Mercè Garí is a Human Biologist (2005) and holds a PhD in Biomedicine (2013) by the University Pompeu Fabra. Her research is focused on the linkages of environmental pollutants and the human health. She has performed her research career in 4 prestigious institutions in Spain and Germany: the Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona), the University of Barcelona, the University Hospital LMU-Munich and the Helmholtz Zentrum Munich for Environmental Health. In these institutions she has received several competitive research contracts, has participated in more than 20 research projects (including 6 as PI), and has published more than 40 articles, book chapters and scientific and technical reports. She has received several awards, including the Extraordinary PhD Award (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2013), the Environmental Sciences Award (Catalan College of Environmentalists, 2014) and the Critics Award for Research (Serra d’Or Journal, 2021).
Mercè is currently a ComFuturo fellow since February 2024 at the IDAEA (CSIC), where she carries out her project ExpoMassDat.
Extended project summary:
Human populations are constantly exposed to thousands of chemicals in their daily life, resulting in a low level, yet chronic exposure through time. Of particular concern are endocrine disrupting chemicals, which may pose an increased health risk, specially in vulnerable population groups such as pregnant women, newborns and children. Examples of these chemicals include pesticides, plasticizers and bisphenols, among many others. The main objective of this research is to account for the simultaneous exposures to certain critical chemical compounds, by considering two key factors: the current concentrations in the environment and the exposure duration across time. For this purpose, specific European population-studies will be included as main collaboration partners, such as the INMA-Asturias (Spain) and the REPRO_PL (Poland) birth cohorts, both of them having followed-up around 400 pregnant women and cheir children until adolescence. Afterwards, the project will design and employ an innovative analytical methodology based on a new generation of instruments, namely High Resolution Mass Spectrometry, which are able to simultaneously detect and quantify hundreds of chemicals at trace levels in human matrices. Tailored data analysis techniques will be applied to this methods in order to automatize and enhance the efforts, using an interactive web application. This combined Mass Spectrometry Data Analysis pipeline will be created usinge Shiny, a free and open source R package. This shinyapp, ExpoMassDat, will be made publicly available and will serve as a basis for further Exposomic studies.
ExpoMassDat is an innovative tool that combines analytical and computational techniques with the aim to evaluate the human exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Those chemical compounds are critical based on two key factors: on the one hand, the current levels in use, production and presence of them in the environment, and on the other, the duration of the exposure through time. ExpoMassDat will be applied in vulnerable population groups such as pregnant women, children and adolescents from European birth cohorts.