Professor Michael Depledge, a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP), will discuss the commission's recent report "Novel Materials in the Environment: The Case of Nanotechnology" at the Baker Institute.
The November 2008 report examines issues related to innovation in the materials sector, and the challenges and benefits arising from introducing nanomaterials and other novel materials to the environment. The commission also makes recommendations on how to deal with ignorance and uncertainty in this area, which can be applied to other areas of rapid technological development.
Depledge holds the Chair of Environment and Human Health at the Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, in Devon, U.K. He is also currently the chairman of the Science Advisory Committee on the Environment and Climate Change of the European Commission's Directorate General for Research in Brussels and a board member of Natural England. Depledge has also been a visiting professor in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University since 2007 and at the School of Earth Sciences and Engineering of Imperial College, London, since 2002. From 2002 to 2006, he served as the chief scientific adviser of the United Kingdom's Environment Agency.
For more information about the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, please visit www.rcep.org.uk.