Piotr Szefer received his M.S., Ph.D., and D.Sc. degrees from the Medical University of Gdansk (MUG), Poland. He was granted a full professorship at MUG in 2000. Between 1990 and 2002, he was vice dean and the dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy, MUG. Since 2000 he has been the head of the Department of Food Sciences, MUG. Prof. Szefer’s research includes instrumental analysis of certain groups of foodstuffs for mineral components and metaloorganic compounds such as butyltins. He is involved in the development of novel multivariate statistical techniques that can be used to estimate the quality, geographical origin, or authenticity of food products. His research also covers the fate of environmental contaminants in the marine environments, speciation of chemical elements, and their bioavailability and biomagnification in the aquatic food chain. Prof. Szefer has published 160 scientific papers including 12 book issues. He has served on editorial boards for seven scientific journals, including Science of the Total Environment (Elsevier) and Oceanologia . Professor Szefer has been a visiting professor or visiting researcher at several universities and research institutions including Miyazaki University, Japan; University of Aden, Yemen; the Geological Survey of Finland; Karlsruhe University, Germany; Unidad Académica Mazatlán (UNAM), Mexico; Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India; Instituto de Radioproteçao e Dosimetria (IRD), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), Nantes, France; Environmental Science and Technology Department, Roskilde, Denmark; University of Plymouth, England; Fundación AZTI Technalia, San Sebastian, Spain; Seoul National University and School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University and Korea Research and Development Information (KORDI), South Korea. He has supervised seven Ph.D. students and more than 100 M.Sc. students. Jerome O. Nriagu is professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and School of Public Health and Research professor, Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan. For many years, he was a research scientist with Environment Canada, National Water Research Institute, Burlington, Ontario. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Science of the Total Environment and editor of 28 books on various environmental topics including Thallium in the Environment , Arsenic in the Environment , and Nickel and Human Health . Dr. Nriagu received his B.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, an M.S. from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He has published extensively and is listed among the most highly cited scientists in the fields of environmental studies and ecology. He has received a number of awards for his work and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
