2021 Grantee: Systematic Analysis of the methodologies and results of the research studies that have been most frequently cited in the risk assessment, public policymaking, and judicial decisions on the toxicity and carcinogenicity of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on humans.
Dr. Vikas Kumar, PhD in Environmental Engineering, is the area leader of the Environmental Informatics and System Toxicology (EI&ST) of the Center of Environmental Food and Toxicological Technology (TecnATox), Rovira i Virgili University (URV). Dr. Kumar has over 14 years of research experience within the area of human health and environmental risk with unique and focused research in Integrated System Modelling & System toxicology, data modelling and analytical solutions including big data and intelligent decision modelling. He has actively participated in more than 20 research projects with 4 individual grants and made significant contributions (~100) with publications and presentations in top-ranked journals and at major international conferences. Dr. Kumar is currently involved in 4 different projects dealing with different aspects of PFASs chemicals including EU flagship project HBM4EU, where he is the lead of PFASs kinetic modelling group. He was part of EU expert panel member for Finding synergies for 3Rs – Toxicokinetics and read-across (EPAA Partners’ forum) and collaborated with other key stakeholders like WHO, EFSA, EA (UK), DARP (ES) etc.
Prof. José L. Domingo is a distinguished professor (Full, CU) of Toxicology and Director of the Laboratory of Toxicology and Environmental Health (URV). He has > 40 years of experience in environmental toxicology. He has published >670 scientific manuscripts (H-index: 73, cited >21700 times) in international peer-reviewed journals mainly concentrated in food toxicology, environmental pollution, human exposure and health risk assessment. He is currently participating in four EC projects, and has also worked for WHO and EFSA. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Research and Food and Chemical Toxicology. Furthermore, he was also co-Editor-in-Chief of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, and he belongs to the Editorial Board of a number of scientific journals.
Prof. Marta Schuhmacher is a distinguished professor (Full, CU) of Environmental Technology and director of TecnATox center at at Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). She has more than 50 research projects (13 projects funded by the European Union) and more than 100 contracts funded by industrial companies. She has supervised 45 master theses and 23 doctoral theses (plus 3 under development). She has published more than 250 papers in per-reviewed journals. She has more than 300 contributions in international conferences and scientific meetings, 21 of them as guest speaker and 6 of them as plenary speaker. She has been organizing committee in 4 scientific conferences. She is member of the editorial panel “Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management”, “Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry” and “The Scientific World Journal as part of the journal’s Soil Science Domain”. Member of the “Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry”, “The Society for Risk Analysis” and the “European Geosciences Union”.
Dr. Joaquim Rovira is Juan de la Cierva post-doctoral researcher at URV and member of Tecnatox grup since 2008. He is chemist and biochemist and obtained his phD in 2013 at Rovira i Virgili University (URV). His areas of research are human health risk assessment; human biomonitoring; exposure assessment to toxic substances including endocrine disruptors and perfluorinated substances; and unraveling exposome; exposure to chemical due the use of textile; micro and nanoplastic determination, fate in environment and exposure. He has participated in several projects of the group, as national (SCARCE, MODELBIS, UltraPAR, FLAMERISK) as well as international (TDSExposure, RISKCYCLE, HEALS, EarlyFOOD). Dr. Rovira has acted as external advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding human health impacts of industrial activities in developing countries. He is author of more than 50 articles and 5 book chapters with a h index of 19 and with 902 citations. He had co-directed two doctoral theses defended in 2018 and 2020. In addition, Dr. Rovira is currently supervising another two doctoral students, who will be defend next year 2021. He has also supervised different masters and undergraduate students in their final works.
Ms. Deepika Deepika is a Marie Curie Early-Stage Researcher working with the project “Neurosome” at URV. She has completed her master’s degree in Pharmaceutics (2014-2016) and have approximately 3 years of work experience as R&D scientist in multinational pharmaceutical company. She holds a patent (IN201841006334) and has been awarded with breakthrough contribution award (2017-2018) for innovation during her industrial work. Her PhD work is focused on development of an integrative modelling framework taking into account environmental exposure, internal exposure (PBPK model), biochemical interactions (systems biology model) and biological response (Pharmacodynamic model) to assess the neurotoxic effect of chemicals with mechanistic blood brain barrier and to have a wider picture of the exposome and related health outcomes. She has written a systematic review proposing a translational framework by integrating in-vitro, in-vivo, epidemiology and in-silico models to reduce data gaps and better predict chemical induced neurotoxicity.