IUPAC Secretary GeneralDr Mester was born and raised in Hungary. He completed his PhD in chemistry splitting his time between his alma mater in Budapest and the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development in Rome, Italy. After a short postdoctoral stint at the University of Waterloo, Canada working with Prof Janusz Pawliszyn, in 1999 he joined the chemistry program of National Research Council Canada in Ottawa. His research interest encompasses analytical mass spectrometry, sampling and sample introduction.
He has been active for many years in various national and international scholarly and standardization organizations such as CITAC, ISO, Codex Alimentarius, etc . Since 2004 he has been working with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) currently serving as the Secretary General of organization. Dr. Mester is the founding chair of the Isotope Ratio Working Group of the Comité consultatif pour la quantité de matière – métrologie en chimie (CCQM) which is the chemistry arm of the Metre Convention and SI. He has published over 250 papers and taught and lectured internally for many years.