Dr. Susan Richardson is the Arthur Sease Williams Professor of Chemistry at the University of South Carolina and was formerly at the U.S. EPA for many years.  Her research surrounds the study of emerging contaminants in water, with a main focus on disinfection by-products (DBPs) in drinking water. Mass spectrometry (with both GC-MS and LC-MS) is a primary tool she uses in her research to identify new environmental contaminants and to quantify contaminants. She also uses combustion-ion chromatography to measure total organic fluorine for PFAS research and total organic chlorine, bromine, and iodine for DBP research to capture a more complete picture of these contaminants.    Dr. Richardson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2024), Executive Editor and Associate Editor for *Environmental Science & Technology,* past President of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (2020-2022), and received the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award for Creative Advancements in Environmental Science & Technology (2008), an Honorary Doctorate from Cape Breton University (2006), an AAAS Fellow (2019), an ACS Fellow (2016), the Herty Medal (2020), the Southern Chemist Award (2020), the Walter J. Weber, Jr. AEESP Frontier in Research Award (2021), the Analytical Scientist Power List (2024, 2023, 2021, and 2019), and most recently, the 2026 South Carolina Governor’s Award for Excellence in Scientific Research. Over her career, she has published 224 articles, given >400 invited presentations and seminars (including 83 plenaries/keynotes) and >200 contributed presentations.  She has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Emory University and a B.S. in Chemistry & Mathematics from Georgia College & State University.