X-rays, Metals, Life and Death - Science and Environmental Speaker Series with Dr. Ingrid Pickering
Speaker: Ingrid J. Pickering
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Molecular Environmental Science - http://homepage.usask.ca/~ inp449/
University of Saskatchewan
Every day, in the course of our normal lives, humans are exposed to a complex chemical soup consisting of an enormous variety of chemical compounds. Many of these compounds contain metal atoms which, once inside us, can either fulfill roles that are essential to our health, or act as poisons, sometimes with deadly consequences. Synchrotron X-rays can be used to reveal the molecular details of metals within living systems, how they interact with one another, how they confer beneficial properties, and how they act as poisons. This presentation will highlight how our knowledge of the roles of metals in our lives and in the environment has been advanced using these methods. Examples relate to mercury in fish and to a possible treatment for what has been called the world’s worst mass-poisoning, in which 57 million people are consuming arsenic-contaminated drinking water in Bangladesh.
Ingrid Pickering received her Bachelor of Arts in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge (UK) in 1986. She received her PhD in Chemistry from Imperial College-University of London (UK) in 1990, conducting her research at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in the area of catalysis. After two years as a postdoctoral fellow with Exxon Research and Engineering Company (New Jersey, USA) she moved to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at Stanford University (California, USA), where she spent 11 years as a staff scientist. She came to Canada and her present position at the University of Saskatchewan in 2003.
Ingrid currently is the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Molecular Environment Science and Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Saskatchewan. She has extensive interactions with the Canadian Light Source, Canada’s only synchrotron, located on the university campus, where she is scientific co-lead of BioXAS, a suite of three beam lines currently in commissioning. She also leads a synchrotron health graduate training program and serves on the Board of Directors of the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Her research investigates metals and other elements in biological systems from the environment to human health. With 25 years of research using synchrotron light, she has more than 160 peer-reviewed journal publications.
Ingrid lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with her husband Professor Graham George, also a synchrotron scientist, and three teenage children. In her spare time she enjoys playing the cello and hiking with her family.
