Mercè Garí de Barbarà

Mercè Garí has focused her research career on the study of environmental pollutants and their effects on the human health. Her main research line focuses on the Exposome, a core topic of the current research on environmental health. It includes 3 main sub-lines:
1) The innovative development and validation of new sampling techniques for the study of new pollutants or mixtures in human samples;
2) The evaluation of health outcomes in human populations associated to the pollutant's exposures; and
3) The incorporation of computational tools, namely machine learning, on the Exposome research.

She joined the IDAEA-CSIC in 2022 with a Talent Attraction Grant from the Severo Ochoa Excellence Program. Previously, she was a Research Fellow at Helmholtz Zentrum Munich for Environmental Health (2018-2022), Research Assistant at the University Hospital LMU-Munich (2017-2018), 'Juan de la Cierva' Fellow at the University of Barcelona (2016-17) and PhD candidate (JAE-CSIC fellowship) and early postdoctoral researcher at IDAEA-CSIC (2006-2015). She holds a Degree in Human Biology (2005, UPF), a Diploma on Public Health (2007, UAB), a Master's degree in Laboratory Analysis (2009, UPF) and a PhD in Biomedicine (2013, UPF).
Dr. Garí has received several research awards and distinctions, including the Extraordinary PhD Award for her thesis "Patterns of accumulation of persistent organic pollutants in human populations" (UPF, 2013), the Environmental Science Award of the Catalan College of Environmentalists for the publication "Impacts of atmospheric chlor-alkali factory emissions in surrounding populations" (COAMB, 2014); the Seal of Excellence (European Commission, 2018) and the Critics Award for Research (Sciences) for the book "Natura, ús o abús (2018-2019) Llibre Blanc de la Gestió de la Natura" (Serra d'Or Journal, 2021). She is an 'Add-on Fellow for Interdisciplinary Science' of the Joachim Herz Foundation since 2019.