Scientific advisory panel

Andrea Hinwood (B.Sc., M.AppSc., PhD) is the Chief Scientist at UNEP. She is an environmental scientist with expertise in environmental exposures and impacts on human health. Since May 2017, Andrea has been serving as the first ever Chief Environmental Scientist at the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) in Victoria, Australia. In this role, she has developed and implemented programs to enhance EPA’s role as an evidence-based scientific organisation and to prevent pollution and waste impacts on communities and the environment. She was previously an Associate Professor at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and held appointments as a member and Deputy Chair of the Environmental Protection Authority of Western Australia and also a sessional member of the State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia. Andrea's career has included the provision of strategic advice to the government on a wide variety of environmental matters, including ozone depleting substances, air quality, fire and smoke management, biodiversity impacts and emerging contaminants. Andrea holds a PhD from the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Marielle Saunois is an assistant professor at Université de Versailles Saint Quentin associated to the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement since 2011. Her research addresses the assessment of global methane sources and sinks. She works with global chemistry transport models and uses 4D-var inversion systems to constrain the methane cycle using atmospheric observations. She is co-leading the Global Methane Budget – methane initiative of the Global Carbon project. Before being hired at LSCE she works on tropospheric chemistry, including ozone and its precursors, using a chemistry transport model, and in-situ and remote observations at the Laboratoire d’Aérologie and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Dr. Aben is a senior scientist in the Earth group at SRON. The group focuses primarily on the interpretation of satellite remote sensing data of greenhouse gases (CO2 and methane) and related species as part of the Carbon cycle research. Dr. Aben is the Dutch Co-Principal Investigator and co-initiator of the TROPOMI instrument on the Sentinel-5 Precursor mission. She leads the SRON TROPOMI team responsible for safeguarding the scientific performance of the TROPOMI SWIR channel measuring CO and methane. The team has in the past defined the SWIR science requirements, instrument requirements, provided support to instrument development and trade-offs, calibration of the SWIR channel, and development of the SWIR L2 algorithms. Dr. Aben is responsible for a number of projects in her group focusing on detection and emission quantification of methane localised and area sources funded through different funding agencies (NWO, UNEP, EDF, ESA), and several projects for the delivery of methane products from different satellites (ECMWF CAMS and C3S, ESA CCI+).

Luis Carlos Belalcazar is currently an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the National University of Colombia, Bogotá. He did his undergraduate and master studies in chemical and environmental engineering in Colombia and received his Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, EPFL. Dr. Belalcazar has participated in international research projects in different countries (Switzerland, Vietnam, Cuba, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia) and has published more than 40 peer-reviewed papers. His research currently concentrates on implementing and combining different research tools for the integrated assessment and policymaking of air pollution and climate change

Kenza KHOMSI is currently an independent researcher. She mainly works on air quality and its interactions with the general atmospheric circulation and the impact on health. She is member of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Study Group for Integrated Health Services and the Study Group on Integrated Urban Services. She is a member of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology and is the Deputy Chair of the Eastern Mediterranean chapter (ISEE-EM). Kenza is the Morocco focal point of the Global Atmosphere Watch at the WMO and the Morocco health focal point at the WMO for health-related research and services in Morocco. She is a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Air Pollution Technical Advisory Group and member of Desert Dust and Health and climate change, air pollution and health working groups. She is also a coordinating lead author of the Africa integrated assessment of air pollution and climate change led by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). She holds a PhD in Environmental Epidemiology (since 2022), a PhD in Climatology and Climate Change (since 2014), a Master in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (since 2009), and an engineering degree in Atmospheric Science (since 2004). Kenza is an ICF-PCC (International Coaching Federation-Professional Certified Coach), a mentor and a trainer. These qualifications helped her to be part of many scientific research programs and to implement a coaching program for scientific researches.

