Donna Mergler is professor emerita in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), where she was a professor from 1970 until 2006.  She is a member of the research group CINBIOSE (Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la biologie, la santé, la société et l’environnement), a World Health Organisation and Pan-American Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for the Prevention of Occupational and Environmental Illness. She was director of UQAM's Institute for Environmental Sciences from 2002-2004 and the first Academic Scholar of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Ecosystem and Health program (1999 - 2002). She received her doctorate in neurophysiology from McGill University in the early seventies and since then her research has focused on early neurotoxic effects of exposure to workplace and environmental pollutants. Her major studies in occupational health examined nervous system deficits associated with long-term effects of exposure to manganese, organic solvents and pesticides.  In the area of environmental health, she performed the first population study, demonstrating nervous system changes associated with airborne manganese exposure. She is currently involved research on the effects of manganese exposure on children.   Over the past fifteen years, she has contributed to the development of an ecosystem approach to human health, which forms the basis of her studies, including mercury pathways and effects in the Brazilian Amazon (Caruso Project) and in Canada (Collaborative Mercury Research Network (COMERN)). A prize-winning film 'Sur les rives du Tapajós' was made on this work in the Amazon.  With her research group, she has developed innovative approaches to examine women’s health and participatory methodologies. These studies focus on preventive intervention and combine quantitative and qualitative methods in order to bring about concrete and lasting solutions to problems of environmental degradation. She is currently the Canadian principal of the Community of Practice on Ecosystem Approaches to Human Health to reduce Toxic Exposures in Latin America and the Caribbean (COPEH-TLAC), which links centres of excellence, researchers, policy-makers and NGO’s in Mexico, Central America, the Andes, Cono Sur and Brazil. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, given many keynote conferences and has won several awards for her work. In 2006, she headed an international panel on the health effects of mercury for the Conference Mercury as a Global Pollutant. She is a member of the Science Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission on the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board and of its Workgroup on Ecosystem Health.

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