Dr. Melis Muz

Melis joined the Department of Cell Toxicology in October 2017 as a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project CHEMO-RISK . Within the project, she will be responsible for the target, suspect and non-target analysis of samples using GC- and LC-HRMS. One of her aims will be establishing chemical patterns among environmental compartments and biota and linking them to the observed effects. Moreover, owing to the “chemometers” being a common reference phase, so far unknown but toxicologically relevant compounds subjected to biomagnification, or metabolisation could be identified. Besides, by comparing the free and total concentrations obtained from the chemometer and exhaustive solvent extracts respectively, she will address the differences between risk and hazard of chemicals of interest.

Melis completed her bachelor and master studies in the department of Environmental Engineering in Middle East Technical University. During her masters she was a scholar in a TUBITAK funded project, focusing on the fate of endocrine disrupting chemicals in different wastewater treatment configurations and studied ozonation as an advanced oxidation process for their removals. She joined the Department of Effect-Directed Analysis in August 2012, as a Marie Curie fellow within the project EDA-EMERGE . She developed a comprehensive approach to elucidate unknown mutagens in surface waters combining novel analytical tools for mass spectral analysis (LC-HRMS) with mutagenicity assays using diagnostic bacterial strains. She got her PhD degree in June 2017, from the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Sciences and Natural Sciences at the RWTH Aachen University . Subsequently, she joined the project SOLUTIONS to gain in depth knowledge about mixture mutagenicity. She takes also part in NORMAN working group meetings.

A current list of publications can be found at Researchgate .