Biography

Dr. Rainer Lohmann is Professor of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. With funding from NSF, NIH, SERDP and private foundations, his group conducts research into the sources, transport, and bioaccumulation of anthropogenic pollutants. Lohmann initiated a global effort to monitor organic contaminants in the waters of the world, termed AQUA-GAPS, which started field trials in 2016. Within URI, Lohmann offers graduate classes in “Environmental Organic Chemistry”, “Organic Geochemistry” and “Introduction to Marine Pollution”.

Lohmann has published over 150 peer-reviewed publications and serves as Editor for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. He is member of the Executive Committee of the U.S. EPA Board of Scientific Counselors, and sitson the Editorial Boards for Environmental Science and Technology, Environmental Pollution and Environmental Science and Technology Letters, among others.

As the Director of the URI Superfund Research Center STEEP (Sources, Transport, Exposure and Effects of PFAS), Lohmann oversees and guides the Center, together with co-Director Philippe Grandjean (URI). As leader of Project 4, Lohmann develops and validates novel sampling approaches for PFASs based on passive sampling of these pollutants. These will be field tested in collaboration with Laurel Schaider (Silent Spring Institute, CEC and Project 4) , Philippe Grandjean (Project 2) and Elsie Sunderland (Harvard University, Project 1).

Lohmann obtained a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Lancaster University (UK) in 1999, and a BSc in Chemical Engineering from EHICS (Strasbourg, France) in 1996. After his Ph.D. Lohmann was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT’s Parson’s laboratory and had fellowship appointments at both the University of Bremen and the Max-Planck Institute of Meteorology (Hamburg). Lohmann received the Roy F. Weston Environmental Chemistry Award by the Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry in 2006, the URI Research and Scholarship Excellence Award in 2019 and the URI Foundation and Alumni Excellence in Research Award in 2022. In 2010/11, Lohmann was named a fellow of the “Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation”, and a visiting fellow of India’s National Institute of Oceanography and Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Lohmann was selected as a Fulbright scholarship as part of the Fulbright Arctic Initiative III, working with Project 2 on the Faroe Islands.