Deborah L Swackhamer

WRC Co-Director

Phone: 612-624-9282

E-mail: dswack@umn.edu

Deborah L. Swackhamer manages WRC's research and educational programs, including overseeing the Water Resources Research Institute grants program for the U.S. Geological Survey and developing research and educational opportunities for the center. She is a professor of environmental chemistry in the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health and holds the Charles M. Denny Chair of Science, Technology, and Public Policy in the University's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Swackhamer also chairs the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board and is a member of the International Joint Commission of the U.S. and Canada. She chairs the Editorial Advisory Board of the "Journal of Environmental Monitoring," published by the Royal Chemical Society and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the American Chemical Society's, “Environmental Science and Technology”. Swackhamer was appointed by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty to serve as the Higher Education Representative to Minnesota's Clean Water Council. She also serves on the National Research Council Committee on U.S.G.S. Water Resources Research for the National Academy of Science.

Swackhamer received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Grinnell College and a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in water chemistry and limnology and oceanography. She joined the University of Minnesota faculty in 1987. 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 exposures and impacts of endocrine disruptors, and on developing policies for the state for the sustainable management of water resources.