June 2025: DCE Annual Division meeting & ICCE 2025 was held in Belgrade (Serbia).
NEWSLETTERS
- NEWSLETTER 2025 II
DCE Life time achievement award 2025
Prof. Dr. Terry Bidleman (Umeå University, Sweden) was awarded wwith the 2025 DC Lifetime Achievement award. Professor Bidleman started his career at the University of Minnesota where he earned his PhD in analytical chemistry. He completed postdoctoral work at Dalhousie University and the University of Rhode Island before joining the University of South Carolina, where he served as a professor in chemistry and marine sciences for 17 years. In 1992, he transitioned to a research role at Environment Canada. During his career, he held visiting professorships at Stockholm University and Umeå University, ultimately joining Umeå University as a visiting professor in 2011.
Professor Bidleman has a strong research focus on environmental fate of organic pollutants, particularly their transport to polar regions, lakes, and oceans. Professor Bidleman pioneered the work with active and passive sampling of organic contaminants in air introducing polyurethan foam as a cheap and efficient solid material. These studies were 1974 presented in Science, and professor Bidleman together with his post doc mentor Dr. Charlie Olney showed that a large fraction of PCBs was found in the gas phase and less on particulate matter. In 1988 he published in Environmental Science & Technology the paper entitled “Atmospheric processes: Wet and dry deposition of organic compounds are controlled by their vapor-particle partitioning” that significantly influenced both scientific understanding and environmental policy revealing how toxic substances like DDT and PCBs travel through the atmosphere and partition between gas, particle and water phases.
His research has today a strong focus on Nordic marine ecosystems where he combines advanced analytical chemistry with field work and sampling at several key field stations in northern Sweden, including the Norrbyn, Krycklan, and Abisko research stations. Professor Bidleman has been investigating a large range of organic persistent pollutants including chiral compounds. Today the focus is mainly on naturally occurring halogenated substances that exhibit persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity properties. These halogenated natural products are often brominated and produced in oceans and seas by algae and bacteria. His studies follow the fate of these chemicals from terrestrial to aquatic environments and their interplay with food web components and organic materials. Critical processes include volatilization, precipitation, interaction with particulate matter, and abiotic and biotic transformation processes in a changing climate. His research provides increased understanding of critical environmental transport and fate processes of both natural and manmade chemicals He is a very important scientist at the Chemistry Department at Umeå University, Sweden and the national strategic research programme Ecochange, inspiring senior as well as younger colleagues.
Impressions from ICCE 2023
