Keynote Speakers

Irene van Kamp

Senior researcher and project manager at the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment

Irene van Kamp (NL) was educated at the University of Groningen and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam (Netherlands) and has a background in sociology, psychology and epidemiology.  She has a broad interest and experience in working in interdisciplinary teams and policy preparing research.  Since 2000 she is working as a senior researcher and project manager at the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (Netherlands), with an assignment in the field of urban environmental quality and quality of life, and specific expertise in the field of environmental noise.

She is and has been supervising several students (PhD and Msc) on the health impacts of noise and electromagnetic fields, the efficacy of noise interventions, risk perception and risk governance. She was co-author in the review on interventions in the framework of the WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines. Current projects include mapping the burden of disease from low frequency noise; advising the EU on the use of environmental health indicators in the Environmental Noise Directives; the perception of noise and vibration from rail traffic; and the health promoting role of positive aspects in the sound environment in their physical and social context. Recently she was granted a Horzion2020 project on the Early Environmental quality and life-course mental health effects (Equal- Life). At RIVM she works closely together with acousticians, physicists and GIS experts. Irene van Kamp is (co) author of some 150 publications and five book chapters. In 2012 she was granted the Dutch Golden Decibel award for her scientific work in the noise domain.

Sharon G. Kujawa

Director of Audiology Research and a Senior Scientist in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Boston, MA

Sharon G. Kujawa, Ph.D. serves on the faculty of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Harvard Medical School. She is the Director of Audiology Research and a Senior Scientist in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Boston, MA. She is on the adjunct faculty of the Program in Speech and Hearing Biosciences and Technology at Harvard University. Dr. Kujawa is an auditory neuroscientist and clinician whose research seeks to clarify mechanisms and consequences of common causes of acquired sensorineural hearing loss and to translate that knowledge into improved diagnosis and treatments that benefit people. A major focus of current work is in understanding how sound overexposure and aging cause loss of cochlear hair cell – nerve fiber communications (synapses), determining the functional consequences of that loss and how it is shaped by sensory cell damage, and clarifying how the degeneration can be manipulated pharmacologically to reveal mechanisms and provide treatments. Her research is supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the Department of Defense and the Office of Naval Research.

Jenny Selander

Research group leader for EPIC- Exposure to physical and chemical factors and health

Jenny Selander, Ph.D, serves on the faculty of the Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM), Karolinska Institutet (KI). She is a research group leader for EPIC- Exposure to physical and chemical factors and health, a team of two PhD-students, two post docs and one senior researcher. She is also deputy head of the unit of Occupational Medicine at IMM, KI and the program director for the Master program in Occupational Health (in Swedish), as well as course leader for Scientific Methods within the program.

Dr. Selander conducts research on physical and chemical exposures in occupational and residential settings in relation to health effects such as pregnancy related outcomes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Her focus is to study how exposures (Noise, vibration, air pollution, chemicals, heat, cold, physically strenuous work etc) separately and jointly affect health. Many exposures interact in the occupational and residential areas and joint exposure assessment is needed to evaluate the risks for the individual. Dr. Selander has been involved in noise research since the start of her PhD-studies and has pursued this in her further career. Dr Selander is currently involved in two EU-projects one focusing on environmental exposures and early life ( Equal Life, WP-leader, and partner leader for KI) and one on occupational exposures and health (EPHOR co-applicant), as well as a collaborative Nordic project (NORDSOUND, WP-lead) with an integrating approach to environmental and occupational noise. Further, she is PI/WP-lead for two national program grants and PI for several smaller national research projects.

Marco Paviotti

Policy officer at the European Commission

Marco Paviotti (IT) is an engineer, who started his career as a researcher, and then developed into policymaking. He has more than 15 years of experience in the environmental noise sector, where he coordinated the work around noise assessment, including setting the results of the WHO noise guidelines into law, and in drafting and implementing international, European and national legislation on transport externalities and in particular on noise.

Policy officer in charge of the European Union noise policy since 2012. He has worked at the European Commission since 2005, and first dealt with environmental noise in both the public and private sectors, having worked in the Netherlands, Germany, Greece and Italy. Early in his career, he worked as a researcher at AEA Technology Rail BV, then at ARPAT Toscana, on European research projects (noise, air quality and electromagnetic pollution). Furthermore, as a freelancer, he worked on environmental policies for local authorities.

He works with the Ministries, the industry association, the research institutions and with UN-agencies such as the WHO, the UN-ECE and the ICAO.