Universiteit Leiden – Netherlands

Sofie Rasmussen is a PhD student at the Institute of Environmental Sciences of Leiden University under supervision of Prof.dr.ing. Martina G. Vijver and dr. Thijs Bosker. Sofie has a background as an Environmental Engineer majoring in environmental risk assessment. Her focus during her PhD will be on chemical stressors from anthropogenic activities on benthic freshwater systems. Data collection for the project will be done following different approaches; from lab-derived experiments, to outdoor mesocosms.

Lunds Universitet – Sweden

Harmony Lautrette-Quinveros is a PhD student in the Biology Department of Lund University under the supervision of Dr. Olof Berglund and Dr. Henriette Selck. Harmony has a Master’s Degree in Environmental Toxicology with a major in Aquatic Ecotoxicology. Her research focuses on assessing effects of long-term exposure to pollutants on individuals’ behaviour. She is working in effects on the variability of behavioural traits within and among populations exposed to pollutants, as this may influence interactions in the food web. Specifically, she will study traits associated with predator responses of prey, e.g., activity, boldness, escape/hiding responses, in different aquatic model organisms. The aim is to use behavioural effects in ERAs linking individual responses to changes on population and community level.

Universidade de Aveiro – Portugal

Jacqueline Hilgendorf is the PhD candidate at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, under the supervision of Susana Loureiro. Before, she studied Environmental Impact Assessment at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany, specialising in Limnology and Ecotoxicology. Her research interest was the impact of wastewater treatment plants on benthic invertebrates, measuring different physiological biomarkers to assess the effects of the chemical mixture in the effluents. In her ongoing PhD project, she evaluates chemical-induced initiating events (lower level of biological organisation) and individual-level responses (physiology and behaviour) in Lumbriculus variegatus under long-term, low-level exposures. These non-standard endpoints will be investigated under combined stressors’ exposures (chemical, abiotic and biotic stressors) to evaluate the consistency of the individual response. In the end, AOPs will be conducted to link effects across different levels of biological organisation.

Aarhus Universitet – Denmark

Mr. Jian Ge is currently a PhD student in the Department of Ecoscience at Aarhus University under supervision of main supervisor is Martin Holmstrup and co-supervisors are Stine Slotsbo and Jesper Givskov Sørensen. During his PhD study, he will focus on the interaction between climatic change and low-dose toxicants in the long-term using typical soil invertebrates as model species. The main hypothesis of his research is that chronic exposure to low levels of contaminants provokes protective reactions at the molecular level, which provide protection against other type of stressor such as climatic stress. The study will assess the effects of these stressors from the aspects of growth performance, reproduction, behaviour and life history. Furthermore, he will try to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanism using transcriptomic analysis.

Roskilde Universitet – Denmark

Charlie is a PhD student in aquatic toxicology within the Department of Science and Environment of Roskilde University under the supervision of Dr. Henriette Selck. She has a background in biology and environmental science. Her research focuses on the understanding of behavioural change in benthic invertebrate under chronic exposure of pharmaceuticals. Her objective is to link the changes in biomarker and behaviors under different environmental settings. Her data collection in CHRONIC will be done mainly from lab-derived experiments.

Roskilde Universitet – Denmark

Martina Santobuono is a PhD student supervised by Professor Henriette Selck, in Roskilde University Department of Science and Environment (Denmark). During her PhD, she will assess how chronic exposure of antidepressants at environmental relevant concentrations, impacts benthic invertebrates living in freshwater and estuarine sediments. One of her main project goals will be to show how these contaminants may affect the organisms in multiple generations.

Syngenta Crop Protection AG – Switserland

Oihane Del Puerto Bengoetxea obtained her BSc in Biology and Erasmus Mundus MSc in Marine Environment and Resources from the University of the Basque Country. During her master’s, she made use of ecotoxicity bioassays in aquatic risk assessment and analyzed cellular and molecular biomarkers for toxicity testing of environmental pollutants. Before joining the CHRONIC consortium, she was part of the MSCA-ITN AQUAlity project in where she developed bioanalytical tools to analyze the efficiency of different UV technologies for the removal of Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) from drinking water. Within CHRONIC and under the supervision of Ph.D. Roman Ashauer, her research topic focuses on in silico modelling of toxic effects of low doses of pesticides in terrestrial organisms.

