U.S. EPA: Microplastics/Citizen Science Workshop

U.S. EPA Region 2 and The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Registration Extended Until October 5, 2016
“EPA will use your registration information solely for this event. We will not share your information with any third party.”
“If you require special accommodations, please contact Patricia Sheridan at 732-321-6780 to make arrangements.” 
The EPA Region 2 Trash Free Waters and Citizen Science Programs and The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry are co-sponsoring a one-day Microplastics/Citizen Science Workshop. This Workshop will look at the historical research conducted, the importance of standardizing sampling and analytical methodologies, future research needs, and how organizations aggregating citizen science efforts can assist in filling these research gaps.  Participants will be introduced to preferred methods of microplastics sampling, and then perform actual sampling to obtain tangible experience. 
Featured Speakers: Judith Enck, EPA Region 2 and Marcus Eriksen of 5 Gyres
Scheduled Panelists: Abigail Barrows/Adventure Scientists; Dr. Sherri A. Mason/SUNY Fredonia; Margaret Murphy/AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow; Dr. Nick Anastas/EPA
Hotel: Sheraton Syracuse Hotel & Conference Center <A HREF="http://www.sheratonsyracuse.com/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">http://www.sheratonsyracuse.com/</A>
Hotel Options: Marriott Downtown; Crowne Plaza Downtown; Genessee Grande Hotel; Hotel Sklyer
Lunch on your own @ Trailhead Cafe,The Gateway Center; or Bring Your Own.  Other lunch options on campus will be provided at the registration table.
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Biographies
Judith Enck, Regional Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 
On November 5, 2009, Judith Enck was appointed Regional Administrator of Region 2 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by President Barack Obama. Previously, she was Deputy Secretary for the Environment in the New York State Governor's Office. As Regional Administrator, Judith's responsibilities are wide-ranging. In cooperation with state and regional authorities in New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and eight federally recognized Indian Nations, she administers federal programs governing air and water pollution, industrial discharges, toxic substances, pesticides, protection of streams, lakes and the ocean, solid and hazardous wastes, the cleanup of chemical spills and abandoned hazardous waste sites, and much more. She is also a member of the President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status.
Judith is responsible for managing a staff of 800 and overseeing an annual budget of approximately $613 million.
Judith previously served for eight years as a policy advisor to the New York State Attorney General. Prior to that, she was Senior Environmental Associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group. She also served as the Executive Director of Environmental Advocates of New York, a non-profit government watchdog organization. She is a past President of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, former Executive Director of the Non-Profit Resource Center and a designer of her town’s recycling program. She worked with the New York State Legislature to pass a number of the state’s most far reaching environmental laws including those addressing acid rain, toxics, pesticides, recycling, energy conservation and environmental funding.
Her accomplishments have been recognized with professional awards from the Attorney General’s Office, the Sierra Club, Center for Women in Government, Citizen Action, the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University of Albany and others.
Judith was raised in the Catskill Mountains and is a graduate of the College of St. Rose in Albany, New York, which recently recognized her as a Distinguished Alumni. She is married and has a grown son, and splits her time between Brooklyn and rural Rensselaer County, New York.
 
Marcus Eriksen, Co-Founder & Director of Research, 5 Gyres Institute
Marcus Eriksen is the Research Director and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute.  He studies the global distribution and ecological impacts of plastic marine pollution, which has included expeditions sailing through all 5 subtropical gyres, Bay of Bengal, Southern Ocean and inland lakes and rivers, recently publishing the first global estimate of all plastic of all sizes floating in the world’s oceans, totaling 270,000 metric tons from 5.25 trillion particles.  In 2013 he and colleagues published the discovery of microbeads in the Great Lakes, which became the cornerstone for a US-based campaign to eliminate plastic microbeads from cosmetics, resulting in the Microbead-free Waters Act, which became US federal law in 2015.  
In 2000 he traveled to Midway Atoll, finding hundreds of Laysan Albatross with plastic pouring out of their stomachs, and that experience narrowed his focus to plastics.  He received his Ph.D. in Science Education from University of Southern California in 2003, months before embarking on a 2000-mile, 5-month journey down the Mississippi River on a homemade raft of plastic bottles to bring attention to this issue.  Again in 2008, he rafted across the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii on JUNK, floating on 15,000 plastic bottles and a Cessina airplane fuselage as a cabin (<A HREF="http://junkraft.com/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">junkraft.com</A>).  The journey, 2,600 miles in 88 days, brought attention to the work of the 5 Gyres Institute, the organization he co-founded with his wife Anna Cummins.
His first book, titled “My River Home” (Beacon Press, 2007) chronicled his Mississippi River experience paralleled with his tour as a Marine in the 1991 Gulf War.   The experience of war, sailing across oceans with wonderful crewmates, and long rafting voyages, have led to a strong conservation ethic worth fighting for. “We must understand and define conservation and social justice as our collective self-preservation – a rationale that crosses all boundaries between all people.”
 
