Aquatic and Terrestrial Ecotoxicology and Risk Management

Anne Alix joined Dow AgroSciences, now Corteva Agriscience, in 2011, as distinguished laureate in Policy and Risk Management for Europe, Middle East and Africa, where she advises on Sustainability policies and precision applications. She has been working in the area of plant protection products risk assessment for 23 years. After a PhD in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) at the University of Rennes, Anne joined the French National Institute for Research in Agronomy (INRA) as an ecotoxicologist in the scientific unit for the risk assessment of crop protection products. Anne was nominated head of the Environment and Ecotoxicology risk assessment unit at the French Agency on the safety of Food (AFSSA, now ANSES), where she initiated scientific collaborations with the pesticide unit of EFSA. Anne then joined the French Ministry of Agriculture as the deputy head of the Section for Regulation of Plant Protection Products and fertilizers, in charge of the implementation of risk mitigation measures for pesticides and of post registration monitoring.

Sonja Braaker has been working as Ecotoxicologist at BASF since 2014. Her focus is on ecotoxicological risk assessments of plant protection products for terrestrial invertebrates. She is an active member of the CLE non-target arthropod group. She obtained a PhD from the Institute of terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Pierre-François Chaton is Deputy Head of the Ecotoxicology and Environmental Fate Unit and a Senior Risk Assessor in ecotoxicology at the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES). He has more than 18 years of experience in regulatory risk assessment of plant protection products, including method development.

Margherita Corti is a Biologist with a PhD in Environmental Sciences. She is currently Regulatory Senior (Ecotoxicology) at TEAM mastery, where she has been working since 2023, with main activities related to regulatory affairs and ecotoxicological evaluation. She has experience with the regulation of plant protection products, acquired both as a consultant and as an ecotoxicological risk assessor for the Competent Authority.

Peter Dohmen is an independent consultant at Econ – Ecotoxicological Consulting. He has previously held a position as Senior Ecotoxicologist at the Agricultural Research Centre of BASF in Limburgerhof/Germany. Having occupied this position for several decades, he brings along profound knowledge and experience in the ecotoxicology field.

Gabriella Carlotta Fait holds a degree in Agricultural Sciences and a Ph.D. in Agricultural Chemistry, specializing in the environmental fate and behaviour of pesticides. Her expertise spans laboratory analysis, field monitoring, and modelling studies on pesticides, nitrates, and heavy metals. Since joining the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2016, she has gained experience in environmental exposure and risk assessment methodologies, contributing to EU peer review process of risk assessments of active substances used in plant protection products. Currently, she coordinates the working group responsible for reviewing the guidance document on terrestrial ecotoxicology and developing new guidance to assess potential indirect effects on biodiversity through trophic interactions in agro-environmental settings.

Mónica García Aguilar is a Policy Officer at the Directorate General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE) of the European Commission. She is responsible for amending the EU Regulation concerning the labelling on plant protection products, developing a guidance on risk mitigation measures and handling of the decision-making procedure for chemical and micro-organisms active substances. She is also coordinating a group of technical experts from Member States and EFSA that provide scientific and regulatory guidance on environmental topics. Before that, she worked as researcher in a Horizon 2020 project on the uptake of innovative spraying equipment in Europe. She also worked in the Stockholm Environmental Institute contributing to research projects on water and waste management governance in Colombia and Bolivia. She holds a Double Degree Master Programme in Environmental Sciences in Europe from the University of Copenhagen and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

Maike Habekost’s PhD work was related to plant biodiversity. At BASF, she is responsible for the ecotoxicological assessment of plant protection products and biocides. From 2014 till late 2016, she worked in the US where she supported US registrations with her ecotoxicological knowledge.

Udo Hommen obtained a PhD at RWTH Aachen University on ecosystem models for risk analysis of toxicants in aquatic systems. Since 2000 he works at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME), where he is Deputy Head of the Department of Modelling and Bioinformatics. His expertise covers GLP study direction of mesocosm experiments, evaluation of ecotoxicological studies for risk assessment of plant protection products and other chemicals and effect modelling. He is also involved in research projects funded e.g. by UBA, EFSA or EU and contributes to SETAC activities like interest groups, workshops, and symposia.

Steven Kragten (PhD) is currently working as an Ecotoxicologist at Syngenta based in Germany. In his role he focusses on risk assessment for birds and mammals in the EU as well as globally. He is co-chairing the CLE Terrestrial Vertebrate Sub-Group.

Adam Lillicrap (PhD) is the Head of the Research Department for Ecotoxicology and Risk Assessment. He is also NIVA’s GLP Manager and has been project managing and study directing regulatory ecotoxicity tests for over 20 years. Adam is a EUROTOX Registered Toxicologist (ERT) and is involved in numerous international committees and expert working groups. Adam is the Norwegian representative for the OECD validation management group for ecotoxicity test methods and is the Norwegian representative for ISO Water Quality test standards. Adams interests involve understanding how chemicals are regulated within an environmental context, and how to influence policy making decisions for regulatory frameworks.

Lorraine Maltby is a Professor of Environmental Biology at the University of Sheffield and has over 30 years of research experience in aquatic ecology and ecotoxicology. Having served on several UK and European advisory committees/expert groups she is currently a member of the ECETOC Scientific Committee and the UNEP Scientific Expert Group on Chemicals and the Environment.

Dirk Nickisch is a senior expert in the Effect Modelling and Statistics team at RIFCON. He studied geoecology at the University of Braunschweig and completed his diploma in population modelling at the ecotoxicology department of BASF. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Sciences and previously worked as a researcher in environmental modelling at the University of Kiel. Since joining RIFCON in 2008, he has contributed to various departments, including regulatory affairs and environmental fate. He is currently one of the lead organisers of the SETAC workshop ELINK-2, which aims to foster collaboration between exposure and effect modellers.

Jacoba Wassenberg is an environmental risk assessor at the dutch Ctgb, specialized in assessing the ecotoxicological risk of plant protection products to bees, birds and mammals.

Stefanie Wollert is a Biologist by Training, starting her career with a master’s degree in biology from Ruhr Uni Bochum. She has since worked as Study Director and Regulatory Scientist Ecotoxicology at the BASF and started her current position as an Ecotoxicologist at knoell Germany in 2016.

Bram van de Straat is an Ecotoxicologist at the Ctgb in the Netherlands, currently specialising in the risk assessment of terrestrial non-target organisms, notably terrestrial plants and non-target arthropods. A biologist by training, he hplds a PhD in Entomology, conducted at the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine in Cairns and in collaboration with the Universitas Sumatera Utara in Indonesia. His work has been published in several peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Sanne van den Berg is a Senior Researcher and Project Leader at Wageningen Environmental Research, where she has previously held positions as Junior Researcher. Her research experience includes the GETREAL project, where she was working on incorporating spatial and seasonal variability in community sensitivity into chemical risk assessment as well as her PhD Thesis that explored possibilities of improving the development of models describing species sensitivity towards chemical stressors.