Robert Aitken: Director, the SAFENANO Initiative
Rob Aitken is Director of Strategic Consulting at the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) in Edinburgh. He was formerly Director of Research Development at IOM, a position he held for six years from 2000 till 2006. He is a founding partner and the co-ordinator of SnIRC, the Safety of Nanomaterials Interdisciplinary Research Centre. He is also an Honorary Teaching Fellow at Napier University, Edinburgh, and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Nanotechnology as well as a member of their Advisory Board.
In the last five years Rob has been particularly active in nanotechnology risk issues and has contributed four major reviews in this area commissioned by the UK government as part of their response to the 2004 RS/RAE Report 'Nanotechnologies and Nanosciences: Opportunities and Uncertainties', as well as a number of international reviews. He is a member of two UK Government Task Forces (On Exposure and Measurement) which are prioritising nanotechnology risk research needs. He is the Principal UK Expert to ISO 299 WG3: 'Nanotechnologies: Safety, Health and Environment', is a member of FP7 Nanotechnologies Program Expert Advisory Group, and is the director of Refnano, a project to establish reference materials for Nanotechnology Applications.
Collectively, he has contributed more than 100 scientific reports, papers and articles on particle risk issues over a period of 25 years.
Bryony L Ross: Editor, the SAFENANO initiative
Bryony Ross is a Research Assistant at the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) in Edinburgh. After graduating from Edinburgh
University in 2005 with a BSc Hons Physiology, she took a year out before joining the IOM in October 2006.
Since then, she has been heavily involved with the development of SAFENANO and with other nanotechnology related projects at the IOM, as well as a variety of other work within the Institute from Occupational Exposure Level setting for Hazardous Substances to collating information for Expert Witness cases.
She has recently completed work on a DEFRA report into Nanotechnology and Food, and is part of the Refnano team, working to establish reference materials for Nanotechnology applications.
Lang Tran: Expert Consultant, the SAFENANO Initiative
Dr C Lang Tran is Director of Quantitiative Toxicology at the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM). With over 16 years experience in the fields of toxicology and ecotoxicology, he has contributed over 50 peer reviews.
A researcher at the forefront of particle toxicology, he has been heavily involved in the evolution of Nanoparticle Toxicology as a research field. He currently leads an EU FP6 project, PARTICLE_RISK which is examining the toxicological properties of nanoparticles and is a founding member of SnIRC, the Safety of Nanomaterials Interdisciplinary Research Centre.
Dr Tran has been involved in the writing of several major Government reviews of nanotechnology, including reports from DEFRA and HSE. He is involved in collaborative work into nanotoxicology QSAR Modelling with the JRC, and with NIOSH on Nanotechnology Risk Assessment, and is currently part of the Refnano team, wokring towards establishing reference materials for nanotechnology applications.
Peter Ritchie: System Design and Management, the SAFENANO Initiative
Peter is Head of Information Systems Section at the IOM, in charge of a team that manages all ICT systems, services and strategy. He is responsible for the technical design and development of the SAFENANO website and databases, involving the latest active server technology, and exploitintg the best of recent interactive and community based web features on the site.
Besides the SAFENANO project itself and scientific interests in nanotechnology health, safety and environment, he is also involved in several other research projects, systems, and application developments. With a scientific background in biology and ecology he worked for several years on environmental research projects before moving further into the development of IT systems for the conduct and analysis of large scale educational and medical studies.
At the IOM he has led or contributed to many research projects including the development of database and software applications for epidemiological and occupational health studies, as well as the implementation of chemical, pesticide, fibre and particle exposure data management systems for risk, hazard assessment and reduction.