Maris Klavins Editor

Ashok Vaseashta, Prof. Dr. Acad. is CEO/CTO and Executive Director for research with the International Clean Water Institute in Virginia, USA. He also serves in several honorary positions, such as a Professor at the University of Bucharest; Chaired Professor of Nanotechnology at the Ghitu Institute of Electrical Engineering and Nanotechnologies, Academy of Sciences of Moldova; Academician at the Euro-Mediterranean Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Senior Strategic Research Advisor for several organizations. Inspired by nature and guided by societal necessities, he strives for technological innovations to address the global challenges of the 21st century. He is a scholar, visionary, strategist, and a dedicated futurist providing strategic leadership to promote and advance research initiatives and priorities using data-driven decisions. He received Ph.D. from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA in 1990 followed by Kobe’s post-doctoral fellowship. Following his PhD, he served as a professor and researcher at Virginia Tech and Marshall University. He also served as the Director of Research at the Institute for Advanced Sciences Convergence and International Clean Water Institute for Norwich University Applied Research Institutes, Vice-Provost (Rector) for Research in South Carolina, and Executive Director and Chair of the Institutional Review Board at a State University in New Jersey. His earlier honorary positions included a Visiting Professor at the Riga Technical University, Latvia, 3 Nano-SAE Research Centre, University of Bucharest, Romania, Transylvania University of Brasov, Romania, and a Visiting Scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He served in the U.S. Department of State in two rotations, as a strategic S&T advisor in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, Office of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism, and U.S. diplomat. His research interests span foresight, nanotechnology, environmental/ecological science, green chemistry, the environmental impact of micro/nano plastics, and critical infrastructure safety and security – all using the nexus of advanced technological solution platforms. He is the author/editor of 22 books and has published over 350 articles in scientific journals, book chapters, and conferences. He serves on the editorial boards of several international journals and is an active member of various professional organizations.

Maris Klavins, Prof. Dr. is director of the Natural Resource Research Centre of the University of Latvia and a professor in Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology. Maris Klavins is a full member of Latvia’s Academy of Sciences. Major research fields are in environmental pollution and its chemical analysis, aquatic chemistry, sustainable management and quality of waters as well as development of environmental technologies. Klavins has supervised 26 Ph.D. thesis works and is the author of more than 400 scientific articles. In the last few years Klavins has been involved in the development of the legislative system of environmental protection in Latvia regarding monitoring systems, chemical substances, chemical safety, toxic wastes, and especially dealing with the problems of analysis of environmental pollution. Klavins has been the leader of several projects related to environmental issues, mostly linked to environmental pollution and management, and quality of water but political and social sciences.

Olena Stabnikova, Prof. Dr. obtained a degree of Engineer-Biotechnologist at the National University of Food Technologies (NUFT), Kyiv, Ukraine in 1972; she received a PhD in Technical Sciences in NUFT in 1978. She has 47 years of teaching and research experience in biotechnology and microbiology at the universities of Ukraine and Singapore, and now is working in the Advanced research laboratory, NUFT. Her research experience includes supervision and participation in international and national projects on the environmental and ecological sciences, and protection of the environment from different contaminants including oil, chemicals, and microplastics. She received the Award of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine named after D.K. Zabolotny for the series of works "Kinetics and stoichiometry of growth of populations of microorganisms" in 1993. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Ukrainian Food Journal and a member of the Section “Scientific Problems of Food Technologies and Industrial Biotechnology”, of the Scientific Council of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. Olena Stabnikova has published 160 research papers, 8 book chapters, and 2 books.