Introducing Our Chief Scientist
Prof. K. Clive Thompson is Chief Scientist at ALcontrol Laboratories and has a long list of achievements. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC); Chartered Chemist (CChem); Chartered Scientist (CSci); Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (FCIWEM);Fellow of the Royal Institute of Public Health (FRIPH); Member of the Water Management Society (MWMSoc); Member of the American Chemical Society and Member of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and Visiting Professor at Brunel University of London.
He has received a Distinguished Service Certificate from British Standards and is the holder of the 2003 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) Environmental Medal. Over the last 40 years, he has gained very broad experience in the management of environmental laboratories and also in the handling of a wide variety of associated technical issues having managed laboratories at both Severn Trent and Yorkshire Water.
He has produced a significant number of peer-reviewed papers and books and also serves on over 20 national and international committees including a number of BSi, ISO and CEN water, soil, sludge, soil improver and growing media committees. He has also has recently joined the BSi NTi/1 Nanotechnologies committee.
He has carried out consultancy work for a number of organisations including the European Commission and UKWIR. He also ran the LEAP Proficiency Scheme for over 10 years, until it was sold to MAFF (now Fera) in 2000. This scheme covered a wide variety of chemical and microbiological parameters in waters, effluents and soil. He has a large number of UK and worldwide professional contacts and has helped to organise over twenty international conferences on food, water and soil issues.
He is a distinguished and respected member of both the ALcontrol team and the wider scientific community. Having worked mainly within the ALcontrol Water and Environmental business to date (he started back 1980!) Clive is now becoming involved in the Food business too. The new facilities at Aspen Court are Clive’s new home although he is often to be found travelling the globe! Nice! This travelling, however, is not without its problems as Clive found out during the recent volcano eruption. Here, he describes his journey back from Poland with his two Fera colleagues:
We took the director’s car from the Pulawy Veterinary Institute to Warsaw Airport only to spend six fruitless hours there. (We re-booked our cancelled KLM flight to Amsterdam and were scheduled to take a “promised to run” LOT flight, that we were assured would definitely fly. It was finally cancelled 20 minutes before the advertised departure time.
So, we took a 19 hour, 1800 km taxi-ride starting at 02-00 hours from Warsaw to Dieppe at £800 for three of us (The quote from Hertz for a one way hire car from Warsaw to Dieppe excluding fuel was £2000!!!) I am glad ALcontrol aren’t paying the travel costs! We drove across Poland, then Germany (from Frankfurt on Oder to Aachen), then across Belgium to Mons and then on to Dieppe via Arras.
The taxi driver consumed about 10 Red Bull drinks on the drive and we only stopped for natural breaks and no meals. The driver did not wish to stop for long at our natural break stops and did not want any food, coffee or sleep despite our frequent offers! The taxi driver was hyper by the time we reached Dieppe and the last 200kms of our 2300 km journey were really scary with some very high speed (100 mph) tail-gating driving. Fortunately, he did not show the slightest sign of tiredness!
We managed to book on-line on Thursday night and reserved a four berth cabin with beds and sheets on the ferry to Newhaven which would leave on Saturday at 06.00 taking 4.5 hours.
The Dieppe hotel could not provide a taxi to the ferry terminal which was a 35 minute walk away (with all of our luggage). We had to report by 04.30 hours for our Newhaven ferry so to be sure we arrived in time we left the hotel at 03.30 hours. It was a scary experience as we were followed and verbally accosted during this epic walk by two groups of very drunk, French youths. Thank God it was not raining!
It was total chaos at the Dieppe ferry terminal which was besieged by multitudes of hopeful travellers. After much ado we finally boarded the ferry at 05.40 hours with our luggage following on a set of trolleys.
We arrived in Newhaven and found that our pre-booked hire car, which we had been faithfully promised would be waiting for us at Newhaven, was still at the Hove Enterprise Car Hire office, the other side of Brighton. With many roads in Brighton closed o wing to the Brighton marathon, we cancelled the hire car.
We then booked three trains and an underground train trip from Newhaven to Leeds and took a final taxi to Leeds/Bradford Airport. What a trip!
We look forward to hearing more from Clive.