Belgian Nuclear Research Center – Belgium

Luca works at SCK CEN (Belgium) in the Biosphere Impact Studies group lead by professor Nele Horemans. In addition, he is under the supervision of professor Henriette Selck from Roskilde University (Denmark). He has a background in molecular biology with plant epigenetics as specialization. His project focuses on the analysis of long-term epigenetic effects on Lemna minor plants after chronic exposure to nuclear accident relevant radionuclides. This plant is a model organism within ecotoxicology and the only freshwater plant for regulatory toxicity testing for chemicals.

 

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology – United Kingdom

Shankari Anna Balan, has a background in microbiology and biochemistry, and is passionate about molecular ecotoxicology of persistent pollutants like plastics, pesticides, perfluoroalkyls. She submitted a dissertation thesis on “Toxicity of Plastic Leachate on microalgae isolated from Pallikaranai  freshwater marsh” during her Masters degree. She is working in the project of studying multigenerational genetic and epigenetic effects of persistent pollutants in C. elegans at UKCEH, Wallingford, under the supervision of Dave Spurgeon and Nico Van Den Brink.

Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté – France

Wildlife ecotoxicology addresses the stress that anthropogenic pollution in its different forms might exert on the ecosystem and its inhabitants and promote adverse health effects. Such effects might result in the individual immune system modulation and de-facto impairing its resistance to disease agents. Those individuals irrevocably become the natural reservoirs hosts for an array of pathogens, and spillover events to another species might eventually occur, resulting in an emerging infectious disease. The importance of wildlife health and its link to human health is paramount in light of recent pandemic events that arose worldwide as zoonotic diseases. Assif’s Ph.D. project will focus on the effects of chronic exposure to a mixture of heavy metals on the immune system’s ability to fight pathogens in wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus). The wood mice are genetically similar to lab mice and serve as an excellent candidate to explore the effects of heavy metals on wildlife species as the extrapolation is considerably more straightforward. The project will be performed at the Université de Franche-Comté (UBFC) under supervision of Dr. Renaud Sciefler and Dr. Nico van den Brink (Wageningen University).

Wageningen University – Netherlands

Shivani will be doing her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Nico Van den Brink in Wageningen University, Netherlands. Her academic interests mainly lie in integrating evolutionary biology and animal physiology. She is interested in learning about how animals evolve in response to environmental stress because of growing urbanization. For her PhD project she will be studying how great tits (Parus major) adapt to urban environments with focus on their immune system. In her free time, she likes painting and be out in the nature.

Wageningen University – Netherlands

Matteo Schiavinato is a PhD student at Wageningen University & Research, in Netherlands, where he work on the Marie-Curie ITN project “Chronic”, with the supervision of professor Nico van den Brink, at Wageningen University & Research (The Netherlands) and professor David Spurgeon, at UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (United Kingdom). He got a bachelor’s degree in biology, and then a master’s degree in evolutionary biology at the University of Padova, in Italy, and his interests focus on evolution and behavior in birds. His research aims to understand how the polluted urban environment can increase telomere attrition for an increase in oxidative stress, and how this mechanism may act actually as a biological clock in animals, triggering a premature senescence, a modification of the expression of genes related for example to behavior, and impacting on the overall wildlife bird fitness. His activity is divided between work in laboratory and in field.

Wageningen University – Netherlands

Dr. Nico van den Brink (male) is associate professor Environmental Toxicology at the sub-department of Toxicology of Wageningen University. His main research interests are in the field of wildlife toxicology and on mechanisms of toxicity leading to non-standard endpoints like behaviour and immunomodulation. He has 20+ years of experience in scientific research, including several fieldtrips to Antarctica and the Arctic. He has supervised several PhD-students, currently 9. To date, he has published 80+ peer reviewed papers and recently edited a book on Risks on Rodenticides to Wildlife. He has extensive scientific leadership from different EU-funded projects on nanomaterials: NanoFASE (WP-lead; H2020-NMP-2014/14-646002), MARINA (Task Lead; FP7-NMP4-LA-2011-263215). He is founding member of the SETAC-World Wildlife Toxicology Interest Group and has been the co-chair of the EU-US Communities of Research on Ecotoxicity (NanoSafetCluster, 2016-2019). Currently he is vice-chair of the programme on Certification of Environmental Risk Assessors of SETAC Europe (https://certification.setac.org/) and board member of International Board of Environmental Risk Assessors. He participates in the European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility Cost action (https://erbfacility.eu/). Within Chronic he will supervise two ESRs on effects of chronic exposures to great tits (Parus major, ESR5 and ESR13). He is also Manager of Research within the Chronic-consortium.

