Dr Gary Fuller, King’s College London

A tale of two cities: Are policies improving air pollution in Paris and London?

Gary is an air pollution scientist at King’s College London where he led the development of the London Air Quality Network. His research focuses on urban sources of air pollution and how these are changing. He also works closely with epidemiologists to investigate the health impacts of ambient air pollution. Gary is a member of Defra’s Air Quality Expert Group.

His book, The Invisible Killer – the rising global threat of air pollution and how we can fight back is published by Melville House.

Polly Lang, University of York

A Trend Analysis Approach for Air Quality Network Data

Polly is a PhD student at the Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories at the University of York. Her research focuses on the application of statistical techniques and machine learning for collecting air quality monitoring data, in order to derive more insight.

Her recent work has included the development of a method for analysis of long term trends in air pollutants across a monitoring network containing sites with different length times.

Currently, Polly is investigating the use of machine learning models to quantify the impact on ambient air quality, with focus on; improvements in vehicle emission technologies and air quality interventions, such as low emission zones, congestion charging and speed limit reductions.

Duncan Mounsor, Enviro Technology Services Ltd

Swansea Council’s open path monitoring and dynamic Air Quality forecasting

Duncan Mounsor is an environmental specialist with almost 30 years of practical experience in air quality and gaseous and particulate monitoring instrumentation and technology.

He started his career at Enviro Technology Services (ET) in 1990 as a trainee service engineer and became Managing Director in 2015 after being involved in all aspects of the company; sales, marketing and operations during his long career at ET.

A member of the Institute of Air Quality Management (IAQM) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Duncan is particularly interested in the ecological and human impacts of air pollution and climate change, especially those attributed to transport emissions.

Duncan is an advocate of newer, faster and better measurement technology, remote sensing and dynamic forecasting and modelling that he firmly believes will better our understanding of air pollution and greenhouse gases, especially episodes, transients and fluxes.

Professor Duncan Laxen, Air Quality Consultants

Analysis of bias in diffusion tubes

Duncan Laxen is an Associate of Air Quality Consultants Ltd, the Company he set up 25 years ago. He is a visiting professor in Air Quality Management and Assessment at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He has been a member of AQEG and COMEAP, and is a Fellow of the IAQM. He has over 40 years’ experience of air quality monitoring, modelling and assessment.

In the 1980s, he was involved in the first major nitrogen dioxide diffusion tube survey across London and contributed to the 2008 guidance on the use of diffusion tubes. In 1991, he set up the Government’s AURN in cities across the UK. In 2010, he published a report on PM2.5 in the UK, which used openair to analyse data.

He recently completed a study of diffusion tube bias adjustment for the Scottish Government, including detailed analysis of trends in automatic and diffusion tube data.

Brian Stacey, Ricardo Energy and Environment

Ultrafine particle measurements at Heathrow Airport

Brian has nearly 30 years of experience in the air quality monitoring business, ranging from QA/QC, data management and network operations. He is the Knowledge Leader for Ricardo’s air quality measurement team, which delivers air quality measurements for many of the UK national monitoring programmes. He is active in the development of measurement standard methods for gases, PM and pervasive sensors within the European Standardisation networks and contributes to the EC National Reference Laboratories Network (AQUILA).

Brian is currently pursuing a part-time PhD at Birmingham University, sponsored by Heathrow Airport, to investigate the nature of ultrafine particles emitted from aircraft.

Dr David Carslaw, Ricardo / University of York

Making better use of Openair

David has a joint position with Ricardo Energy & Environment and the Department of Chemistry at the University of York where he is a Reader in Air Pollution Science. David has over 20 years of experience in urban air pollution science and is the principal developer of the openair software package, which is used extensively worldwide. He also has an interest in vehicle emissions research and has led many vehicle emission remote sensing campaigns across the UK, which have led to many new insights of importance to urban air pollution.

David has published his work widely in academic journals and is an advisor to several governmental bodies including the UK Air Quality Expert Group (AQEG).

Jim Mills, Air Monitors

The London Hyperlocal Air Quality Monitoring Network

Jim trained as an industrial chemist in Scotland before moving to the air quality monitoring business 35 years ago. He has been the founder of three successful startups, the latest, Air Monitors Ltd has become the leading air monitoring technology provider in the UK since its formation in 2003. The company is the main support contractor for the UK AURN network and for many local authority and research networks in the UK and abroad. His main role in the company today is the identification and introduction of new monitoring technologies and methods for both gaseous and particle pollutants.

Jim is currently working with Google to instrument their Street View vehicles with air monitoring equipment, has set up a network of 100 small sensor systems around London for the GLA and instrumented Bloomberg’s new HQ in London inside and out to monitor the transfer of external pollution within the building.

Dr Ben Marner, Air Quality Consultants

Intensive Interrogation of Routine Measurements Made around Junction 34 of the M1

Ben is a Technical Director with Air Quality Consultants (AQC) and has 20 years’ experience in the field of air quality. He has been responsible for a large number of air quality and greenhouse gas assessments in the UK and abroad. He has specific experience in the application of detailed dispersion models and has contributed to the development of modelling best practices. He has provided public inquiry expert witness services, as well as support and advice to Defra, the Highways Agency, the Environment Agency, Transport Scotland, Transport for London, and numerous local authorities.

Owen Butler, Health and Safety Executive

Air Quality Measurement – making it personal

Owen is a principal analytical chemist within the Exposure Measurement Group at the Health and Safety Laboratory, the laboratory of the Health and Safety Executive. He has over 25 years’ experience developing new and improved methods for undertaking personal measurements of chemical agents in ambient, indoor and workplace air. This work is disseminated through publication of national UK (HSE MDHS series); European (EN) and International (ISO) standard procedures for use within the wider regulatory monitoring system.

Current research interests within the group include new approaches for the sampling and analysis of combustion and engineered nanoparticles, NOx and VOCs; using laboratory robotics for high throughput testing of air samples and evaluating the performance of new wearable air samplers and sensors.

Dr Chris Hazell-Marshall, Environmental Resources Management

Low-cost gas and sensor particulate monitors: Real world experience and lessons learned

Chris is ERMs air quality technical lead for Europe, Middle East, Africa and central Eurasia. He specialises in industrial air quality across a wide range of sectors and oversees the delivery of air quality modelling, monitoring and impact assessment. Chris has a particularly keen interest in low-cost air quality monitoring.

In Africa, air quality is a huge public health issue and monitoring has, in many locations, never been undertaken. These low-cost air quality monitoring techniques offer a new way to look at air quality. In the western world, monitoring beyond diffusion tubes has the potential to open up a new level of insight, and with it potential interventions.