Leçons inaugurales Profs Tamar Kohn et Konrad Steffen
Event details
| Date | 02.12.2014 |
| Hour | 17:15 › 19:15 |
| Speaker | Profs Tamar Kohn et Konrad Steffen |
| Location | |
| Category | Inaugural lectures - Honorary Lecture |
17h15: Leçon inaugurale de la Prof. Tamar Kohn, professeure associée de chimie environnementale
Bio:
Tamar Kohn studied Environmental Sciences at ETH Zurich, where she received her diploma in 1999. In 2000, she moved to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she obtained a PhD in Environmental Chemistry. She then spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, where she first started working on waterborne viruses. She moved to EPFL in 2007 as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor in August 2014. As the director of the Environmental Chemistry Lab at EPFL, she worked on the fate of organic micropollutants and viruses in natural and engineered system. Currently, her main goal is to understand the fundamental processes controlling virus disinfection, to anticipate disinfection failure and to devise optimized disinfection strategies. She is interested in both high-end disinfection applications, as well as water and waste treatment technologies suitable for developing countries.
Abstract:
Waterborne viruses: can we kill them all?
Despite the remarkable progress accomplished in water and wastewater treatment over the past decades, pathogens in drinking and recreational water continue to pose a threat to public health in both industrialized and developing nations. Pathogenic viruses (e.g., Hepatitis A virus or norovirus) present a particular challenge for water quality because they are excreted in very high numbers from infected patients, and they are not well removed by physical treatment barriers such as filtration or sedimentation. The safest measure to control waterborne viruses is disinfection. However, disinfection processes are poorly understood, and can even unexpectedly fail. In this presentation, I will discuss my group’s advances in understanding the processes involved in virus disinfection by different treatment technologies. I will highlight both mechanisms lead to inactivate inactivation, as well as some viral “strategies” to protect themselves from disinfection. Finally, I will discuss my group’s work in the context of designing optimal treatment strategies to achieve the best possible virus disinfection.
18h00: Leçon inaugurale du Prof. Konrad Steffen, professeur ordinaire de sciences cryosphériques
Bio:
Dr. Konrad (Koni) Steffen is the Director of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and a Professor in Climate and Cryosphere at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC) at EPF-Lausanne, and at the Institute for Atmosphere and Climate at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland. He is responsible for vital instrumentation deployed in the Arctic to help us monitor the significant changes taking place on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Without his work, human knowledge of Arctic climate, warming, and melting dynamics would be substantially diminished. He has led field expeditions to the Greenland ice sheet, to Antarctica, and other Polar Regions for the past 39 years to measure the dynamic response of ice masses under a warming climate. He has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and 15 book chapters. He spent 24 years at the University of Colorado and led the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) before returning to his homeland in July 2012. He is currently the Chair of the Global Climate Observing System Terrestrial Observation panel, a member of the NASA Earth Science Subcommittee advising board, the ESA Climate Advisory board, the Advising Board of the Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar and Marine Sciences in Germany, and a lead author of the IPCC AR5 assessment for the Cryosphere chapter.
Abstract:
The melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet – how does it affect the global sea level?
The Greenland ice sheet shows an increasing loss of ice during the last decade. The current ice loss in Greenland corresponds to a global sea level rise of about 1 mm per year. The global sea level rise caused is caused by the melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, glacier, and the thermal expansion of the oceans with a predicted rise of one meter by the end of this century and large regional differences in both hemispheres. Climate observations (1991-2014) will be discussed from the Swiss Camp, located at the western slope of the Greenland ice sheet, 60 km inland from Ilulissat. The mean annual temperature of -12 °C increased 3.6 °C between 1991 and 2014 (1.7 °C per decade) with large interannual variability in all seasons. Also the snow melt has increased which resulted in an increased melt water flow towards the coast. The increase of the meltwater, which is drained through Moulins in the ice sheet is causing the acceleration of ice flow through the reduction of friction at the ice sheet interface with the bedrock. New insights of this underground hydrological channels and cavities were measured with a radar system and recorded with video cameras.
Bio:
Tamar Kohn studied Environmental Sciences at ETH Zurich, where she received her diploma in 1999. In 2000, she moved to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she obtained a PhD in Environmental Chemistry. She then spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, where she first started working on waterborne viruses. She moved to EPFL in 2007 as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor in August 2014. As the director of the Environmental Chemistry Lab at EPFL, she worked on the fate of organic micropollutants and viruses in natural and engineered system. Currently, her main goal is to understand the fundamental processes controlling virus disinfection, to anticipate disinfection failure and to devise optimized disinfection strategies. She is interested in both high-end disinfection applications, as well as water and waste treatment technologies suitable for developing countries.
Abstract:
Waterborne viruses: can we kill them all?
Despite the remarkable progress accomplished in water and wastewater treatment over the past decades, pathogens in drinking and recreational water continue to pose a threat to public health in both industrialized and developing nations. Pathogenic viruses (e.g., Hepatitis A virus or norovirus) present a particular challenge for water quality because they are excreted in very high numbers from infected patients, and they are not well removed by physical treatment barriers such as filtration or sedimentation. The safest measure to control waterborne viruses is disinfection. However, disinfection processes are poorly understood, and can even unexpectedly fail. In this presentation, I will discuss my group’s advances in understanding the processes involved in virus disinfection by different treatment technologies. I will highlight both mechanisms lead to inactivate inactivation, as well as some viral “strategies” to protect themselves from disinfection. Finally, I will discuss my group’s work in the context of designing optimal treatment strategies to achieve the best possible virus disinfection.
18h00: Leçon inaugurale du Prof. Konrad Steffen, professeur ordinaire de sciences cryosphériques
Bio:
Dr. Konrad (Koni) Steffen is the Director of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and a Professor in Climate and Cryosphere at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC) at EPF-Lausanne, and at the Institute for Atmosphere and Climate at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland. He is responsible for vital instrumentation deployed in the Arctic to help us monitor the significant changes taking place on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Without his work, human knowledge of Arctic climate, warming, and melting dynamics would be substantially diminished. He has led field expeditions to the Greenland ice sheet, to Antarctica, and other Polar Regions for the past 39 years to measure the dynamic response of ice masses under a warming climate. He has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and 15 book chapters. He spent 24 years at the University of Colorado and led the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) before returning to his homeland in July 2012. He is currently the Chair of the Global Climate Observing System Terrestrial Observation panel, a member of the NASA Earth Science Subcommittee advising board, the ESA Climate Advisory board, the Advising Board of the Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar and Marine Sciences in Germany, and a lead author of the IPCC AR5 assessment for the Cryosphere chapter.
Abstract:
The melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet – how does it affect the global sea level?
The Greenland ice sheet shows an increasing loss of ice during the last decade. The current ice loss in Greenland corresponds to a global sea level rise of about 1 mm per year. The global sea level rise caused is caused by the melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, glacier, and the thermal expansion of the oceans with a predicted rise of one meter by the end of this century and large regional differences in both hemispheres. Climate observations (1991-2014) will be discussed from the Swiss Camp, located at the western slope of the Greenland ice sheet, 60 km inland from Ilulissat. The mean annual temperature of -12 °C increased 3.6 °C between 1991 and 2014 (1.7 °C per decade) with large interannual variability in all seasons. Also the snow melt has increased which resulted in an increased melt water flow towards the coast. The increase of the meltwater, which is drained through Moulins in the ice sheet is causing the acceleration of ice flow through the reduction of friction at the ice sheet interface with the bedrock. New insights of this underground hydrological channels and cavities were measured with a radar system and recorded with video cameras.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- Section SIE
Contact
- Christina Treier