Professor Deshusses is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University and a co-founder of 374Water Inc. His interests are related to the design, analysis and optimization of processes for waste treatment, and resources recovery. He is pioneering work on the development of biological filters for air pollution control has resulted in widespread use of biofilters and biotrickling filters for odor and air toxics control. Professor Deshusses’s current work on supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) for sustainable waste treatment is breaking new ground. SCWO can be used to treat a variety of problematic wastes, including wastewater sludges (biosolids), animal wastes, or to destroy PFAS in a variety of matrices. He has received several awards for his innovative research including the 2002 Research Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Basin Section of the California Water Environment Association, the 2003 Quality & Productivity Award of the City of Los Angeles for Environmental Marvels. Other awards include the WEFTEC 2020 Innovation Pavilion Champion, the Department of Energy 2020 Water Resource Recovery Prize, and NC TECH “Startups To Watch” award (all to 374Water). Professor Deshusses holds degrees (B.S., Ph.D.) in chemical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology.

Dr. Kossack earned her B.S. degree in Environmental Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2013, and her P.hD. degree in Pharmacology and Toxicology in 2019 from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Kossack’s graduate research investigated molecular mechanisms of sex determination in zebrafish. Following her graduate work, she began her postdoctoral position at Brown University in the lab of Dr. Jessica Plavicki. In 2021 she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship (F32) from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to study the mechanisms of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin induced infertility in zebrafish. Dr. Kossack has won several awards including Paper of the Year from the Society of Toxicology’s Northeast Chapter and a Postdoctoral Scholar Research award from the Molecular and Systems Biology Specialty Section of the Society of Toxicology, and she was selected to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 2023. Dr. Kossack has been invited to speak at various conferences including the Gordon Research Conference on Environmental
Endocrine Disruptors, and she is a member of the Scientific Advisory, and Training
Advisory Committees for the non-profit Healthy Environment and Endocrine
Disruptor Strategies.

Dr. Manz’s research and teaching interests are in environmental chemistry, including (A) understanding natural chemical transformation in the environment, (B) developing remediation technologies to minimize pollutant exposure, and (C) discovering previously unidentified environmental exposures in humans. Her research team utilizes state-of-the-art analytical chemistry techniques, such as high-resolution mass spectrometry, to monitor chemical transformation in groundwater and soils and to develop new techniques to assess total exposure. In addition to using these techniques to identify new exposures, Dr. Manz is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms, or metabolisms, that are impacted due to chemical exposure in humans and the environment.

Dr. Zoeller, is Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is a visiting Professor at the University of Örebro in Sweden. His research has focused on the role of thyroid hormone in brain development with an emphasis on the fetal brain. Dr. Zoeller’s lab also works on the mechanisms by which environmental endocrine disruptors can interfere with thyroid hormone action in the developing brain. His  laboratory has published over 200 scientific papers on these topics. Dr. Zoeller was a member of the U.S. EPA’s committee to develop a strategy to identify endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the 1990’s as well as several other EPA and NIH review panels. In recognition of his work, he received the “Scientist of the Year – 2002” from the Learning Disabilities Association and was a Samuel F. Conte Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, awarded the UMass Chancellor’s Medal for his work and was an Endocrine Society Laureate Awardee.