Pradyot Patnaik, Ph.D., is Director of the Laboratory of the Interstate Environmental Commission at Staten Island, NY. He also teaches as an Adjunct Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ, and Community College of Philadelphia and does his research in the Center for Environmental Science at the City University of New York on Staten Island. His diverse interests include chemical processing, product development, catalysis, reaction mechanisms, environmental pollutants, and mass spectrometry.

Dr. Patnaik was a post-doctoral research scientist at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. His B.S. and M.S. in chemistry are from Utkal University, India, and his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Dr. Patnaik was written two other books, A Comprehensive Guide to the Hazardous Properties of Chemical Substances and Handbook of Environmental Analysis.