Working group on Biominerals and the Environment

Biominerals: a continuously growing family  

Biominerals are the product of organism’s activity leading to mineral formation within the cellular space or in the space surrounding the organism. In the last decades biominerals have received growing interest from a large interdisciplinary scientific community. Actually, biominerals are known from the geological record to play a pivotal role in biogeochemical cycles of elements. Thus, understanding biomineralization processes in widely different environments helps us to understand environmental changes induced by anthropic activities, as well the as environment resiliency. Moreover, they offer diverse examples to devise useful biobased materials and allow the development of technologies for environmental sustainability.

The working group on Biominerals and Environment was created around the concept that biominerals, in all their diversity of forms, are central to environmental function and human activities in the environment. However, the community of specialist researchers in this topical area currently lack a forum for information exchange to discuss and promote this science. It is the charter of the WG-BME to bridge this gap by rallying a set of enthusiastic leaders from the community that can help promote relevant research, both basic and applied, and foster dissemination more broadly. The members of the WG act on a voluntary basis and participate with a collaborative approach to pursue said aim.

Officers:

Chair: Giovanni De Giudici, Università di Cagliari, Italia

Vice-Chair: Kevin Rosso, Pacific Northwest National Lab. USA.

Vice-Chair: Jurai Maizlan, Univ. Jena, Germany

Secretary: Karen Hudson-Edwards, Exeter Univ. UK.

Members: WGE Members : Pupa Gilbert, Andreas Kappler, Jonathan Lloyd, Francesco Di Benedetto, Lucian Staicu, Juan Liu.

For info write to bio-enviro-office@mineralogy-ima.org