Dr. H Kenneth Hudnell has degrees in chemistry, biological psychology, and neurobiology, and completed a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship in neurotoxicology. He worked as a neurotoxicologist in the US EPA’s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory for 23 years. He conducted field, laboratory, and clinical studies on the human health effects of exposure to environmental pollutants such as manganese, arsenic and volatile organic compounds. More recent studies investigated acute and chronic illnesses associated with exposures to toxins produced by living organisms such as cyanobacteria, dinoflagellates and fungi. From 2003-2007 he was tasked to lead an interagency effort to develop the scientific basis for a National Research Plan on freshwater harmful algal blooms, one of the products mandated by the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act.

Ken led the Interagency, International Symposium on Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), is editor and co-author of the book, Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms: State of the Science and Research Needs (Springer Press, 2008), and co-author of the Congressionally mandated report; Scientific Assessment of Freshwater Harmful Algal Blooms. He briefed White House subcommittees on freshwater bloom risks and solutions, and gave numerous invited presentations on that topic around the country. He testified in 2008 before the US House Science & Technology Committee on freshwater HABs, drafted legislation to improve the Federal response to HABs and was elected to the National HAB Committee and co-chair of the Committee’s Freshwater HAB Subcommittee.

He is currently the Vice President and Director of Science at SolarBee Inc., a company that developed solar-powered, long distance circulation technology for an ecological and sustainable approach to control of HABs and other water quality problems. He is conducting research on the efficacy and mechanisms of long distance circulation for control of HABs, invasive macrophytes and pollutant concentrations. The research projects are conducted through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Institute for the Environment, were he is an Adjunct Professor, and other collaborative arrangements with academic, government and private organizations.