North America Leadership
SETAC North America Board of Directors
President
Nile Kemble, Federal Government, USA
Vice President
Mark Johnson, Federal Government, USA
Treasurer
Teresa Norberg-King, Federal Government (retired), USA
Executive Committee Member-at-Large
Alan Jones, BASF, USA
Board Members
Katy Chung, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), USA
Austin Gray, Virginia Tech University, USA
Mark McMaster, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada
Carla Ng, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Martha Georgina Orozco-Medina, University of Guadalajara, Mexico
Shawn Sager, Arcadis, USA
Amila De Silva, Environment Canada, Canada
Ruth Sofield, Western Washington University, USA
Chris Stransky, WSP, USA
Student Members
Adam Wronski, Baylor University, USA
Bonnie Ertel, Arnold School of Public Health, USA
SETAC North America Executive Director
Tamar Schlekat, ex officio
Executive Committee
Nile Kemble
Nile Kemble received a B.S. degree from the University of Nebraska-Kearney in biology with a wildlife emphasis and a M.S. from the University of Missouri in fisheries management. Kemble has worked with a variety of other organizations, both nationally and internationally, to develop sediment quality guidelines that can be used to predict the incidence of toxicity in sediments as well as working with ASTM and USEPA in developing standard methods for conducting toxicity tests with contaminated sediments. His current research is primarily focused in evaluating toxicity and effects of hazardous algal blooms on freshwater fish and invertebrates and working on developing a bait food for eradicating invasive carp. He has published 94 peer reviewed articles or final reports.
Mark Johnson
Mark Johnson serves as the Director of Toxicology for the U.S. Army Public Health Center. He has held several leadership roles including as a past president of the American Board of Toxicology (ABT) and board member of the International Board of Environmental Risk Assessment (IBERA). He believes that the role of SETAC as a leader in environmental sciences is changing from one that has traditionally focused on understanding contaminants to one that has had to respond to increasingly complex emerging environmental issues that include human public health concerns. Johnson hopes to help SETAC encourage new ways to support multi-matrixed efforts to include One Health concepts in environmental risk assessment through focusing on emerging issues. He would also like to see SETAC bridge into recommending courses of action that will result in applied tools and solutions.
Teresa Norberg-King
Teresa Norberg-King is a self-employed subject matter expert in the development and application of effective methods for identifying significant stressors and effects in aquatic systems. She has a master’s degree from the University of Wyoming and has spent a large part of her career working for the USEPA Office of Research and Development. Norberg-King has a history of service to the society. She has served on the SETAC North America Board of Directors, the SETAC World Council, and was President of the Midwest Chapter. She was an annual meeting chair and has chaired and served on many other committees and interest groups including the finance committee. She is dedicated to fiscally-responsible management of the society’s resources.
Alan Jones
Alan Jones is a Senior Aquatic Ecotoxicologist with BASF in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He received a B.S. in Environmental Studies from Emory & Henry College and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Toxicology from Clemson University, where he studied the effects of multiple stressors on small stream ecosystems. He was a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University, working on the Hanford Site Natural Resources Damage Assessment, and went on to join the crop protection chemicals industry in 2015. He has been an active SETAC member since 2005 and has both been a member of and (co-)chaired the steering committees of the Chemistry Interest Group and the Sediments Interest Group. He was a member of the Membership Committee and has organized the SETAC North America Buddy Program for the last three years.
Board Members
Katy Chung
Katy Chung received her B.S. from University of South Carolina and her M.S. from the University of Charleston. She has more than 20 years of experience at NOAA, and her current research focuses on per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) and PFAS-free fire-fighting foam compounds in estuarine organisms. Chung started as a SETAC student member in 1998 and has been an avid SETAC volunteer, serving on the Board of Directors for the Carolinas Chapter of SETAC (2004–2006) and as its secretary from 2006 to 2019.
Austin Gray
Austin Gray is an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg where he does research in aquatic toxicology. He has been a member of SETAC since he was a sophomore in college. Most recently, he co-founded and co-chaired the Inclusive Diversity (ID) Committee. As a board member, he wants to bring more transparency to members of SETAC. He believes SETAC should focus on being more inclusive and recruit new environmental professionals with diversity in mind. He also hopes to work on the board to promote SETAC’s support of early and mid-career scientists that are transitioning to new positions.
Mark McMaster
Mark McMaster has a Ph.D. from the University of Guelph and has been with Environment and Climate Change Canada for more than 26 years. His research experience focuses on monitoring programs and the effects of contaminants on the reproductive status of wild fish. He first joined SETAC in 1989 and has been to most annual North American meetings since. He is an avid and diligent SETAC committee member and volunteer. McMaster is a senior research scientist, who leads a research team, manages projects across sectors, and is responsible for a budget of roughly one million a year.
