18. May 2017, Topic: Sediment Ecotoxicology Aquatic Ecotoxicology Soil Ecotoxicology Risk Assessment

Visitors at the Ecotox Centre

In the last months, we have been able to welcome two visitors to the Ecotox Centre in Lausanne.

Dr. Leire Méndez-Fernández is a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory for Ecotoxicity and Biodiversity of Animals at the University of the Basque Country (UPV / EHU) in Lejona, Spain. She visited the Ecotox Centre in November and December 2016 and worked on the development of sediment quality criteria for metals for the region of Northern Spain. Leire's goal was to integrate the natural background concentrations of metals into sediment quality criteria and to determine threshold effect concentrations. Leire will present her results at the SedNet conference in Genoa, Italy, in June 2016.

Dr. Stéphane Pesce heads the research group “Microbial ecology in anthropogenic hydrosystems” at the “National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture” (Irstea) in Villeurbanne, France. Stéphane's main field is microbial ecotoxicology. He is particularly interested in how organic and inorganic pollutants affect the communities of diatoms, algae, fungi and bacteria in surface waters. During his six-month visit, Stéphane assesses lake and river sediments in the Lake Geneva region with the help of microbial communities and compares the results with those of the Ecotox Centre. The visit takes place in the context of a Franco-Swiss project financed by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.