International award to environmental researcher
Dawei Geng, doctoral student in chemistry at Örebro University, Sweden, has received the prestigious Otto Hutzinger Award for his presentation at an international environmental conference in Daegu in South Korea. He was awarded for the development of a new method with which to analyse environmental pollutants.
About a year ago, the Waters Center of Innovation was opened at Örebro University, giving the university access to sophisticated equipment from Waters Corporation in Manchester and the opportunity to work together with Waters on the development of various analytical instruments. The focus is on the analysis of different persistent organic environmental pollutants.
– This equipment has facilitated a simplified analysis process, says Dawei Geng. With a Master’s degree from Beijing, he came to Örebro on a Chinese scholarship a little over a year ago to begin his doctoral studies. He was attracted to Örebro University and the research environment Man-Technology-Environment (MTM) led by Professor Bert van Bavel, who is also his supervisor.
Reference laboratory
Örebro University’s centre for environmental research, MTM, is one of the United Nations’ three reference laboratories for the environmental pollutants that are listed in the 2004 Stockholm Convention – a global treaty to reduce the use of persistent environmental pollutants, also known as POPs (persistent organic pollutants).
The work for which Dawei Geng has now been rewarded is part of his research which is looking to develop and secure new methods for analysing different POPs and their effect on humans and on the environment.
The Otto Hutzinger Student Presentation Award is given for outstanding presentations at the annual international Dioxide Symposium, dedicated to discussing persistent organic pollutants. Professor Otto Hutzinger was the initiator of the symposium and it has been held annually at different venues around the world since 1980.
In 2011, the Otto Hutzinger Award was given to Helena Nilsson, also from MTM.
Text and photo: Lars Westberg