Dr. Elisa Rojo Nieto

Elisa joined the UFZ in September 2017. She has been part of the ERC project: “CHEMO-RISK”. Within this project, she focused on the development of “chemometers” (understood as a common and well-defined reference phase for passive equilibrium sampling in different phases) to broaden the scope and the applicability domain of current passive sampling devices and to study which processes drive the enrichment of pollutants in aquatic biota on a thermodynamic basis. In addition, she has been also part of the BMBF funded project "MICRO-FATE", where she was responsible of the analysis of pollutants in marine water and plastic samples (blog). Since 2020, she is involved in the HGF project "EXPOSO-METER", where she explores which processes drive the bioaccumulation of pollutants in top predators (incl. humans) on a thermodynamic basis. She is currently main supervisor of two PhD students and advisor of two junior postdocs. Since 2022 she is elected member of the Scientific and Technical Council of the UFZ and since 2024 she is part of the editorial board of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry journal.

She completed her Ph. D. in the program Marine Environment: Science and Sustainable Development at the University of Cadiz, studying the fate and effect of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) in the marine environment. Amongst others, she has proposed the use of passive sampling and dosing to 1) reconstitute complex environmental mixtures of HOCs in toxicity tests and 2) use freely dissolved concentrations in pore water and specific biota-to-sediment accumulation factors to estimate concentrations of HOCs in target organs of fish.

Besides her dedication to research and academia, she has also been working (2012-2013) as head of the analytical laboratory and related projects in CTAQUA (Andalusian Aquaculture Technological Centre, Spain). Furthermore she was a member of the coordination team of the International Campus of Excellence of the Sea, CEIMAR (2013-2016).