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Fugacity-based chemical fate modelling is a fascinating and sometimes complicated scientific pursuit. Such modelling is of critical importance in the early stages of chemical management, when new chemicals are being introduced into production and little is known yet about their actual behaviour and fate in the environment.

Donald Mackay was an internationally renowned engineer and scientist, the acknowledged pioneer of fugacity-based modeling applications in environmental fate and exposure methodology. Don graduated from the University of Glasgow and was most recently an Emeritus Professor in the School of the Environment at Trent University. He was also Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry of the University of Toronto where he taught for some 30 years and established himself as a pioneer of multimedia modeling in environmental science. Moving to Trent University in 1995, he contributed to the growth and maturation of the environmental science program and established the Canadian Environmental Modelling Centre, which he led until his official retirement in 2002. Since that time, Don continued to work in the field, producing over 750 articles, many books, and numerous reports during his career. The recipient of the Order of Canada and many other awards, Don was a leading figure in the field of environmental fate modeling.

J. Mark Parnis is an Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. A graduate of the University of Toronto, he is a physical chemist with early research work in metal atom and cluster reactions with organic molecules and a teaching emphasis on quantum mechanics, spectroscopy, and kinetics. In more recent years, he joined forces with Donald Mackay to focus on the development and implementation of techniques for estimating physico-chemical properties of molecular species with an emphasis on environmental modeling applications. He is a former director of the Canadian Environmental Modelling Centre at Trent University and continues to work on applications of fugacity-based models and property estimation techniques in environmental modelling. He maintains and updates the various models developed by Don Mackay’s group, which are available from the CEMC Website.