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SETAC North America Announces New Executive Committee

New President, Vice President and Board Members Announced

November 7, 2006

At the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry North America’s Annual Meeting in Montréal, a new President, Jane Staveley and Vice President, Paul Sibley have been named for the SETAC North America geographic unit.

Four new board members, Karen Kidd, George Cobb, Kim Anderson and Kurt Maier, also took office.

SETAC North America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to environmental quality through science, is governed by a board of directors that is elected by the voting membership and comprised of a combination of members from academia, business, and government. Board policies are carried out by an executive committee that consists of an executive director (ex-officio), president, vice president, immediate past-president, treasurer, and one other board member appointed by the president.

SETAC North America’s new President, Staveley, was vice president from November 2005 to November 2006, and will remain in position as president for one year. She is succeeding former-President Chris Ingersoll, who has a doctorate in zoology and physiology from the University of Wyoming at Laramie and specializes in sediment toxicity and bioaccumulation.

Staveley is a principal environmental scientist and business practice manager with ARCADIS in Durham, N.C. She has previously been an associate at The Cadmus Group, president of Carolina Ecotox, associate of Malcom Pirnie, and a scientist at Union Carbide Corp. Staveley earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.; and her master’s of science in public health specializing in environmental chemistry and biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has contributed to more than 30 publications and presentations.

Staveley has more than 25 years experience working as an environmental consultant for clients in both the public and private sector. She specializes in ecological risk assessment, ecotoxicity testing for pesticides and industrial chemicals, approaches for water quality-based toxics control, and the fate and effects of chemicals in aquatic ecosystems.

She is a charter member of SETAC and also a member of the Water Environment Federation and ASTM Committee E-47 on Biological Effects and Environmental Fate, which meets in November with the annual meeting of SETAC North America. Previously, Staveley served as the president of the Carolinas SETAC regional chapter. Among the many SETAC activities she is involved in, Staveley has been on the editorial board for SETAC’s journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, served on the Government Affairs Committee, has been a short course instructor, and student presentation judge.

SETAC North America’s Vice President, Sibley, will also serve for a year in his new position, and will become president November 2007. Sibley is currently an assistant professor in environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. He received his doctorate in biology at the University of Waterloo, also in Ontario.

After his graduate training, Sibley spent three years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Mid-Continent Ecology Division where he coordinated a research program concerning the development, application, and validation of sediment toxicity tests, before getting back into academia at the University of Guelph. He has authored and co-authored more than 60 papers and book chapters.

Sibley’s research interests include focusing on issues of water quality and environmental management, including: disturbance ecology (impacts of forest harvesting on boreal aquatic systems), invertebrate and sediment toxicology of novel compounds (with emphasis on testing, methods development, and validation), ecosystem-level responses to contaminants using field-based systems (assessment of lab-to-field extrapolation issues), and development of risk assessment methodologies.

Sibley has served as the chair of the North American Membership Committee from 2002 to 2004. He is a regular participant at the SETAC North America annual meeting and has served as a student mentor at the meeting for almost 10 years.

Kidd, one of the four new board members out of a total of 14, has a doctorate in environmental biology and ecology from the University of Alberta. She considers herself an ecotoxicologist and is interested in understanding the fate of contaminants in freshwater food webs and the effects of human stressors on energy flow structure of aquatic ecosystems.

Kidd currently has a position with the University of New Brunswick working with the Canadian Rivers Institute and holds a Canada Research chair. In addition to her research program,she is on the editorial board for SETAC’s journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, serves on SETAC’s World Council Science Committee, has been a student mentor at several of SETAC’s annual meetings, and was on SETAC’s organizing committee for the meeting in Montréal.

Outside of SETAC, Kidd sits on two national management boards, is a co-chair for a national aquatic toxicology workshop next year, and is an editorial assistant with the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

Cobb, also a new board member for SETAC North America, is a professor in environmental toxicology at Texas Tech University. He received his doctorate in chemistry from the University of South Florida. Cobb’s research interests include sensor development for rapid trace analyses, toxicant bioaccumulation, and non-lethal sampling techniques for exposure assessment. His current research projects include improving detection of nitramine explosives, mutagenic effects of nitramine explosives, age dependent toxicity of metal nanoparticles, and toxicant distributions left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Cobb served as a SETAC North America program chair and program committee member at previous North America annual meetings and chaired annual meetings for the Carolinas’ and South Central regions. He served on the editorial board of SETAC’s journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry from 1994 to 1996, and continues to review for them, as well as numerous other scientific journals. Cobb has published more than 70 peer reviewed articles, 10 of which were published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and two of which were published in SETAC texts.

Anderson, who is an associate professor in the Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Department and director of the Food Safety and Environmental Stewardship Program at Oregon State University, will also join the SETAC North America Board. She holds a doctorate in chemistry, and has previously served as chief chemist in the Analytical Sciences Laboratory at the University of Idaho. Before that, she worked as a chemist for an environmental engineering company, and a geologist in the gulf state region and US Forest Service.

Anderson’s current research interests include bioavailability processes, development of in-situ analytical tools, chemical profiling/modeling, and risk assessment. She has co-authored 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, more than 100 proceedings, report, and abstract publications, and several book chapters. She authored the book Analytical Techniques for Inorganic Contaminants.

Anderson has served as an ad hoc reviewer for SETAC’s Journal of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, co-chaired the SETAC national meeting platform sessions, and participated in several professional interest group sessions at the annual North American meetings, including the Life-Cycle Assessment and Metals Advisory Group.

Maier, also a new board member for SETAC North America, is associate professor of environmental health at East Tennessee State University and earned his doctorate in ecology from the University of California Davis. His expertise in aquatic toxicology, including the fate and effects of toxicants at chemical to community levels, together with his expanding interest in environmental microbiology, has provided the basis for his university research program.

Maier has served as chairman for numerous state and local public interest committees, including the Issues of the Environment symposia on ‘Children’s Health Initiatives’ and ‘Environmental Endocrine Disruption,’ the symposium on ‘Perspectives on Nutrients in Aquatic Ecosystems,’ and the Sinking Creek Watershed Alliance. He has also served as an invited member to the EPA’s Star Fellowship and EPSCoR Review Panels.

An 18-year member of SETAC North America, Maier has chaired the North America meetings committee, the SETAC North America annual meeting committee and has served on both the SETAC North America student activities committee as well as the annual meeting committee. He was elected to the mid-south SETAC board of directors and is the founding president of the mid-south regional chapter.