Environmental Contaminants and Endocrine Health

Dr. Oliana Carnevali, PhD, Professor of Developmental Biology, Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy Dr. Carnevali’s research focuses on reproductive and developmental biology of fish models. Her focus is on the effects of probiotics on fish welfare. Her group also has substantial interest in reproductive toxicology to monitor environmental risk. A wide spectrum of aspects such as embryo development, reproduction, energy metabolism, immune system and genotoxic aspects, on different fish models are evaluated. She is a partner of the BioMedAqu project, supervisor of ESR10, a project focusing on skeletal pathologies in human and fish providing evidence on the effects of micronutrients and probiotics in bone cell differentiation in fish. In addition, the in vivo effects of vitamins and probiotic by parental and larval exposure on skeletal formation will be tested on zebrafish, seabream and meagre. A multidisciplinary approach including transcriptomic, histology, cell biology, infrared micro spectrometry and Raman, will be used. Dr. Gary Hardiman, PhD, Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University, Ireland Dr. Hardman works in the field of systems biology the objective of which is the study of biological systems, including genes, RNAs, proteins, metabolites and cells in a focused manner, and organs, organisms and populations in a broader context. Areas of research focus include studying the effects of man-made contaminants on marine and human health; studying prostate cancer in the context of racial differences and nutritional deficiency; examining the impacts of long term space travel – specifically the effects of nutrition, torpor, space radiation and microgravity on hepatic and intestinal biology; developing a rat model of opioid abuse to better understand the biological basis for substance abuse disorders and advance development of preventive strategies and more efficacious treatments; and developing a robust toolkit for better integration of Omics data sets into genotype-phenotype predictions. He maintains active research collaborations with groups in the USA, Italy, Ireland and Scotland.

1. Endocrine-disrupting chemical sources and effects
2. Endocrine-disrupting Chemicals as source of disease and health impairment in laboratory models
3. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals; cause of disease and health impairment in human and wild species
4. Removal of Hazardous Pollutants from Wastewaters