Ganga Hettiarachchi is an Associate Professor of Soil and Environmental Chemistry at Department of Agronomy, Kansas State University. She earned her BS (Hons.) from University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and her MS, and PhD in Soil and Environmental Chemistry from Kansas State University. After her PhD, she completed a three-year Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education postdoctoral fellowship at the National Risk Management Research Laboratory, EPA in Cincinnati, OH. During that time her research mainly focused on understanding fate of metals in land applied biosolids. Later she worked as a research scientist at the University of Adelaide and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial research Organization (CSIRO, Land and Water Division) in Australia also for three years. She was a leading scientist in Metals in Asia Project led by CSIRO jointly with Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her current research program at K-State focuses on understanding the biogeochemistry of both nutrient and contaminant elements in the natural environment, applying knowledge of soil and environmental chemistry to develop solutions to agronomic and environmental problems, and soil remediation. Currently she is leading research program of a multidisciplinary project funded through EPA brownfields research, training and technical assistance program, focusing on gardening initiatives on brownfields sites.