Day 1
Session 1
Shannon White has been the Biodiversity Specialist in ESRD’s Planning Branch
since August 2014. There she provides scientific leadership on development of the
Biodiversity Management Frameworks, as well as other biodiversity-related
initiatives such as the Regional Strategic Assessment for the South Athabasca Oil
Sands. Prior to this she worked at the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute
(ABMI). Her PhD in Ecology, from the University in Alberta, focused on
understanding the effects of climate change on rangeland ecosystem function and
biodiversity across the Canadian prairies. Shannon enjoys.
Alberto Pereira Doctor in Sciences (2003) by the Chemistry Institute of the Rio de
Janeiro Federal University (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), and with a postdoctoral
research at the Pfizer Analytical Research Centre, University of Ghent, Belgium
(2006 to 2008) in collaboration with Professor Pat Sandra. The more of 15 years
of experience in chromatographic science are reflected on more than 70 papers
published about the applications of GC-MS, LC-MS and SFC-MS to environmental
science, pharmacology, natural product chemistry and food science.
Lisa Brown is a Project Engineer for Waste Management Services of the City of
Edmonton, where she works for the best boss ever. She holds a B.Sc in Civil
Environmental Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Geoenvironmental Engineering, both
from the University of Alberta. She has experience working in consulting and
industry, as well as a year as a visiting researcher in England. She is an active
executive on her condo board and community league.
Session 2
David Chadder David is a Principal and Senior Project Director at RWDI with
experience in environmental consulting dating back to 1978. His area of specialty
involves the technical supervision of engineering teams involved with air quality,
public safety (toxic gas or flammable gas releases) and quantitative risk
assessments, Environmental Assessments, industrial approvals, emission sampling
and ambient monitoring. Recently, he has supervised engineering teams that
have provided air quality, fugitive dust and odour assessments, hazard and risk
assessments, facility approvals (AER, NEB, and AUC) and assessments over a
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broad range of applications. These have included continuous, emergency and
intermittent flaring, sour gas handling and compression facilities, sour wells and
batteries, cold heavy oil and oil sands extraction, bitumen upgrading, land use
planning, gas and oil pipeline transmission, storage tank terminals, pulp and paper
facilities, hospitals, universities, and power generation plants.
Md. Aynul Bari Dr. Bari is currently working as research associate in the School of
Public Health, University of Alberta. He graduated in Civil Engineering from
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in
Environmental Engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. His
research focuses on air quality monitoring and characterization, indoor air quality,
impacts of oil and gas development on air quality and atmospheric deposition,
source apportionment modeling, biomass smoke pollution, vehicular traffic
pollution, environmental exposure assessment, and environmental public health.
He is an author/co-author of over 40 referred journal and conference papers.
Ray Yang, Dr. Ray Yang is an air quality specialist in Levelton Consultants Ltd. He
received his Ph.D. degree in Physics in 2000 at University of Mainz in Germany,
and did postdoctoral researches in McGill University and York University. He has
worked in atmospheric environmental researches and air quality consulting in
Canadian institutions and firms for more than 15 years. He is specialized in air
quality assessment, air dispersion and meteorological modelling, and air
emissions and pollution management.
Session 3
Hamid Namsechi, P.Eng. is the Section Head of Air Policy in the Policy & Planning
Division of ESRD. He has over 30 years of experience with the Government of
Alberta in areas of air and water policy and planning. His talk about A strategiclevel discussion of air policy development in Alberta, including the FederalProvincial collaboration on sector-based and place-based limits, the linkage with
the provincial land-use plans, the roles and responsibilities of various agencies,
and the challenge of maintaining good air quality with the growing economy and
population base.
Ron Chapman, RWDI AIR Inc.
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Ron has been with RWDI for 8 years and is currently a Technical Director leading
the Environmental Software Services group. Key areas of responsibilities include:
real-time dispersion modelling; emission inventory management systems;
realtime data collection and visualization of air quality, noise and vibration data;
and, RWDI’s operational weather forecast system.
Yayne-abeba Aklilu Dr. Aklilu is currently working as senior air scientist at Alberta
Environment and Sustainable Resource Development. She is an alumnus of York
University, Ontario where she earned her PhD in Atmospheric Science and
University of Alberta where she earned her undergraduate degree. Yayne has
worked in the air quality field for over ten years.
