Gerard Cornelissen

Gerard Cornelissen has been working with organic contaminants in soils and sediments as well as on methods to combine tropical soil improvement with climate change abatement. During his PhD (Amsterdam, 1999) he discovered that classic contaminants such as PAHs, PCBs and dioxins are often so strongly bound to soils and sediments that they show very limited bioavailability. During his postdoc (Stockholm, 2003-2004) he found out that strong binding to black carbon (soot, charcoal) often is the reason for this limited bioavailability. At the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI, 2005-2026) he focused on remediation methods such as biochar amendment to reduce the risk of PFAS, metals and other contaminants. Together with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) he has also led numerous projects on biochar and climate-smart agriculture in tropical countries, mainly in Zambia, Tanzania and Uganda, currently training 6000 farmers in these technologies.