Narayanan Kannan, PhD

Profile

Dr.N.Kannan’s interests include the transport and fate of industrial contaminants and hormone disruptors such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), nonylphenols, polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), polychlorinated dibenzo dioxins (PCDDs), brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) and pesticides in terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

He is familiar with modern sampling techniques for analysing organic contaminants in water, sediments, particles and organisms; clean-up methods and high resolution determination and risk assessment. His four years association with Prof.S.Tanabe, Ehime University, Japan has resulted in the awakening of non-ortho coplanar PCB studies. He spent his last 10 years with a group of marine/environmental analytical chemists lead by Prof.Dr.J.C.Duinker at IFM (Institute for Marine Research) Kiel. His other interests includes application of structure activity relationship (SAR) in understanding the Bio transformation of these chemicals in organisms and the usage of anthropogenic trace contaminates as bio geochemical indicators of marine processes.

He has published his works in scholarly journals and presented in international conferences. This amounts to more than 80 citations. He has keen interest in public education and was motivated by environmental movements in USA and Germany. His undergraduate and Masters research work show his early attempts in the field of environmental toxicology. He obtained his first PhD in Madurai Kamaraj University, India with a research title “Chemo dynamics of pesticides in plants - movement and dissipation in plants and surroundings”. As a Mombusho scholar, he worked at Ehime University, Japan and obtained a second PhD in the field of ecotoxicology and environmental chemistry with the research title "Coplanar PCBs in humans and wildlife: Congener specific analysis, occurrence, behaviour and toxic evaluation".

Dr.Kannan has travelled widely in Asia, Europe and USA and lived in multicultural environment. He has teaching experience at undergraduate and graduate levels. He has guided M.Phil and PhD students as well. He has experience in writing grant proposals. In the field of public education he has given several radio talks on the impact of science on society and on the changing landscape of science. He writes often on these topics in popular magazines as well. He was born in Southern India in the year 1952 and has acquired German citizenship. He is fluent in English and has good comprehension of German and Japanese. He enjoys travel, music and creative writing.

He is familiar with Mac OS, Windows, Java Scripting, ASP, HTML, DHTML, Internet software und Protocol (TCP/IP, FTP), Microsoft office, Adobe products, statistical packages. He is currently the President of Tamil Heritage Foundation and Lead sheppard of International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil (INFITT)-Europe.