Session 4
Kurt J. Hansen. M.Sc., P. Eng., President of Green Inc., Calgary
Kurt graduated as a Civil and Environmental Engineer in 1974 at the Technical
University of Denmark. He has 41 years of Canadian and international
environmental service experience regarding emission control, air pollution and
waste management. He has been involved in about 50 annual GHG emission
verification projects encompassing a variety of industrial facilities and offset
emission projects. Based on the observations from these assignments, he has
experienced the current practices of quality assurance with respect to
measurements and data harmonization.
Craig Vatcher Craig is the Senior Project Manager and Director of Western
Operations for Novus Environmental, and is based in Calgary, Alberta office. Craig
has more than 15 years’ environmental consulting experience, the majority of
which in Alberta. He has extensive technical experience working with clients to
solve issues in air quality, noise, hazardous releases, and public and regulatory
consultation. Since managing his first project in 2004 (the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline)
he has managed hundreds of projects ranging from small flare permit applications
to large oilsands EIAs. Prior to managing projects, he performed measurements,
modelling and assessment for many environmental assessments in Alberta, BC
and the Territories.
Longdong Zhang is a Research Engineer at University of Alberta. He has solid
practical experience in using advanced environmental sensing technologies in
conjunction with eddy covariance and/or inverse dispersion techniques for
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characterization and quantification of fugitive emissions, in the oil sands region
and other areas. In addition, he also worked on air pollution control projects using
activated carbons to capture volatile organic compounds or gaseous mercury. He
graduated from University of Alberta with a Master’s degree in Environmental
Engineering in 2014.
Day 2
Session 5
Long Fu Dr. Long Fu has over 20 years of experience working for Alberta’s
Ministry of the Environment. He was involved in developing national and
provincial ambient air quality standards and objectives to protect human health
and the environment. He represented Alberta on the National Committee on
Health and the Environment (CHE) and the CEPA National Advisory Committee
(CEPA NAC). Dr. Long Fu is currently leading AEMERA’s Standards, Quality and
Innovation program. Dr. Long Fu received his Ph.D in Physical Chemistry from
Northwestern University in 1986. He obtained 2 US patents while working at the
Chemical Engineering Department of University of Alberta.
Thompson Nunifu, Dr. Nunifu is an Environmental Statistician with AEMERA
Standards and Innovation Team. He holds a Ph.D. the University of Alberta with
specialization in forest biometrics. Before joining AEMERA, Thompson worked
with the Forest Management branch of ESRD as a biometrics forester and was
later appointed Environmental Statistician in the Science and Technology of ESRD.
Thompson joined ESRD in 2006 from a forestry consulting company, the Silvacom
Group in Edmonton where he worked as a biometrics forester. Thompson’s
previous work in Ghana, included University lecturer in applied statistics and
Assistant District Manager of Ghana forest Services in the 1990s.
Quamrul Huda & Zheng Yang (Two presenters):
Dr. Huda obtained his PhD in Electrical Engineering & Electronics from the
University of Manchester in 1997. He worked as a faculty in Bangladesh University
of Engineering and Technology for fifteen years, and was in the rank of a
Professor before moving to Canada. He also worked in Nanoelectronics Research
Institute, Japan under ITIT and JSPS fellowships. He worked for 4 years in
University of Alberta where he prototyped a microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS) tunable laser for environmental gas sensing. He joined ESRD/AEMERA in
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2013, and has been involved in remote sensing techniques. He authored 80 peerreviewed articles including 20 journals.
Dr. Yang is currently an Advanced Monitoring Instrumentation Specialist in
Alberta Environmental Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Agency (AEMERA).
He focuses primarily on remote sensing technologies such as DiAL, Open Path
FTIR, and Earth Observation. Before joining AEMERA, he worked in the Chemistry
Department of University of British Columbia (UBC) as a Postdoctoral Research
Fellow, working with new laser technologies and developing new bitumen
extraction processes. He holds a B.Sc. in chemistry from Peking University in China
and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from UBC.
