John Smol is a professor of biology at Queen’s University, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in environmental change. He founded and co-directs the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab, a group of thirty students and scientists studying long-term global environmental change, especially as it relates to lake ecosystems. John has authored 500 journal articles and chapters and twenty-one books, focusing primarily on environmental stressors on lakes. The founder of the international Journal of Paleolimnology and the current editor of Environmental Reviews, John has won approximately fifty research and teaching awards or fellowships, including the NSERC Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal, and he is an officer of the Order of Canada.