The kick-off meeting of SMaReF

Group photo of the SMaReF meeting (Prof. Kevin Bishop: 3rd from the right in the 2nd row; Prof. FENG Xinbin: 2nd from the right in the 2nd row.)

On Feb. 17-18, the kick-off meeting of Sino-Swedish Mercury Management Research Framework (SMaRef) was successfully held at IGCAS. Around 40 people gathered at the State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry (SKLEG) to initiate the new Sino-Swedish project. Among the attendees were students and researchers from IGCAS, and five researchers from Sweden.

Prof. FENG Xinbin, Deputy Director of IGCAS, opened the meeting with a welcome speech to the Swedish researchers from afar, congratulations on the successful grant application of the Sino-Swedish project, and a brief introduction of the project team members from both countries.

Prof. Kevin Bishop from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) then presented an overview of the Swedish partners and team members involved in the project, their major research fields and achievements, and the potential fields of collaboration.

Prof. FENG Xinbin also outlined the IGCAS researchers’ achievements and progress in the studies of mercury in the environment, followed by the detailed presentations from Chines team members including Prof. CHEN Jiubin, Prof. QIU Guangle, Dr. Li Zhonggen, Dr. FU Xuewu, Dr. WANG Jianxu, Dr. Jonas Sommar and Dr. HU Haiyan.

During the meeting, the collaborative research areas were discussed in details, and the agreement was reached on the preliminary collaboration plan.

SMaRef is a Sino-Swedish cooperation project granted by the Swedish Research Council in 2013. Prof. Kevin Bishop from SLU serves as the Chief Scientist of the project. Swedish partners include SLU, Umeå University, Uppsala University and Stockholm University. Chinese partner is SKLEG at IGCAS, with the team members including Professors FENG Xinbin, CHEN Jiubin and QIU Guangle, and Associate Professors SHANG Lihai, YAN Haiyu and Jonas Sommar. The project was funded from January 2014 to December 2018, with a total funding granted for 24,398,000 Swedish Krona (about 23,178,100 RMB ).

The research within SMaReF is based on four aspects in the Hg cycle in the environment: air-surface exchange of mercury, mercury methylation and demethylation, accumulation of mercury in food chain and remediation of Hg contaminated sites.

SMaReF Opening Workshop is scheduled to initiate at Wiks Castle in Sweden on May 19-23, 2014. SMaReF, together with invited experts from N. America and Scandinavia, will help set the direction of work to be done within SMaReF, and associated projects, during the coming 5 years.

SMaReF team members are looking forward to the half a decade of collaboration between Sweden and China to better understand mercury in the environment.

(By FENG Xinbin Group)