JANUARY NEWS 2010

Welcome to Joanna Clarke

Welcome to Joanna Clark who joined Imperial College in January 2010 as a Research Fellow funded by the Grantham Institute for Climate Change. Her research interests are focused on understanding the interactions between carbon and other biogeochemical cycles in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, particularly the sensitivity of carbon release from organic soils to climate change in relation to other drivers of environmental change.
Prior to joining Imperial College, she worked at Bangor University on a joint knowledge exchange project for the Environment Agency and NERC QUEST research programme on the vulnerability of organic soils in the British Uplands to climate change. She also worked as a Research Fellow at Leeds University for three years, on a NERC standard grant examining to what extent recent increases in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) release from organic soils to surface waters could be attributed to declining atmospheric sulphur deposition. This research project was developed from her PhD on DOC dynamics in blanket peat, which she completed at Leeds in 2005. Joanna also holds an MSc in Environmental Monitoring and Modelling from King's College London and a BSc in Geography from Durham University.

 Professor Stephen Smith is visiting Australia for three weeks from 18 January. He is meeting colleagues at the Curtin Water Quality Research Centre (CWQRC) at the Curtin University of Technology, Perth where he will present a seminar on ‘Agricultural Recycling of Biosolids - Benefits, Issues and Research'. Professor Smith is the international consultant working with Professor Margaret Deighton and Dr Duncan Rouch from the Biotechnology and Environmental Biology Group in the School of Applied Sciences at RMIT University, Melbourne on a Smart Water Fund project on Verifying Microbial Safety in Biosolids Treatment, and he is visiting RMIT to support the project work. He is also meeting colleagues from Melbourne Water and visiting the main metropolitan wastewater treatment works and a number of rural treatment plant in the region. Sydney is the final call on the itinerary where Professor Smith will speak at a joint meeting of the Waste Management Association of Australia and NSW Biosolids Taskforce.

 Professor Howard Wheater has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. Only one in every thousand members are elected to Fellowship each year. An Ceremony will take place in December honoring this event.  Congratulations Howard.