Aarhus Universitet (AU)

AU was founded in 1928. Internationalisation is a key part of AU’s mission and it continuously works to strengthen the international profile of the University through a series of initiatives. AU has participated in 295 FP7 and 173 H2020 projects and is currently hosting 39 ERC projects. The Department of Environmental Science at AU executes basic and problem-oriented research within organic, chemical and physical connections in the environment and within economic, political and social conditions in the interaction between environment and society. The Environmental Endocrine Disruptors Laboratory conducts lab and field experiments at the molecular level, to understand the environmental occurrence, fate and effects of endocrine disrupting pollutants, such as natural substances, pesticides and medicine residues. Effect-oriented in-vitro and in-vivo testing in combination with wildlife investigations and state-of-the-art mass spectrometry-based technologies provide means to identify emerging environmental endocrine disruptors.

Martin holds a PhD in environmental analytical chemistry and toxicology and is an expert in bioanalytical chemistry working with endocrine disruption. He has 15 years’ experience in the area and published 48 international articles in this field. Martin is the head of The Environmental Endocrine Disruptors laboratory and is a senior researcher in the Research section of Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology at AU, as well as a guest lecturer in Environmental Toxicology at University of Copenhagen. His interdisciplinary research focuses on identifying emerging environmental endocrine disruptors, i.e. ecosystem pollutants that impede the endocrine systems in wildlife and potentially humans. His research lies at the interface of environmental chemistry, biology and analytical chemistry, and employs novel bioassays and advanced mass spectrometry. Martin coordinates and is responsible for AU’s contribution to ERGO. His major tasks are applying high-quality analytical methods to determine thyroid hormones and characterising global metabolome profiles in WP4, WP5, WP6 and WP7. In addition, he supervises the ERGO AU connected PhD fellow.

Rikke is specialised in aquatic toxicology and endocrine disrupting compounds with a particular interest in applying untargeted omics approaches. Working interdisciplinary with molecular biology and analytical chemistry, she has experience with in vivo and in vitro toxicity assays, as well as different omics tools including metabolomics and transcriptomics. With a special focus on applying liquid-, gas- and ion exchange chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) for targeted and non-targeted analysis of environmental chemicals and their effects, she seeks to obtain a toxicological and biochemical understanding of organismal biology and how they are affected by man-made chemicals. Rikke joined the Environmental Endocrine Disruptors Laboratory at Aarhus University as a visiting PhD student in 2018 and has, since November 2019, been employed as a postdoctoral researcher in ERGO. Using HRMS, Rikke has expanded on previous work in the laboratory by developing a sensitive quantification method of thyroid hormones using LC-MS2 that quantifies not only the main thyroid hormones thyroxine and triiodothyronine but also 10 other thyroid hormone metabolites. Using this method, she performs targeted analyses of thyroid hormones as well as untargeted metabolomics analyses in WP4, WP5, WP6 and WP7.