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Deborah L. Swackhamer

WRC Co-Director

 

Phone: 612-624-9282
E-mail: dswack@umn.edu

173 McNeal Hall,
1985 Buford Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55108

Fax: 612-625-1263

WRC Projects: Water Resources Research Institute program, a member of the National Institutes of Water Resources, "The Power of Water" a lecture series funded by the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences.

Deb manages the research and educational programs within the WRC, including overseeing the Water Resources Research Institute grants program for the US Geological Survey, directing the biennial Minnesota Water Conference, and developing additional research and educational opportunities for the Center.

Deb is a Professor of Environmental Chemistry in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health. In her research program, she has studied the processes affecting the behavior and fate of persistent organic compounds including PCBs, dioxins, and pesticides in the Great Lakes for the past 20 years, including sediment accumulation, source determinations, water column processes, and foodweb bioaccumulation. Her current research is focused on developing chemical indicators of ecological conditions for coastal zones of the Great Lakes, and on exposures and impacts of endocrine disruptors (http://glei.nrri.umn.edu/default/). Deb also generates the data for the US EPA Great Lakes Fish Monitoring Program, which monitors time trends in persistent contaminants using fish as biomonitors.

Deb chairs the US Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board and is a member of the International Joint Commission of the US and Canada. She chairs the Science and Technology Advisory Committee for the Great Lakes Environmental and Molecular Sciences Center at Western Michigan University, and serves on the Advisory Board for the National Undersea Research Program of NOAA for the North Atlantic-Great Lakes region. She was also named in June 2005 to the Editorial Advisory Board of the "Journal of Environmental Monitoring," published by the Royal Chemical Society (UK).

Deb received a BA in Chemistry from Grinnell College (Grinnell, IA) and an MS and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Water Chemistry and Limnology & Oceanography, respectively. After two years post-doctoral research in Chemistry and Public & Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, she joined the Minnesota faculty in 1987.