Abby Barrows, Principal Investigator, Global Microplastics Initiative, Adventure Scientists
Abby Barrows grew up on an island in Maine with the ocean as her playground. A passion for travel brought her to the University of Tasmania, where she earned a degree in Zoology with a focus on Marine Biology. She is currently working towards a Master’s degree at the College of the Atlantic.
After mapping the canopy of old-growth temperate rainforest and trapping Tasmanian devils, Abby designed and managed a groundbreaking study of seahorse diversity, distribution and trade in Papua New Guinea, publishing two academic papers on the research. She has traveled the South Pacific by boat, trekked the Himalaya, explored the Middle East, researched sea turtles in Uruguay and Costa Rica, dived Mediterranean wrecks, rehabilitated big cats in the Amazon, and worked aboard a schooner in New England and the Canadian Maritimes. She saw one thing in common everywhere: plastic pollution.
Abby has directed microplastics research since 2012, initiating the first baseline data map of microplastic pollution distribution in Maine. She used this research to help push through plastic reduction legislation. Abby currently manages a lab for Adventure Scientists where she processes and analyzes international water samples, enabling a rare glimpse at the extent of plastic contamination in remote, understudied ocean and fresh waters.
 
Dr. Sherri A. Mason (aka “Sam”)
A native of Texas, Dr. Sherri A. Mason (aka “Sam”) earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin. She completed her doctorate in Chemistry at the University of Montana as a NASA Earth System Science scholar. She is currently a Professor of Chemistry and chair of the Department of Geology & Environmental Sciences at the State University of New York at Fredonia. As co-PI on the first-ever survey for plastic pollution within the open waters of the (Laurentian) Great Lakes, her research group is among the first to study the prevalence and impact of plastic pollution within freshwater ecosystems and, as such, has been featured within hundreds of mass media articles including the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. The Great Lakes Plastic Pollution Survey formed the basis for the Microbeads-Free Water Act, which bans the manufacture and use of microbeads within personal care products effective July 2018, signed into law by President Obama in December 2015. In April 2016, as the result of a nomination by US Senator Kristin Gillibrand (NY), Dr. Mason was named a 2016 EPA Environmental Champion owing to her research and advocacy work on microplastic pollution.
 
Margaret Murphy 
Margaret Murphy is an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow in the Marine Pollution Control Branch of the Office of Water at EPA. She received her PhD in Zoology/Toxicology from Michigan State University in 2005, and then spent ten years in the Department of Biology & Chemistry at City University of Hong Kong as a post doc, assistant professor and associate professor. Her research interests include health risk assessment of legacy and emerging environmental pollutants and development and use of bioassays for toxicity assessment. 
 
Nicholas D. Anastas, Ph.D., M.S., Senior Advisor, Office of Research and Development/NRMRL 
Doctor Nicholas Anastas has over thirty five years of experience as a professional toxicologist, risk assessor and environmental analytical chemist in both the private and public sectors. Currently Nick is a Senior Advisor at the USEPA’s Office of Research and Development National Risk Management Research Lab (NRMRL). In this capacity, Nick is responsible for integrating fundamental computational toxicology and chemistry research results into management and policy strategies to promote and guide the availability of safer, healthier and sustainable products to the marketplace. Previously he worked for the MA DEP for 26 years.
He teaches Chemical Toxicology at the University of Massachusetts Boston as part of the chemistry department. Nick holds a doctorate in Environmental Studies with a concentration in green chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Boston and a master’s degree in pharmacology from the Graduate School of Pharmacy at Northeastern University.

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