Patricia Forbes is Full Professor in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Pretoria (UP) and holds the Rand Water Chemistry Research Chair. She was previously employed as Environmental Manager at Impala Platinum Refineries and as Head of the Air Quality Research Laboratory of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Forbes’ research focuses on the development of novel sampling and analytical methods for environmental pollutants, including denuder based sampling techniques; biomonitors; and quantum dot-based fluorescence sensors. She was awarded the prestigious 2019 ChromSA Chromatographer of the Year award in recognition of her research achievements. Patricia has a passion for teaching the next generation of chemists and she believes in encouraging students to develop an understanding of key fundamental concepts via active and inquiry-based learning. To this end she developed an educational spectrophotometer (called the SpecUP) which students can assemble from a kit and then use to generate analytically useful results. She was the recipient of the Chemical Education award of the South African Chemical Institute in 2014 for this project, which has been rolled out to numerous institutions throughout Africa. The SpecUP project was awarded the prestigious international Wharton QS Reimagine Education Award for Presence Learning in 2015 and Patricia received the University of Pretoria Teaching Excellence and Innovation Laureate award in 2016. Prof Forbes has given over 35 invited presentations on her research, has published over 70 journal papers and 10 book chapters in this regard, including a book on Air Pollution Monitoring published by Elsevier in 2015. Prof Forbes is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) of which she is an elected member on the Professional Standards Board and she chairs the RSC Local Section South Africa, North committee. Patricia is a Fellow of the South African Chemical Institute (SACI) and she served on the Executive of SACI from 2011 to 2015, and was Chairperson of ChromSA, the chromatography division of SACI from 2009 to 2015 and again from 2019 - current. She has also served as Council Member and Chairperson of the Professional Advisory Committee for Environmental Science of the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions (SACNASP). She is currently Editor in Chief of the South African Journal of Chemistry, is a member of the journal Editorial Boards of Applied Science (Springer Nature) and Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry , as well as Managing Guest Editor of MethodsX (Elsevier) for analysis of air pollutants. She serves as an air pollution monitoring expert regarding organic vapours in workplace environments for the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
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Brief Biography (English)