Rate My Professor Jonathan Benskin

Jonathan Benskin is Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Head of the Contaminant Chemistry Unit in Stockholm University’s Department of Environmental Science, part of the Faculty of Science. He holds a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Victoria, Canada, and a PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Alberta’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, where he specialized in isomer-specific profiling of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). After his doctorate, Benskin worked as a Visiting Scientist at the Institute of Ocean Sciences under Fisheries and Oceans Canada and as an NSERC Industrial Research and Development Fellow at a private analytical laboratory in Canada. He later became Principal Scientist there, establishing the company’s metabolomics division. In 2014, he joined the Department of Environmental Science (formerly ACES) as Associate Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 2021.

Benskin’s research investigates the identification, transformation, and environmental fate of organic contaminants, emphasizing PFAS. His group develops high-resolution mass spectrometry methods for non-target and suspect screening in human biofluids, wildlife tissues, and wastewater sludge, collaborating with the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Swedish Food Agency, and Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. They perform fluorine mass balance studies using combustion ion chromatography, uncovering substantial unidentified organofluorine in marine mammal blubber, groundwater, and consumer products. Additional efforts track PFAS uptake in vegetables and fungi, biotransformation in sediments, and temporal trends in human serum, milk, and wildlife. Notable publications include “Pharmaceuticals Account for a Significant Proportion of the Extractable Organic Fluorine in Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant Sludge” by Seilitz et al., “Temporal trends of suspect- and target-per/polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), extractable organic fluorine (EOF) and total fluorine (TF) in pooled serum from first-time mothers in Uppsala, Sweden, 1996–2017” by Miaz et al., and “Fluorine Mass Balance and Suspect Screening in Marine Mammals from the Northern Hemisphere” by Spaan et al. As Assistant Coordinator of the PERFORCE3 Marie Curie Innovative Training Network, he has advanced PFAS research and European policy.