Derelict Mines

Ravi Naidu is the Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment and Laureate Professor and Founding Director of the Global Centre for Environmental Remediation at the University of Newcastle. He has been a research scientist in environmental contaminants, toxicology, bioavailability and remediation for over 25 years. He has co-authored over 850 technical publications and co-edited 16 books in the field of soil and environmental sciences, including field remediation of contaminated sites. Since 1994 Ravi has worked with scientists from the United States, Europe and Asia on environmental contamination, including recent arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh, India and China, with this collaboration leading to extensive research as well as the training of 5,000 environmental managers. Ravi was awarded a Gold Medal in environmental science in 1998 by Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, elected as a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America in 2000, a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of New Zealand in 2004, a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy in 2006, a Fellow of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2013, a Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Chemistry in 2017, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, a Foreign Fellow of the Indian Academy of Agricultural Science in 2021 and a Foreign Fellow of the New Zealand Academy of Science in 2021. In 2012 Ravi was chosen as a winner of the Soil Science Society of America’s International Soil Science Award. In 2023, Ravi was presented with the European Geosciences Union Alina Kabata-Pendias Medal and also the Food and Agriculture of the United Nations World Soil Prize – the Glinka Award. He has also been Chair of the Standards Australia Technical Committee on Sampling and Analyses of Contaminated Soils (1999–2000), Chair of the International Union of Soil Sciences Commission for Soil Degradation Control, Remediation and Reclamation (2002–2010) and President of the International Society on Trace Element Biogeochemistry (2005–2007).