Student Research Projects

The Ecotox Centre offers students the possibility of serving internships or working on bachelor or master projects on practice-relevant topics from applied ecotoxicology for a duration of 3 to 6 months. Four jobs are available in Dübendorf and Lausanne for these projects. Currently possible topics are listed below. If you are interested, please send the following information and documents to Brigitte Bracken.

Date and duration
Preferred topic
CV
References

Possible Topics

Further development of HPTLC-bioassays and/or application to tire wear particles
Bioassays performed on thin-layer chromatography plates (HPTLC-bioassays) allow us to detect toxic chemicals after separating them from other chemicals. HPTLC-bioassays are recently developed tools so there are still questions about improving the chemical, biological, and data evaluation steps. There is also need to incorporate procedures to detect chemicals that would only be toxic after enzymatic activation. We use HPTLC-bioassays to investigate chemicals in tire wear particles. For example, we can follow known and unknown toxic chemicals leaching from tire particles to the environment under various conditions. Topics of a student research project would include further developing HPTLC-bioassays and/or applying them to tire wear particles.

Contact: Alan Bergmann (alan.bergmann@oekotoxzentrum.ch)

Bachelor Project: Technical aspects of water analysis
At the Ecotox Centre several bioanalytical methods for the monitoring of water quality are applied. In these bioassays, either native water samples (without sample preparation) or concentrated water samples are tested for their toxicity. To improve the analysis, the following questions should be examined:
What is the best extraction method? Can we accumulate all toxic substances in a water sample with the same mechanism of action?
How long can chemical substances be detected in water samples?
Responsible for the project: Etiënne Vermeirssen (etienne.vermeirssen@oekotoxzentrum.ch)