..BACKGROUNDThis doctoral position is 1 of 10 doctoral positions offered within the he HORIZON Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Doctoral Network Pharm-ERA: "Improving monitoring and Environmental Risk Assessment of PHARMaceuticals, antimicrobial resistance and pathogens from terrestrial to aquatic environments".Global contamination of soil and aquatic ecosystems by pharmaceutical and microbiological pollutants (such as antimicrobial-resistant microorganisms and/or pathogens) raises severe concerns about impacts on ecosystem health and repercussions on humans and animals.Preserving ecosystems from adverse ecotoxicological effects of pharmaceuticals and their transformation products,and limiting the environmental spread of antimicrobial resistance and pathogens is imperative to reach several UN Sustainable Development Goals as well as the European Green Deal, Water Framework Directive and Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. In this context, the main scientific objective of Pharm-ERA is to develop and implement innovative concepts, methods and strategies to improve the monitoring and assessment of the environmental effects and risks of pharmaceuticals, their transformation products, antimicrobial resistances and pathogens from terrestrial to aquatic environments. The ultimate goal is to provide scientific evidence and expertise to contribute to reducing the environmental spread and impact of these chemical and microbiological contaminants and to preserve microbial diversity and functions across the soil-water-sediment continuum.By joining Pharm-ERA, you will integrate a high-level interdisciplinary and intersectoral research and training network based on 10 doctoral projects covering scientific disciplines including environmental and analytical chemistry,microbial ecology, ecotoxicology,molecular biology (incl. multi-omics approaches) and chemical fate/effect modelling. Pharm-ERA involves 9 Beneficiaries (including 2 non-academics) and 6 Associated Partners (including 5 non-academics), committed to contribute to research, training, dissemination, communication and exploitation of results targeting end-users such as environmental consultancies and agencies.DESCRIPTION OF THE PhD PROJECTAquatic ecosystems are continuously exposed to complex mixtures of organic contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals, which gives rise to concern for potential risks for ecological and human health even at the trace level. To address the complexity of mixtures of Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) present in environmental waters,Effect-Directed Analysis (EDA) is a cutting-edge approach.EDA combines biological activity testing and stepwise fractionation with chemical analysis to prioritize biologically active CECs in environmental matrices. Despite its broad use in environmental monitoring, such an approach still lacks ecological relevance since most of bioassays focus on specific in vitro endpoints. To tackle this gap, aquatic microbial communities (i
