Jessica Subirats Medina

Jessica holds a degree in Biology from the University of Girona (UDG, 2011) and a Master degree in Food Biotechnology (UDG, 2014). In 2018, she completed her PhD at the Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA, Girona) under the EU-FP7 GLOBAQUA Project, obtaining Cum Laude distinction and the extraordinary PhD award. Part of her PhD project was conducted in the Microbial Ecology Group (MEG) of the Institute of Ecosystem Study at the National Research Council (Verbania, Italy). Afterwards, in November 2018, she joined the research group of Dr. Edward Topp at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Center (London, Ontario, Canada) for almost three years, where she worked as a postdoctoral associate. In 2021 she was awarded with a “Juan de la Cierva Formación” grant and she started working at the Institute of Environmental Research Council (IDAEA-CSIC). Her research interests relies on understanding the main routes of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) dissemination from anthropogenic sources to the environment. As a PhD student, she investigated the effects of pharmaceutical active compounds on bacterial communities thriving in rivers receiving chronic anthropogenic pollution. She was particularly interested on how these chemical compounds affect the diversity and abundance of antibiotic resistance genes across water, sediment and biofilms. On the other hand, the work she carried out at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada aims to understand and manage the risks to human and environmental health from microbial and chemical contaminants generated in primary food production.