Announcing the 2024 Slate of SETAC Fellows
Derek Muir, Retired; Fabiana Lo Nostro, University of Buenos Aires; Charles Menzie, William Goodfellow, Exponent
The SETAC Fellows award recognizes both an individual’s scientific contributions and their personal commitment to our society and their efforts to build the next generation of scientists and professionals.
Jing You
Jing You has been a Full Professor in the School of Environment, Jinan University in Guangzhou, China, since 2016. From 2009 to 2016, she was a professor in the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She started her academic career in 2007 as an assistant professor at the University of Central Missouri after a five-year period as a post-doctoral researcher at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, USA.
You has been an active member of SETAC since 2005 and has played an influential role in SETAC Asia-Pacific over the past 14 years. She was elected as a member of the SETAC Asia-Pacific Board of Directors in 2013 and served on the board until 2022, including as vice president (2016–2018), president (2018-2020) and immediate past president (2020–2022). She also served as a board member of the SETAC World Council from 2018 to 2020.
You has an outstanding record of scientific productivity with 220 peer-reviewed publications over a 20-year period. She has focused her research interests on interdisciplinary areas linking chemistry and ecotoxicology techniques with the objective of understanding ecological risk of chemical mixtures in aquatic ecosystems.
In summary, You is an internationally recognized scientist who has made key contributions in multiple areas of the sciences important to SETAC, including environmental analytical chemistry, ecotoxicology and effects directed analysis. She has also played an influential role in SETAC Asia-Pacific and promoted SETAC’s goals in her advisory and mentoring roles.
Jim Fava
At the recent annual meeting in Seville, Spain, SETAC awarded James (Jim) A. Fava as SETAC Fellow. Fava has long been recognized as having a strong environmental toxicology, risk assessment and life cycle initiatives reputation, both nationally and internationally. Fava has demonstrated a strong dedication to science over his career, addressing the most complex issues while emphasizing the importance to giving back to the community and SETAC through active participation and service.
Fava has been called the “father of modern-day life cycle assessment” and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment (ACLCA), playing a key role in promoting and developing the application of life cycle information to support decision-making globally. Some of the noteworthy contributions that Fava has made to LCA and SETAC over the last three decades include:
- Led the SETAC LCA Interest Group in organizing a series of SETAC Pellston Workshops starting in 1990 that created the scientific foundation of the modern-day life cycle assessment. He chaired the first workshop and then either chaired or was a lead participant in consequent workshops held in the 90s, including:
- Chaired the Strategic Advisory Group for the Environment (SAGE), which recommended that ISO develop LCA standards.
- Led the U.S. delegation in their development through the first generation of ISO LCA standards (1993-2000).
- Co-founded and played key roles within the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, launched in 2002 by UNEP and SETAC to enable users around the world to put life cycle thinking into effective practice. For example, he co-chaired the Flagship 3a on Hot Spots Analysis.
- Co-founded and was Executive Director of the Forum for Sustainability through Life Cycle Innovation. FSLCI is a non-profit and membership-based community organization to promote the acceleration for the use of life cycle information in decision-making.
- Founded and directed the Product Sustainability Roundtable (PSRT) for more than 25 years. The PSRT brings together the product sustainability leaders of the world’s most respected companies, from across the value chain, in a non-competitive environment to provide support, benchmarking and best practice advice to their product-oriented programs to drive organization change to realize business value.
- Published the first paper outlining the LCA critical review process, which was adopted by ISO.
- Supported the early consideration and use of LCA within GHG protocol and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program.
In addition to his involvement with the LCA community, Fava has been a long-term leader for SETAC, including being a Charter Member, SETAC President, Chair of the Technical Committee and founding member of the SETAC Education Foundation, which was converted and grew into the current SETAC North America Eugene Mancini Endowment Fund. In the award nomination package, Bruce Vigon’s support letter stated, “I can confidently say that the landscape of LCA and SETAC’s historic and continuing role in its evolution and promulgation would be very different were it not for the leadership and creativity of Jim from the early days to the present.” This point was further articulated by Pat Guiney in his support letter commenting that “Dr. Fava brings not only a sophisticated understanding of environmental science, sustainability and LCA issues but a tremendous enthusiasm for complex problem solving. Perhaps even more importantly, he has applied this understanding and enthusiasm as a driving force for the successful advancement of these areas within SETAC.”
Fava is a valuable professional within the SETAC community, exhibiting a strong commitment to use of science in decision-making. Also noteworthy is his continual mentoring of young professionals in the field of ecotoxicology, risk assessment and life cycle assessment. His commitments to our next generation of professionals are critical to advancing our science.
Helena da Silva de Assis
Helena da Silva de Assis has been a member of SETAC for 30 years. Her academic and professional career has grown steadily. She was born in Brazil, holds a degree in veterinary medicine, a master's degree in renewable aquatic organisms, and PhD in natural sciences, research line ecotoxicology. Among many other appointments, she has served as a full professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the Federal University of Paraná and has made a positive impact on future generations of scientists in the world of ecotoxicology. Due to her leadership within SETAC, many generations of students in Latin America have become involved with our society and have become involved with the science of SETAC.
Da Silva de Assis is a highly recognized scientist who has made great contributions to the knowledge of the toxicological effects of chemicals on neotropical fish from freshwater, estuarine and coastal systems at the Environmental Toxicology Laboratory in the Pharmacology Department at Federal University of Paraná. She, along with colleagues, has forged a path of high-quality research in neotropical regions and is a leader in that field. As a policy maker within Latin America, da Silva de Assis is one of the leaders working to bring together government officials from across the continent with the academic and business scientific communities.
Within SETAC Latin America, da Silva de Assis has led a regional training program in risk assessment and use of weight of evidence methods. As a participant in the Global Horizon Scanning Program, she was instrumental in developing key future research questions and organizing a funded initiative to address these questions. At the global policy level, she has been an active member of the SETAC Chemical Management Panel for its contribution to the UNEP Science-Policy Panel.
Da Silva de Assis has worked to empower women scientists. Always committed to women’s activities at SETAC and leading women throughout SETAC, da Silva de Assis has been a central person inside and outside SETAC Latin America. She was awarded the SETAC Global Partners Capacity Building Award along with other female colleagues from Latin America.
After chairing SETAC Latin America for two years, she not only became the first SETAC World Council President from Latin America but also assumed this leadership at a difficult time for the society (pandemic period). To “steady the ship of SETAC,” she served two terms and assumed governance responsibility in an impeccable manner.
Her institutional knowledge of our society and her experience in science and science policy inspired many in all her great achievements. Da Silva de Assis motivates and inspires us to break barriers and actively participate in SETAC. She works to increase the participation and visibility of women in the governance of society.
The SETAC Awards Committee congratulates all the winners and thanks them for their hard work and dedication. If you would like to nominate someone as a SETAC Fellow, submissions will open in September.
Author’s contact: [email protected]