Session 6
Peter Fortna Peter is the co-owner of Willow Springs Strategic Solutions and the
Regulatory Affairs Advisor for the McMurray Métis. Peter is the Vice President of
the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association (WBEA), Chair of WBEA’s Traditional
Knowledge Committee and is the former co-chair of the Cumulative
Environmental Management Association’s (CEMA) Traditional Knowledge
Working Group. While acting as the TKWG co-chair, he oversaw the first two
phases of CEMA’s Traditional Knowledge Framework which will provide
recommendations regarding how to effectively include traditional knowledge in
Environmental Impact Assessments, Environmental Monitoring and Land-Use
Planning. Peter holds a BA in History from the University of Calgary, an MA in
History from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and a PhD (ABD) in History
from the University of Alberta.
Jean Birks Dr. Birks is a senior research scientist at Alberta Innovates –
Technology Futures. Her primary research interest is the development and
application of isotope tracer techniques to better understand the hydrological
cycle. Jean completed her MSc at Queen’s University and her PhD at the
University of Waterloo. She has been conducting research in the Athabasca oil
sands region for the past 8 years including isotope tracing of water yield and
chemical loadings, and using age dating, geochemical and isotopic techniques to
evaluate groundwater and surface water connections in the Athabasca oil sands
region.
Roger Ord, MBA P.Eng. is SNC-Lavalin’s Director, Acoustics, Air Quality and
Climate Change Services for Western Canada located in Victoria, British Columbia.
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He uses his 25 years of experience to assist companies with environmental
compliance processes and technologies, such as that required in air permitting,
due diligence and carbon management. Roger has also been actively developing
and canvassing for broader acceptance of predictive monitoring systems since
implementing his first PEMS in 1999. Roger is a professional engineer in both
Alberta and BC, and holds a Master of Business Administration from the
University of Victoria.
Kelly Munkittrick, Ph.D., Director, Monitoring and Risk Assessment, at Canada’s
Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA). Kelly has a varied background, starting
work in environmental consulting, before moving to the Federal government for
11 years (6 in Fisheries and Oceans and 5 at Environment Canada), 15 years at the
University of New Brunswick as a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, and now 3 years
working on the new environmental monitoring framework with the oil sands
industry. He is a co-founder of the Canadian Rivers Institute, was the Scientific
Director of the Canadian Water Network, and has sat on panels for UNEP, OECD,
and the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. He has developed regional and
national monitoring programs in South America, Asia and North America, and has
worked with governments to improve environmental assessment models.
Session 7
Christian Reuten Ph.D., Christian is a technical director and associate in RWDI’s
Calgary office. He has a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of
British Columbia, published a book and numerous peer-reviewed publications,
and reviewed two of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Reports. He is a CMOS Accredited
Consultant in Meteorology and an A&WMA CPANS board member. Christian’s
work includes data analysis, industrial permitting, climate-change assessments,
and environmental assessments as well as ongoing research on climate related
topics involving statistical methods.
Nicole Pysh has been an Environmental Protection Officer for ESRD for 8 years
conducting thorough industrial inspections, responding promptly to incidents and
public complaints, and assisting in managing emergency events to ensure
environmental compliance and integrity. In her role as an EPO, she has also
served on several committees and teams to advance awareness of cumulative
effects management, climate change legislation, cross-ministry interests, and
training opportunities for compliance staff. Nicole received her Bachelor of
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Applied Science: Environmental Management from Lakeland College, and is a
Master of Science: Environment and Management candidate at Royal Roads
University, pending thesis approval.
Hebaallah Marey Dr. Marey is a Postdoctoral fellow in the department of Civil &
Environmental Engineering, at the University of Alberta where she pursues
research on atmospheric remote sensing over Alberta. Heba received her Ph.D. in
2011from the University of Alexandria jointly with National Center of
Atmospheric Research (NCAR) through a three years excellence based
scholarship. Her primary area of expertise is air quality including ground-based
measurements of air pollutants, and analysis of satellite data for air quality
applications. Her PhD research work was the first that used satellite data to study
the formation, dynamics and transport of severe air pollution episodes, called as
"Black Cloud", over the urban greater Cairo area in Egypt. The potential impacts
of her research work were highlighted in a 2011 article in NASA’s "Sensing our
Planet” newsletter. Her current research includes the utilization of satellite and
other observations to improve scientific understanding of the physical and
chemical processes determining atmospheric composition, and the implications of
anthropogenic activities on climate and surface air quality.
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