EDA-EMERGE

  Copyright: © EDA-EMERGE

Neue Instrumente der Effekt-Dirigierten Analyse zur Unterstützung der europaweiten Identifizierung und Überwachung umweltrelevanter Schadstoffe

EDA-EMERGE is a 4-year Marie Curie ITN project which aims to provide young scientists with the interdisciplinary skills required to meet the major challenges in the monitoring, assessment and management of toxic pollution in EU river basins.

Funded by the European Commission within the 7th framework program, EDA-EMERGE consists of ten full partners and four associate partners from eight European countries.

Development of New EDA Approaches

By integrating innovative biodiagnostic tools including in vitro tests, transgenic organisms and “omics” techniques with powerful fractionation and cutting edge analytical and computational structure elucidation tools, a new generation of effect directed analysis (EDA) approaches will be developed for the identification of emerging toxicants in European surface and drinking waters.

 

Innovative method development by young researchers will be closely interlinked with a joint European demonstration program and higher tier EDA and extensive training courses. EDA-EMERGE fellows will learn to organize and run international and interdisciplinary sampling and monitoring campaigns and benefit from the links to industrial partners.

Services for Regulatory Bodies and Companies

In addition to comprehensive supervision at Europe’s leading environmental research institutes, EDA-EMERGE offers its fellows multi-disciplinary training and courses at private water companies and regulatory bodies, highlighted by the involvement of fellows in monitoring and assessment of actual EU wide programs such as the European Demonstration Programme.

Overall Goal

The overall goal of EDA-EMERGE is the good ecological state of all EU water systems by 2015 as required by the Water Framework Directive (WFD). On a broader scale the project will contribute to secure high drinking water quality.

Participation of the RWTH Department of Ecosystem Analysis

The Department of Ecosystem Analysis will contribute to the training of young scientists for an outstanding knowledge of effect-directed analysis (EDA) of unknown, environmentally relevant trace substances.

Within this EU-wide alliance, Carolina Di Paolo will work on mechanism-specific test systems using the zebrafish Danio rerio as well as permanent cell lines in her PhD project.