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology – United Kingdom

Prof David Spurgeon’s research focusses on understanding the ecotoxicological effects of contaminants including metals, nanomaterials, microplastics, persistent organic pollutants and pesticides on invertebrate species. Current projects included research to investigate the mechanistic effects of pesticides mixtures for terrestrial species, nanomaterial risk assessment, microplastics and plasticiser detection in soils and freshwater and groundwater risks for trace pollutants, plasticisers and plant protection products. Within Chronic he will supervise two ESRs on effects of multi-generation effects of chemicals on nematode physiology and ecology and on the detection and mechanistic attribution of synergistic interactions in chemical mixtures. He is also Manager of Manager of Innovation & Networking within the Chronic-consortium.

Lunds Universitet – Sweden

Olof Berglund, Senior lecturer at the Department of Biology, Lund University, Sweden.

My research interests cover the environmental influence on contaminant transport and uptake, and the ecological effects of contaminants on populations, communities and ecosystems. The drivers of my research are the needs to accurately predict exposure and effects of contaminants at ecosystem level to enable scientifically sound ecological risk assessments of past, present and future chemicals released from anthropogenic activities. A future goal of our research is to enable extrapolation of effects of contaminants at individual level, to population, community and ecosystem level. That would enable assessment and risk management at the level of our protection goals.

Universidade de Aveiro – Portugal

Dr. Susana Loureiro (♀) is an assistant professor with habilitation at the department of biology, University of Aveiro. Her research focus on the toxicity and fate of emerging contaminants in the environment and on the combined effects of chemicals in a global change perspective. She has participated in several national and international funded projects, that rely on regulatory frameworks like REACH, the Water Framework Directive and the Water Law, and her expertise on aquatic ecotoxicity testing and approaches related to mixture toxicity are often required in this type of projects. She is the coordinator of the Thematic line of Ecology and Functional Biodiversity at the CESAM- Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, UAVR. She coordinates a research team of 25 people at the laboratory applEE- Applied Ecology and Ecotoxicology. She has co-authored > 175 ISI papers with > 3500 citations (H-index=28) and 4 book chapters. She has been involved in several EU-funded projects: on nanomaterials, like NanoFATE (WP-lead; FP7), NanoFASE (FP7), NanoFARM (ERANET SIINN; FP7); on chemical mixtures in freshwater systems, like NoMiracle (FP6); WE-NEED (Water-JPI). She is one of the Portuguese committee members of the EDAPHOBASE Cost Action, and she is actively involved in the Soil Portuguese Partnership (linked with the Global Soil Partnership and the European Soil Partnership). She is the Manager of Training in the Chronic-consortium.

Aarhus Universitet – Denmark

Martin Holmstrup is professor of soil zoology at Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University. His research is focused on the ecophysiology of soil invertebrates. In the CHRONIC project, he will contribute with research on the interactions between environmental contaminants and natural stressors.

View current research at ClimateStressLab.

Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté – France

Dr. Renaud Scheifler (male) is lecturer of Environmental Toxicology and Ecology at Chrono-environnement (https://chrono-environnement.univ-fcomte.fr/), a research department of University Bourgogne Franche-Comté (UBFC, Besançon, eastern France, https://www.ubfc.fr/en/). His main research interests are in the field of wildlife toxicology and stress ecology, and aim at understanding the mechanisms involved in transfer and impacts of pollutants (metals, pesticides, radionuclides) and pathogens, and their interactions, in terrestrial food webs. He has 20+ years of experience in scientific research, including many fieldtrips to Europe, Africa and Asia. He has supervised 13 PhD-students and post-doc fellows. To date, he has published around 70 peer reviewed papers. He is founding member of the SETAC-World Wildlife Toxicology Interest Group. He his also headteacher of the international Master “Ecology, Monitoring and Management of Ecosystems” (Master EMME, https://www.nature-conservation-ubfc.com/emme/en/) and director of the Graduate School TRANSBIO (https://www.ubfc.fr/en/formations/transbio-graduate-school/) of UBFC. Within Chronic, he will supervise one ESR on immune modulatory effects of chronic exposure of small mammals to trace metals, and implications for prevalence of zoonotic diseases (ESR6).

