Dean Hesterberg is a Researcher and Advisor at the National Laboratory for Synchrotron Light (LNLS) at the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM) in Campinas, Brazil. He is also a Distinguished Professor Emeritus (retired) of Soil Chemistry in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at North Carolina State University in the United States. Dr. Hesterberg earned a B.S. degree in Plant and Soil Science from Southern Illinois University ? Carbondale (1981), an M.S. degree in Agronomy from Purdue University (1984), and a Ph.D. degree in Soil and Environmental Sciences from the University of California ? Riverside (1988). Before joining NC State University in 1993, he worked for Chevron Oil Field Research Company, and for the Institute for Soil Fertility Research in the Netherlands . He is currently leading the soil and agricultural research program at the Sirius synchrotron in Campinas, Brasil, where he is developing and applying advanced synchrotron x-ray absorption spectroscopy and spectromicroscopy techniques to the molecular chemistry of phosphorus and trace elements in soils and other complex environmental systems. He has published more than 115 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.