PREPARE » Andrew Singer

Andrew Singer

Website: http://www.prepare.org.uk
Profile: has a broad research interest focused around soil, water and air pollution. Throughout his academic and research career (PhD awarded 2000), he has tackled a broad spectrum of research questions ranging from biocontrol of avocado root rot, to remediation of PCB contaminated soil, to environmental microbiology of earthworm mixed soil, to pandemic usage of pharmaceuticals. His earliest research focused on innovative mechanisms of remediation of PCB-contaminated soils employing microorganisms (Singer et al., 2000), plants (Singer et al., 2003b) and earthworms (Luepromchai et al., 2002). He was the first to investigate the potential of earthworms to assist in remediation of pollutants, including persistent organics (Singer et al., 2001) and the greenhouse gas, methane (Singer et al., 2001; Héry et al., 2008). He was also the first to apply an environmentally compatible surfactant towards hastening the degradation of PCBs in soil (Singer et al., 2000). The publication of a Perspectives paper in Trends in Biotechnology helped to clarify the discussion on the role of secondary plant metabolites in "naturally" facilitating the biodegradation of otherwise recalcitrant organic pollutants (Singer et al., 2003a). Two additional Perspective papers in subsequent years provided a vision for the future of bioaugmentation (Singer et al., 2005; Thompson et al., 2005).