Faculty chat with Dr. Nicola Pirrone
When: January 30th, 12:30-1:30 pm
Where: Dudley House (Lehman Hall) in the 2nd floor graduate student lounge
Lunch will be provided
This event will be capped at 20 participants
Dr. Nicola Pirrone is a visiting scholar in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), where he is developing research projects on understanding the global mercury cycle and environmental and human health impacts, developing interoperable systems for integrating Earth Observations and modeling tools in environmental policy evaluations and assessments. He is the Research Director of the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy, and was most recently the Director of the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research of the CNR from 2008-2018. Dr. Pirrone also serves as an expert for major international and national public and private organizations in the field of environmental research and policy development. He is serving as Representative of the EU Presidency in the ad-hoc group for the Effectiveness Evaluation of the Minamata Convention and Italian Representative in the Group on Earth Observation (GEO). He has served as co-chair of the UNEP Fate &Transport Research Area, which provided scientific support to the UNEP Governing Council during the development of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, an international treaty that became effective in 2017; he was also the Head of the Italian delegation at Conference of Parties (COP1 and COP2) of the Minamata Convention, Chair of the Workgroup on Mercury as part of the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollutants under the UNECE-LRTAP convention, and Chair of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Task “Tracking Pollutants” as part of the GEO Work Plan (2012-2015) to support the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). He has published over 300 papers in the peer-reviewed literature, books and international conference proceedings. Dr. Pirrone studied Nuclear Engineering at University of Pisa in Italy, completed a post-doc at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and University of Michigan, and also currently serves as an Adjunct Professor with the Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Michigan. He received the Kathryn R. Mahaffey Lifetime Achievement Award for “his outstanding contribution to mercury research and policy” and the UNEP award for “his commitment and outstanding contribution to the UN Environment Global Mercury Partnership”.