interactions in Canada’s aquatic ecosystems. Cyanobacteria from picocyanobacteria through to bloom-forming and toxin-producing taxa are of particular interest and these are studied in natural and man-made systems as well as in pure cultures using classical limnological/phycological methods and more modern methods in analytical chemistry (for cyanotoxin analyses) and molecular biology (for eDNA and paleoDNA analyses). In 2014, she received the Frank Rigler Award from the Society of Canadian Limnologists for achievements in freshwater research. |
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Paul Sibley
Paul Sibley’s research interests focus on issues of water quality and its management, including understanding stressor interactions and their cumulative effects; the effects of anthropogenic stressors in agricultural, boreal, and Arctic landscapes: risk assessment of novel, priority, and emerging chemicals and toxins; understanding risk perception and communicating risk. |
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Susie Wood
Susie Wood is a Scientist at the Cawthron Institute in Nelson, New Zealand. She obtained her PhD from Victoria University (Wellington, New Zealand) in 2006 specialising in algal blooms in rivers and lakes. Susie leads and contributes to multiple research programmes, supervises students, and regularly undertakes consulting projects for government departments and regional authorities on a range of topics related to cyanobacteria, water quality, molecular ecology and biomonitoring. Her cyanobacterial research is divided between understanding bloom formation and toxin production in New Zealand’s lakes, and more recently investigating environmental drivers of benthic toxin-producing cyanobacteria in rivers. She has been particularity active in advocating for the incorporation of molecular tools in biomonitoring and biodiversity projects, including the development of novel molecular-based indices. She co-leads a nationwide programme that aims to obtain an overview of the health for 10% of New Zealand’s lakes using paleo-environmental reconstructions. |