The CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) is the largest and leading public research institution in Spain and the third in Europe. It comprises 120 institutes spread across Spain and employs 11,000 people, of which 3.000 are researchers. The Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA), located in Barcelona, endeavours to improve the quality of water and air, identify and solve environmental problems and accidents, and characterize global climate change. IDAEA is divided in two departments, each of them with various research units. The Water, Environmental and Food Chemistry Unit (ENFOCHEM) is focused on the development and application of reliable, high sensitivity and selectivity analytical methods for determination of both priority and emerging organic contaminants in the aquatic environment, and the study of their source, transport, fate, and effects on aquatic organisms and humans.

Small bio for the team leader:

Miren López de Alda Villaizán is PhD in Pharmacy by the University of Santiago de Compostela and currently works in Barcelona (Spain) as Scientific Researcher at IDAEA-CSIC. Previous to this, she worked for three years as a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland, USA. Her main field of expertise is the environmental analysis of emerging contaminants (estrogens, endocrine disrupting compounds, illicit drugs, cytostatics, polar pesticides…), field where she has contributed many novel analytical methods and data in relation to their occurrence, risks for the environment and human health, and ways to eliminate them. She has a long record of participation in European I+D projects financed in public calls, has published more than 200 SCI papers (Hirsch-index 68, > 13.000 citations, 61 citations per article on average) and 30 book chapters, has presented more than 300 contributions in national and international conferences and has supervised 9 doctoral Thesis plus various DEA, TFG, and Masters. Since 2014, she leads the consolidated research group “Water and Soil Quality Unit” (“2014 SGR 418” and “2017 SGR 01404”) which is currently integrated by 27 members (14 of them doctors) bound through either permanent or temporal contracts to IDAEA-CSIC, plus a variable number of graduate, MsC and PhD students. Mid-to-long term scientific–technical interests and objectives of her research agenda focus on the study of currently used pesticides, anti-cancer agents, drugs of abuse, and other anthropogenic contaminants, such as those included in the Watch List of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), and their transformation products, as environmental contaminants (including their occurrence, significance for the environment and human health, and ways to eliminate them), and on sewage-based epidemiology, water reuse and management, and contamination of the atmosphere, oceans and polar regions as transversal areas of study and application.