Carla Ng
Carla Ng has been an active member of SETAC North America for nearly twenty years and has also actively participated in SETAC Europe. She has an appreciation for the roles that SETAC plays globally. She has participated in Pellston Workshops and Focused Topic meetings, and SETAC has been the core association and scientific meeting place for her research career.
Carla is trained as a chemical engineer, works in a department of civil and environmental engineering, and manages projects that span chemical hazard assessment, toxicology, environmental fate modeling and human exposure assessment. This highly interdisciplinary experience helps her appreciate many of the fields of relevance to SETAC and the important roles this association plays in academic, regulatory and industrial sectors.
She is currently an Associate Editor for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, a Past President of the Exposure Modeling Interest Group, a Past Steering Committee Member of the Chemistry Interest Group and was a Co-Chair of the 2022 SETAC North America annual meeting.
Martha Georgina Orozco-Medina
Martha Georgina Orozco-Median is the Director of the Institute for the Environment and Human Communities and is a Senior Research Professor at the University of Guadalajara. Orozco-Median coordinates research projects in the areas of environmental health, risks, pollution and health, pollution indicators, and environmental quality in vulnerable areas of environmental fragility. She is also the director of the scientific journal Sembrando Conciencia (Sowing Consciousness). She is a past president of Collegiate Biologists of Jalisco, which belongs to the Mexican Federation of Biology Colleges.
Shawn Sager
Shawn Sager is currently a Vice President and Principal Scientist at Arcadis with more than 35 years of consulting experience. Her expertise lies in human health risk assessment. She received a B.A. from the University of California, an M.S. and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Sager attended her first SETAC meeting in 1993 and has been active in SETAC for the last 15 years.
Amila De Silva
Amila De Silva is a mid-career government scientist at Environment Canada where she studies the environmental chemistry of contaminants. She has been involved with SETAC since 2005 in several capacities. The strengths De Silva hopes to bring to the board are her long-term energetic experience within and outside of SETAC and ability to identify with all stages of SETAC involvement from newcomers to seasoned members.
Ruth Sofield
Ruth Sofield has been an environmental toxicology and chemistry faculty member in the Environmental Science Department at Western Washington University since 2003. Her research is focused on contaminants in Puget Sound, and she's involved in the restoration of the Sound as a member of the Puget Sound Partnership Science Panel. Additionally, she has coordinated and ran an online speaker series since 2020 called Toxicology and Societies; this series is designed to make science more relatable to the general public.
Ruth has a B.A. in Biology from West Virginia University, an M.S. in Environmental Science from McNeese State University, and a Ph.D. and post-doc from Colorado School of Mines (Environmental Science and Engineering). She would like to contribute to activities that make toxicology and chemistry relatable and relevant to different audiences, support toxicology programs in universities, and build on inclusive practices.
Chris Stransky
Chris Stransky is a manager of the Aquatic Sciences and Toxicology Group at WSP USA in San Diego, California. His experience and interest has been centered on a variety of toxicology and ecological risk assessment programs in support of regulatory compliance as well as pushing the boundaries to develop and test new innovative methods for monitoring. Characterizing the health of the biological communities in our local bays, harbors and watersheds is a role and passion of his. He has been an active member of SETAC since 1993 (helping to establish and grow the SoCal Chapter) and is the current co-chair for the National SETAC Regional Chapters Committee (various roles described further below). He also proudly serves on the Board of Directors for the Boz Research and Teaching Institute, affiliated with the University of California San Diego (UCSD). He received his B.A. in Aquatic Science from UCSB and an M.S. in Ecology from SDSU. Strengths specific to SETAC include identifying and fostering collaborative opportunities and motivation and enthusiasm to inspire others.
Student Members
Adam Wronski
Adam Wronski is a second-year graduate student at Baylor University, where he is pursing a Ph.D. in Environmental Science. His research has thus far focused primarily on the prevalence of pharmaceuticals, specifically antipsychotics, in wastewater influent, effluent discharges and surface waters globally. Wronski has governance experience as a member of the executive board of the Baylor University SETAC chapter. He hopes to work to increase student engagement, especially with local and regional SETAC chapters.
Bonnie Ertel
Bonnie Ertel is a Ph.D. Student in the Arnold School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Center for Oceans and Human Health and Climate Change Interactions, where her research is focused on the impacts of microplastics on bottlenose dolphins. Prior to this, she completed her masters at the Citadel. She is involved in the Carolinas Regional Chapter and has been involved in NASAC.