The Ohio River Valley is home to 42 major coal-fired power plants - a significant source of air pollution that makes the region's air quality the worst in the country. Though prosperous, the coal industry has simultaneously helped create acid rain and smog that critically damage the environment.

In 2010, Dr. Miles and colleagues released the results of an alarming study - lizard populations are quickly becoming extinct around the world.

Miles - who has devoted years of study to lizards - determined rising temperatures are to blame. The climate is changing faster than lizards can adapt. If global warming patterns continue, Miles and fellow researchers estimate over 20 percent of all lizard species may become extinct by 2080 in areas on the continents of North and South America, Europe, Africa and Australia.

Dr. Srdjan Nesic is an Ohio University Distinguished Professor and a Russ Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in Athens, OH, USA. Since 2002 he also serves as the Director of the Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Flow Technology at the same university, which is one of the world’s largest research institutions of the kind.

Dr. Morgan Vis is an expert on the biogeography, systematics, and evolutionary relationships of freshwater red algae and the effects of pollution on freshwater algae. The inspiration to study this field of work came at a young age.

“I’m originally from Michigan and I grew up around the Great Lakes, so I was always interested in fresh water,” she says.