Universiteit Leiden – Netherlands

Prof. dr. ing. Martina G. Vijver is professor of Ecotoxicology within the Institute of Environmental Sciences of Leiden University. Her research is focused to understand and quantify how much human activities impact ecosystems. Her passion is to use a field representative setting and to account for dynamics in fate, uptake and responses. Data collection in CHRONIC will be done following different approaches; from lab-derived experiments, to outdoor mesocosms, to in situ experiments in the field. 

Syngenta Crop Protection AG – Switserland

Roman is an environmental scientist and is particularly interested in ecotoxicology and computer modelling. His research improves our understanding of the effects of chemicals in the environment by combining field and laboratory experiments with theory and computation. After a career in academia he joined Syngenta Crop Protection AG in 2019. More information at www.ecotoxmodels.org.

Belgian Nuclear Research Center – Belgium

Prof. Dr. Nele Horemans. I am a biologist and did my PhD in 1997 on the role of vitamin C in plants. Since 2008 I work at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK CEN) where I now lead a research group studying the impact of radiation on the environment. My research focuses on plants and crops and their long term response to environmental relevant doses of radiation or radionuclides. I am also a guest lecturer at University of Hasselt teaching in ecotoxicology, radiotoxicity and on experimental design of field studies. 

Aarhus University – Denmark

Jesper Givskov Sørensen is professor in evolutionary genetics at Department of Biology, Aarhus University. His research is focused on small ectotherms and particular interests include evolutionary adaptation, mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity, environmental stress (primarily thermal biology and some ecotoxicology) using comparative approaches, experimental evolution and molecular tools.

Aarhus University – Denmark

 Dr. Stine Slotsbo is Associate professor in Ecophysiology and Ecotoxicology of soil invertebrates at the Department of Bioscience at Aarhus University. Stine is an experienced ecophysiologist with particular interest in the interaction between toxicants and natural stressors. Her focus within natural stressors is temperature and moisture, including simulation of natural temperature fluctuations and different moisture regimes. She finds it inspiring to study how interactions among stressors affect underlying physiological mechanisms. 

Roskilde Universitet – Denmark

Dr. Henriette Selck is professor of sediment ecotoxicology at the department of Science and Environment of Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research is centered on contaminant fate and effects (both inorganic and organic) in the aquatic environment. Of particular interest is processes affecting bioavailability and bioaccumulation of sediment-associated contaminants, the interaction between multiple stressors including chemicals, environmental parameters (e.g., food variability) and climate change (e.g., temperature changes), and non-standard endpoints such as behavior. H Selck has a track record of funding and have been co-applicant on a number of successful national and international applications e.g.,: Villum Fonden, Marie Curie Individual Fellowship grant, Fulbright Scholarship, EUs 7the Framework grants and several Industry projects. She has considerable educational and scientific leadership: Head of studies for the Master program in Environmental Risk; Head of the Ph.D-school, GESS; Appointed i) board member by the Research Council of Norway-MiljøForsk; ii) member of HESI Bioaccumulation Committee’s Steering Team (2015-); iii) EU chair of the EU-US collaborative initiatives on nanomaterials; iv) chair of the scientific evaluation board at NATOs Environmental Security Panel. Invited expert at e.g., ECHA. H Selck has supervised 11 postgraduate scholars, 8 PhD students and more than 30 master thesis projects, currently 1 post.doc, 1 PhD student, and 4 master students (focusing on fate and effects of pharmaceuticas in the aquatic environment). Within Chronic she will be main supervisor for two ESRs on effects of chronic exposures to sediment-dwelling organisms (ESR1 and ESR7). She is also coordinator of the CHRONIC consortium.