Ulrich Borchers Editor

Over the last 40 years, Prof. Thompson has gained very broad experience in the management of environmental laboratories. He has managed laboratories at both Severn Trent and Yorkshire Water. He is currently Chief Scientist of ALcontrol UK. ALcontrol Laboratories employs over 1600 staff in the UK and mainland Europe in 11 countries. It is one of the largest contract water, soil air and food analysis laboratory organisations in Europe. He set up the UK water laboratories mutual aid group in 1995 and still chairs this group and is active on a number of ISO/CEN and British Standard committees. He has published over 60 papers and a number of books. Ulrich Borchers has been working with the IWW Water Centre in Muelheim/Ruhr (Germany) since 1993, in different executive positions. Since 2002 he has been Manager of the Water Quality Department and Authorised Officer of the Water Centre. His routine lab and the R&D group comprise nearly 55 scientists from various disciplines and technical staff as well. In 2004 he was also appointed Technical Chief Executive Officer of the IWW NORD, a branch of the IWW Water Centre in Northern Germany. The focus of Ulrich Borchers' work is on instrumental chemical (organic and inorganic) and microbiological water analysis, as well as on the examination and assessment of different types of water and water treatment chemicals. Furthermore, he is active in the field of organising national and international PTs for water parameters and he also has long-term experience as lecturer at the "Academy of Public Health" in Duesseldorf, Germany (education of health authorities¦ staff). He has been the Chair of several European Conferences in the field of Water Policy and organises annual conferences on PT schemes for drinking water laboratories in the framework of the German Drinking Water Regulation. Finally, Ulrich is active in the field of European (CEN) and International (ISO) standardisation of analytical methods and is involved with several activities around the implementation of European Water Directives (e.g. Water Framework Directive, Drinking Water Directive, Groundwater Directive) in co-operation with the General Directorate Environment of the European Commission (EU DG ENV) in Brussels. He has published about 45 papers in international literature and several books. Professor Professor Peter A. Williams currently holds position as Academic Leader, Materials and Analytical Science, Director, Materials Science Research Centre, Glyndwr University, UK. He was first appointed as Research Scientist at Glyndwr University in 1978 before becoming Senior Research Scientist in 1986, Reader in 1990, Director Centre for Water Soluble Polymers 1994, Professor Polymer and Colloid Chemistry in 1996, Director Materials Science Research Centre 2006 and as Academic Leader Materials and Analytical Sciences in 2010. His work has concentrated on the synthesis, characterisation, properties and applications of a broad range of polysaccharides and synthetic water soluble polymers.