Michel Grutter is professor at UNAM in the Earth Sciences Undergraduate and Graduate programs. He studied chemistry at the University of Texas, USA and concluded in 1999 his PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Dr. Grutter now leads an active research group in the field of spectroscopy and remote sensing at the Institute for Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Change. His main research areas are aimed to detect and characterize changes in the Earth’s composition by means of optical methods, operating ground stations that serve for the characterization of source strengths, distribution and transport of air pollutants as well as identifying the variability of climate-relevant species. He has coordinated a large number of national and international projects and has participated in several science teams and committees (IGAC, TEMPO, GeoCarb, etc.). He was Head of the Department in Atmospheric Observation and Instrumentation at his institute between 2014 and 2021, where he coordinated a project in Mexico to establish a university network of atmospheric observatories nationwide to foster multidisciplinary collaboration and education in atmospheric sciences.

Rebecca Garland is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Geo-informatics and Meteorology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Her research focuses on improving the understanding of air quality and atmospheric science in southern Africa. This includes emissions inventory development, photochemical air quality modelling, risk, vulnerability and impact assessment, evidence-based air quality management planning, and the linkages between air quality and climate change in a regional to urban scale. Before joining the University of Pretoria, Rebecca was a Principal Researcher in the Climate and Air Quality Modelling Group at the Council for Scientific and Industrial research (CSIR), South Africa. She received her PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder focusing on atmospheric science and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.

Dr. Graciela B. Raga, born in Argentina, did her undergraduate studies in meteorology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and received a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington (USA) in 1989. Postdoctoral work at Environment Canada and at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UK) gave her opportunities to develop research on cloud-aerosol interactions through in-situ measurements with research aircraft. She has been a scientist and professor at UNAM since 1995, having authored 76 peer-reviewed publications and several chapters in books, and supervised 16 master and PhD theses. Her research in Mexico focused more on aerosol urban pollution, providing a new direction by bringing a physical context to the pollution research. She has developed several graduate level courses and has taught systematically over the last 20 years. She has been a member of several international committees including the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC), International Commission of Clouds and Precipitation (ICCP), Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation-Climate (ACPC) Initiative of the International Global Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and a membe of the Joint Scietific Committee of the World Research Climate Programme (WCRP). She was the Chief Editor of the journal Atmosfera, a member of the Mexico Academy of Sciences, of the National System of Research (SNI, level III) of the National Research Council of Mexico (CONACYT) and of the Third World Organization for Women in Science. She is currently a Senior Associate of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). She was Lead Author for Working Group I of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), including participation in the Summary for Policy Makers and the Technical Summary of the Assessment. Recently, she co-chaired the Regional Assessment on SLCP in Latin America and the Caribbean, whose Summary for Decision Makers was presented at the UNEA meeting in 2016. She is also a member of the Committee to Prevent Extreme Climate Change (CPECC), chaired by Drs. Ramanathan, D. Zaelke and M. Molina.

Victor Alderson Professor of Applied Ocean Sciences and director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego (USA). Professor Ramanathan has been conducting original research in Climate and Atmospheric Science since the 1970s. He discovered the super greenhouse effect of halo carbons (CFCs) in 1975 and used observations to quantify the large global warming effect of black carbon. He led international field campaigns, developed unmanned aircraft platforms for tracking brown cloud pollution worldwide, and educates and trains the next generation of scientists. Based on his research, he developed a new approach for mitigating climate change that involves mitigating emissions of four short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) to drastically reduce near-term warming and slowing down the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers. He is now implementing this new approach in the field. Professor Ramanathan conducted work on observations and modeling of SLCPs, particularly black carbon in Asia. He founded, designed, and leads Project Surya, an extended effort to characterize and mitigate environmental impacts of black carbon, ozone, and methane in rural India. He also initiated ICAMP, a World Bank sponsored project to reduce soot emissions from the transportation sector in India. Involved in research on mitigation strategies and has published on technical and policy options for SLCP reduction.

Dr. Molina is one of the world's leading researchers in atmospheric chemistry. He co-authored, together with FS Rowland in 1974, the original article predicting the thinning of the ozone layer as a result of the emission of certain industrial gases, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which won them the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In addition, his research and publications on the subject led to the Montreal Protocol of the United Nations, the first international treaty that has effectively faced an environmental problem of global scale and of anthropogenic origin.