Invited Speaker

Abstract: The worldwide extensive urbanization in terms of economy, industrial, and population have caused deterioration of environmental quality. Further, the issue concerns not only the environmental contamination level and ecological risks associated, but also human exposure via daily dietary intake. Prevalent contamination and potential risk of exposure of emerging contaminants i.e., endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) were observed in drinking water supply. This indicates inadequacy of the current treatment technologies and regulatory exercises in addressing the whole spectrum of water pollution and pollutants evolution, which requires development of strategies with application of methods and technologies to reduce the effects of pollution in the environment, particularly those having direct contact with humans such as water. Further, effective risk communication and governance are in need since the impacts might have been underestimated due to the expected relatively low knowledge and awareness.

Biography: Professor Dr. Ahmad Zaharin Aris, CEnv, FGS, MRSC has conducted pioneering work on the establishment and development of hydrochemistry and environmental forensics studies in Malaysia where some of his works have been used to set up national guidelines and policies on environmental issues. He has instituted various impressive and successful programmes including the establishment of comprehensive chemical databases for fingerprinting and a hub for training and technological transfer in environmental forensics. He is one of the top researchers in environmental science in Malaysia, and a globally recognized scientist and academia in his field of expertise. This has led him to be accorded with the Top Research Scientist Malaysia award in 2019 and one of the finalists for Zayed International Prize (Young Scientists Award for Environmental Sustainability). He is also a national representative for APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (“ASPIRE”) and many others. He is an Associate Editor for a few top tier journals, including Nature Scientific Report and Environmental Geochemistry and Health. He is the youngest faculty member with a brilliant academic record with over 300 academic writings related to his field in refereed international journals (over 225; 200 in SCI Journals), books (5) and chapters in books (37), and the rest are conference papers as well as four (4) policy papers with over 2700, 2400 and 4800 citations respectively for WOS, h-index 24; SCOPUS, h-index 27; and Google Scholar, h-index 35. Over 50% of his published SCI papers are in Q1 and Q2 tiers. Some of his papers have been ranked as the most downloaded papers and received many citations within a short period of time. Furthermore, Elsevier’s Scival Spotlight has ranked him third among the global experts under the Distinguished Competency of water quality, sediment and pollution category. He has been featured in several international symposia, professional meetings, news media, and scientific publications. He has trained over 130 graduate and undergraduate students, postdoctoral associates, and visiting scholars in his laboratories.