A Global Success: Recapping the 11th Young Environmental Scientists Meeting
Drew Szabo, Gwilym Price and Collins Nimako, Meeting Chairs
Meeting attendance by country.
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The 11th SETAC Young Environmental Scientists (YES) Meeting was held over three jam-packed days from 7–9 March. The YES meeting is typically held face-to-face in Europe and North America each year. However, due to ongoing travel and attendance restrictions around the world, we decided to make YES2022 a virtual meeting from the very beginning. This enabled us to engage students and recent graduates from all over the world, who could participate and enjoy the meeting from the comfort of their homes. It was important to us that students were not only comfortable but could also present in their own time zone. To help us achieve these goals, we invited the Student Advisory Councils from each SETAC Geographic Unit to help organize and participate so that we could continue the meeting over almost 72 consecutive hours, which was great for those insomniacs among us!
We were pleased to have attendance from 65 students and early career researchers in 27 countries. There was excellent representation from each geographic unit, including Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. Each student presented in one of seven session themes focused on promoting research in all fields of environmental toxicology and chemistry.
Geographic Unit Highlights
Asia-Pacific
Sarva Praveena from the Universiti Putra (Malaysia) presented interesting data on the presence of microplastics in alcohol-based hand sanitizers. This was an important discovery when considering the environmental impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. They estimated a staggering 26 trillion microplastics were discharged to the environment from hand sanitizer alone in Malaysia over the last few years.Europe
Estefanía Pinto from the University of Vigo (Spain) investigated the impact of micro- and nanoplastics on the bioavailability of cadmium in rainbow trout. They found that plastics reduced bioavailability and did not alter the effect of acute cadmium toxicity. As more plastics are discharged to aquatic ecosystems, this research will be very important in understanding the interactions of plastics with legacy and emerging contaminants.Africa
Akintayo Aborisade from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (Nigeria) developed a low-cost biochar from eggshells that were effective in reducing the bioavailability of cadmium and lead in soils. The remediation of soils contaminated with these metals will reduce the overall exposure to humans and the environment.North and Latin America
María del Rocío Franco from Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata (Argentina) presented a review of the phytoremediation potential of cattail. They investigated the relationship between numerous chemical properties and the concentrations of contaminants in the organism. Overall, they found that this species could be an important tool for environmental scientists remediating contaminated aquatic environments.In addition to all the excellent student presentations, we had a huge lineup of keynote and plenary speakers over the week. Juliane Hollender, Eawag and ETH Zurich, opened the meeting with a brilliant introduction to exposure assessment and the applications of suspect screening and non-target screening in groundwater and biota samples. Jean Armengaud, CEA, then closed the meeting with a detailed exploration of molecular biomarkers using advanced “proteogenomics” workflows developed in his laboratory.
Screenshot from the first global SETAC Student Advisory Council meeting during YES2022 with representatives from Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America.
Holding a global virtual meeting that was presented in each time zone was a huge challenge and is a testament to the enthusiasm and dedication of the members of the Student Advisory Councils for each region. It was so rewarding to see students from around the world coming together and sharing their research, either for the first time or after a long hiatus during the pandemic. The SETAC community is made that much stronger with the participation of students to their fields, and this meeting was a great example of the international collaborations that are possible for the society.
On behalf of the organizing committee, we would like to thank each of the presenters for their excellent contributions to SETAC and to the fields of environmental toxicology and chemistry. We are also very grateful to each of the keynote speakers, who generously dedicated their time to sharing the most innovative and important research from their respective labs. We could not have run this meeting without the support from Rebecca Bundschuh and her colleagues from the SETAC Europe office. Finally, we acknowledge the sponsors of the meeting, Agilent and Syngenta, for their generous contributions.
Authors’ contact information: [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]