Dr Katie Reilly is a post-doctoral researcher exploring how particle-based pollutants, such as microplastics and nanomaterials, can change in the environment and the effects that this can have on the ecosystem. Katie undertook her PhD at the University of Birmingham on how increasing the environmental realism of microplastic studies changes their potential toxicity to Daphnia, and how combined environmental pollution (such as exposure to mixtures of chemicals and plastics) can lead to variable toxicity - highlighting the complexity of this issue. Katie is currently working on the EU-Funded RiskGONE project developing new methods to assess the environmental risks from nanoscale materials, and is involved in a NERC discipline hopping project on the differences in the epigenetic changes in Daphnia exposed to ‘traditional’ plastics compared to newer bioplastics.
Professor Iseult Lynch is chair of Environmental Nanoscience at the University of Birmingham and theme lead for Environmental Science. She leads several large-scale projects on nanomaterials safety and microplastics research, focussing on how we can understand toxicity and stress over several levels of complexity (from cells to ecosystems) and how we can improve testing methods to support environmental risk assessments. Professor Lynch is also a key investigator on the 100 plastics river project in addition to being part of the Birmingham plastic network.
How do organisms interact with microplastics in our waterways?