Leonard Ritter
Professor Len Ritter was born in 1950 in Montreal, Canada. Prof. Ritter attended Sir George Williams University in Montreal where he earned a B. Sc. Degree (Hons. Biology/ Maj. Biochem) and an M. Sc. degree (Biochem) in 1972 and 1974 respectively. Prof. Ritter obtained his doctoral degree in biochemistry from Queen's University School of Medicine, Kingston, Canada, in 1977. Following completion of his formal studies at Queen's, Prof. Ritter took up a fellowship in the laboratories of the Environmental Health Directorate of the Department of National Health and Welfare. During the tenure of this award, Prof. Ritter directed his efforts to the toxicology of a broad range of environmental contaminants and their potential adverse impacts on human health. In late 1978, Prof. Ritter took up a position as an evaluator in the newly formed Pesticides Section of the Environmental Health Directorate and in the ensuing six years assumed various positions of progressive responsibility, being appointed to the position of Chief of the Division in the Spring of 1984, a position held until 1990. Throughout this time, Prof. Ritter was responsible for organizing and managing a regulatory program with responsibility for the evaluation and approval of a broad range of pesticide products subject to Canadian federal regulation. In 1990, Dr. Ritter was appointed to the position of Director, Bureau of Veterinary Drugs of Health Canada with overall responsibility for the management of Canada's regulatory program directed at the safe use of veterinary drugs in food producing animals and the establishment of safe residue limits of veterinary drugs in foods. Prof. Ritter was appointed Executive Director of the Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres, a national university based research foundation, in June 1993. He was also appointed as tenured Professor of Environmental Biology and adjunct Professor of Biomedical Science at the University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada. In this present position, Prof. Ritter has overall management responsibility of a large multidisciplinary national research program which serves to advance toxicological knowledge related to environmental and human health. Prof. Ritter actively participates in the supervision and co-supervision of graduate students and contributes guest lectures to a number of undergraduate and graduate level courses at the University. He also serves as co-coordinator of a very successful advanced graduate course in toxicology which attracts students from all over the world. In June 2000, Prof. Ritter was appointed Associate Chair of the Dept. of Environmental Biology at the University of Guelph.
Prof. Ritter has been privileged to have served on various expert panels and boards including those organized by the International Centre on Pesticide Safety (a collaborating WHO centre), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the National Cancer Institute of Canada and the Government of Canada Ministers' Expert Panel on Priority Substances. Prof. Ritter is currently Vice-President of the Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention and has been a long serving member of the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the Food and Agricultural Organization/World Health Organization of the United Nations. Prof.. Ritter has been a member of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Codex Alimentarius Commission. Prof. Ritter has served as an expert panelist on behalf of the World Trade Organization, adjudicating international food residues disputes. Prof. Ritter has contributed to the development of numerous IPCS/WHO expert reviews of toxic chemicals and was the senior author of the widely distributed WHO document on persistent organic pollutants. Prof. Ritter has also served on numerous expert advisory committees organized by both government and industry associations.
In addition to his present responsibilities as Professor of Environmental Biology at the University of Guelph and Executive Director of the Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres, Prof. Ritter has also recently been appointed as coordinator of the Metals in the Environment Research Network, a multidisciplinary national research program linking government, industry and academia and directed at a better understanding of the potential impact of metals in the environment.
Prof. Ritter has published widely in the scientific literature, has contributed to several text books and has been an invited lecturer and speaker on four continents.