Dr. Nigel T. Roulet is a Distinguished James McGill Professor of Biogeosciences and Chair of the Departmentof Geography, McGill University. He obtained a joint Honours B.Sc. in Biology and Geography (1979) and a M.Sc. in Watershed Science (1981) from Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, and his PhD in Physical Geography from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. He started his academic career in the Department of Geography at York University, Toronto in 1985 and moved to McGill University in 1994 as an Associate Professor. He was theDirector of the McGill School of Environment (2003 – 2008) and theDirector of the Centre for Climate and Global Change Research (1996-2002) and the Director of the Global Environmental and Climate Change Research Centre (2011-2014) at McGill University. He became the Chair of the Department of Geography in 2014 and is continuing until 2024. He has served in various grant and scholarship review panels for Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
Nigel’s research interests focus on the interactions among hydrology, climatology, and ecosystems processes in peatlands and forested catchments of the temperate, boreal, and arctic regions. He has published over 200 scientific papers, book chapters and monographs and was a contributing author to the 2ndthrough 4thscientific assessments of climate change by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He served as a member of the Ontario Far North Act Science Advisory Panel from 2010 to 2014. His teaching includes introductory physical geography and environmental systems, environmental hydrology, systems modelling for sustainability, and global biogeochemical cycles. He is currently an Associate Editor of Global Biogeochemical Cycles, and Ecosystems. In 2014, Nigel was elected to the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada.
Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington is Emeritus Senior Lecturer in the Botany Department, NUI Galway, where she taught plant ecology. Her research focused on the sustainable use and rare plant species and communities of many wetland habitats, including flood-meadows (the Shannon callows) and peatlands. A key research area has been on turloughs that are priority habitats of European Conservation importance. Here, she collaborated with colleagues on the study of the plant and invertebrate communities of these ecotonal habitats in relation to local farming practice.
Dr Akintunde Babatunde is an Associate Professor in the School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, UK; and a member of the water@leeds research group. He is also a Chartered Engineer with the UK Engineering Council and a Chartered Environmentalist. His core expertise is in experimental and numerical approaches for addressing the challenges of water quality from cloud to coast. He is a specialist in the design of frameworks for water quality and pollution control at various scales; and the engineering design of bespoke treatment systems and management strategies for water quality. From 2007 to 2011, he worked with the Irish government to develop a coupled catchment model/decision support system for predicting and mitigating nitrate and phosphate losses from agricultural catchments. Since 2012, he has been working with water companies in Ireland and in the UK on various environmental problems. In particular, he has worked on developing novel constructed wetland systems with enhanced phosphorus removal, and which can be deployed as part of catchment management solutions. In 2009, he was awarded the Green Talent award for outstanding young professionals in environmental engineering by the German Federal Minister of Education; and in 2010, he received the prestigious Irish Research Council and EU Marie Curie Joint Postdoctoral Fellowship award. Dr Babatunde has authored > 100 publications; with over 2, 460 citations and a current h-index of 20. He has secured research grants in excess of £9M (both as PI and co-I). He is a member of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Associate Peer Review College, an Editor for Water Science and Technology Journal and a regular reviewer for a number of high-impact factor Journals. He is also one of the two regional coordinators for Africa for the International Water Association specialist group on constructed wetlands. He has extensive contacts and on-going engagements with the water community globally, and this is crucial for understanding needs and developing solutions.
