From Air Pollution to the Smell of Life

This event was held on Monday 5 March 2012  (3.00pm - 5.00pm)

This seminar runs for 2 hours

Much of the modern discussion in academia is about research and commercial impact, but can you have both?  What do air pollution and your breath have in common?  It might be thought that these two questions are somewhat disconnected. Using examples from air pollution to breath research via smelling mangoes, whisky, paint and dead bodies, Paul will argue that research and enterprise need not be dissimilar or odd bedfellows.  Novel technology for fingerprinting air will be described and its wide application to develop a leading position scientifically and in a business facing environment explored.

The series is open to all academics and PhD research students across the University. Visitors from other institutions are also welcome.

Professor Paul Monks, Department of Chemistry, University of Leicester

Paul is a Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Leicester. He studied at the Universities of Warwick and Oxford before working at NASA/Goddard and the University of East Anglia in collaboration with CSIRO in Australia. He is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2004, he was awarded the EU Lillehammer Young Scientist award.

His primary research interests are the scientific questions underlying the role of photochemistry in the control of atmospheric composition; chemistry and transport, particularly the impact of long-range transport on chemical composition; the feedbacks between climate and atmospheric chemistry; organic complexity and the control of regional pollution and the measurement of tropospheric composition from space. He is also actively involved in knowledge exchange with the forensic, security and health sectors.

Paul sits on a number of national and international bodies. He is a co-director of the UK Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation, a task leader for the EU-ACCENT network, a member of CACGP (Commission for Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution) and co-chair of IGBP-IGAC (International Global Atmospheric Chemistry). He is a member of BIS Space Leadership Council. He is Chair of DEFRA Air Quality Expert Group (Government Science Advisory Committee on Air Quality). Until recently, he was also a member of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Science and Innovation Strategy Board (SISB).

This seminar forms part of the Intrepid Researcher series.

During this seminar the experts will speak for an hour followed by time for questions and discussion.  This is also an opportunity to meet the speaker informally over tea and cakes at the end. 

Air Pollution, non-invasive diagnostics, mass spectrometry, breath, mangoes. 

Maximum 60 delegates
Minimum 6 delegates

Please complete the online the Intrepid Researcher - Booking Form, submitting to the Staff Development Partnership. 

Booking conditions apply.

About the workshop content:
Contact Dr Meera Warrier (Academic Practice Unit) email: mw189@le.ac.uk  tel: (0116) 223-1876.

About the workshop arrangements:
Contact Us at the Staff Development Partnership.

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