François Courchesne (Phd McGill University, Montréal, 1988) is a full professor of soil science at the Department of geography of the Université de Montréal (UdeM). His research program focuses on the impact of environmental changes on the biogeochemical cycle of nutrients and contaminants in soils. The results of his pioneering work on the speciation and the bioavailability of metals in the rhizosphere were praised and reckoned by his fellow researchers (h-index of 20). He signed more than 120 scientific papers and book chapters in refereed publications, and presented, individually or in collaboration, more than 200 conferences in national and international forums.
François Courchesne was a principal investigator in large research infrastructures such as the research network Metals in the Human Environment (MITHE-RN) of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the GenoRem project on the bioremediation of contaminated soils financed by Genome Canada. He was member and co-president of the grant selection committee in environmental earth science of NSERC, he co-presided the working group on the rhizosphere of the International Union of Soil Science and was associated editor of the Canadian Journal of Soil Science.
François Courchesne was appointed to many administrative duties in the Canadian university system. He was the Chairman of the Department of Geography of the UdeM from 2000 to 2004 and, for a second mandate, from 2005 to 2009. In April 2010, he was nominated Associated dean of planning and infrastructures at the Faculty of arts and sciences (26 departments, 625 professors and 20 000 students in all three study cycles) of the UdeM for two years. His appointment as vice-dean was since renewed until June 2016.
Mrs Ruxandra Iepan graduated Law Studies at Law Department in University Babes Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca, Romania and obtained her Master in business law at the Law Department in Université de Montréal.
Mrs Iepan is a lawyer, member of Quebec Bar with a 6-year experience in judicial practice in Québec, Canada.
Mrs Iepan has professional experience in Romania as a law counsellor for different companies as well as in private practice and presently in Québec, Canada as clerk in court at Ministry of Justice.
Lizabel Nitoi graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Litteratures – English department – at University of Bucharest and finished the master cursus in English literature in the English department at Université de Montréal, Québec.
Lizabel Nitoi has a solid and respected professional reputation as an English teacher in Romania and, for the last 25 years, in Québec, Canada.
Lizabel Nitoi voluntarily involved herself, during the last 25 years, in a multitude of social, economic, environmental, communitarian and charity causes in Québec. The Romanian community acknowledged the great humanism and inexhaustible energy she put into numerous activities of charity, which she initiated to help the compatriots who decided to settle in Québec.
Renowned as a great defender of the French culture in Québec, Lizabel Nitoi held important and different political positions. Her political involvement continued when appointed in the ministry cabinet of Ministry of Immigration during the provincial government 2012-2104.
Lizabel Nitoi uses her natural leadership to involve the Romanian community in a great and crucial project for the environmental and cultural protection of the Danube Delta in Romania.
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