School of Science and Technology

How to identify drivers of toxicity – News from effect-directed analysis of surface waters

13 December 2016 10:00 B219, Bilbergska huset

Speaker

PD Dr. Werner Brack, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Germany

Host

Steffen Keiter, MTM, Örebro university

About the speaker

Werner Brack studied geoecology at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, with a focus on environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology. At the same university he did his PhD on the "Identification of volatile toxicants in landfill leachates". After PhD, in 1997, he moved to the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research UFZ in Leipzig, first as a Postdoc, since 2005 as head of the department for effect-directed analysis. He coordinated three large EU-projects (MODELKEY, EDA-EMERGE and the ongoing project SOLUTIONS) and participated in a number of others (KEYBioEFFECTS, RISKBASE, NaToxAq) together with many national projects and is heading a department with 20 to 30 scientists, PhD students, technicians and master students. Werner Brack had lectureships in several Universities (Leipzig, Germany; Landau, Germany; Ouro Preto, Brazil). Since some years he is teaching at the RWTH Aachen University (PD).

His major scientific interests are to unravel complex environmental contamination and to identify drivers of toxicity. This includes broad interests in target- and non-target analysis, fractionation tools, biotesting, understanding exposure in the environment and laboratory systems, emerging contaminants, monitoring and assessment from the site to the European scale. He likes to do applied research with a specific focus on science relevant for water quality management, preferably in a European and international context.