Pham Van Toan, a PhD student from UNU-EHS working on pesticide monitoring in the WISDOM project was among six presenters who received an award to attend the “18th Symposium on Environmental Chemistry” from 9th to 11th June 2009, in Tsukuba, Japan. The award covering air tickets, registration fee, and accommodation enabled Mr Toan to participate and deliver a talk about his research on “Monitoring residue concentrations of recently used pesticides in surface water at two representative study sites of the Lower Mekong Delta Viet Nam”. The extended abstract is published in the conference proceedings.