Endocrine Disruptors

Alex Charlton is a Senior Ecotoxicologist and Technical Expert with Syngenta. His focus is Regulatory toxicology, with a special attention to Mechanistic Toxicology.

Anne Gourmelon has been working for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for twenty years. She started as a Project Manager for chemical safety, including the validation of methods for endocrine disruptors screening and testing, and is now Principal Administrator of the OECD’s Test Guidelines Programme. The programme aims at the development and harmonisation of test methods for chemical safety to meet regulatory needs in OECD member countries, and to enable the mutual acceptance of data across countries.

Heli Hollnagel is a EUROTOX registered Toxicologist, working as Regulatory Toxicologist and EMEA Science Leader at Dow Europe. She is also the Chair of Cefic's Polymers Issue Team and Cefic's LRI Issue Team, as well as a member of the ECETOC Scientific Committee.

Effrosyni Katsanou is a project officer in the European’s Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy. Her role includes scientific input to the activities relevant to the Community Strategy on Endocrine Disruptors such as the REACH information requirements update relevant to EDs, the new ECHA guidance document in relation to the new hazard classes for EDs under the CLP regulation, OECD’s activities on endocrine disruptors as well as involvement in PARC-related ED activities. She is a member of the OECD’s Expert Group on better use of academic data and she is leading a case study on how to better use academic data for ED identification.

Pim Leonards is a Professor for Environmental Bioanalytical Chemistry at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He has more than 20 years of experience in field and experimental studies related to environmental chemistry, analytical method development, bioaccumulation, indoor exposure assessment, and metabolomics. Nowadays, his focus is on emerging chemicals, indoor exposure assessment and metabolomics.

Iris Mangas is a Regulatory Toxicologist. She holds a Ph D in molecular toxicology. Since 2018, she has been a Scientific Officer at EFSA. She is currently in charge of the Peer Review of Pesticides Risk Assessment and supports the developmental activities for improving EFSA Risk assessment methods in the area of developmental neurotoxicity and Endocrine Disruptor properties, including development of IATA case studies and AOPs.

Emily McVey is an experienced Regulatory Toxicologist and works at the dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment – RIVM. Her specialties include environmental toxicology, wild vertebrates (birds, mammals, amphibians, fish), molecular mechanisms of toxicity, neurodevelopmental toxicity and endocrine disruption testing and assessment.

Eva Vanna Lorenza Negri is an Associate Professor at the Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences at the University of Bologna. Her main interests are epidemiology and biostatistics, in particular cancer epidemiology, occupational epidemiology, environmental epidemiology and statistical methods for descriptive and observational epidemiology.

Katie Paul Friedman joined the National Center for Computational Toxicology in the Office of Research and Development at the US EPA in August 2016, where she is currently focused on integration of multiple information streams to address the needs of preliminary risk assessment, with additional interests in uncertainty in alternative and traditional toxicity information, endocrine bioactivity prediction and in vitro kinetics. Previously, she worked as a Regulatory Toxicologist at Bayer CropScience with specialties in neurodevelopmental and endocrine toxicity, high-throughput science, and predictive toxicology. She has been actively involved in multi-stakeholder projects to develop adverse outcome pathways, alternative testing approaches, and the regulatory acceptance of these tools.

Vera Ritz is Head of the Unit „Steering and Overall Assessment Biocides“ in the Department „Pesticides Safety“ at the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) in Berlin. She has been working at the BfR since 2006 and is involved in assessments, conceptual and research activities regarding EDs.

Bieke Scharlaken is a Regulatory Ecotoxicologist at knoell Germany. She studied Biotechnology at Ghent University in Belgium and is holding a PhD in Biochemistry. Before joining knoell in 2020, she worked in the crop protection and biocide industry in various regulatory roles, for 10 years. At knoell she works in the crop protection sector with a focus on ecotoxicology as well as regulatory affairs. She is also part of the knoell ED expert team and is involved in the assessment of active substances (biocides and crop protection) and co-formulants with respect to endocrine disrupting properties.

Alice Tagliati is a Senior Ecotoxicologist at Enviresearch. She provides environmental risk assessments for plant protection products active substances and related formulations to aid products registration in the EU. Alice has a keen interest in ecotoxicological modelling, and at Enviresearch she specialised in in novel ecotoxicological approaches such as population modelling to answer regulatory questions.

Helen Tinwell has a PhD in genotoxicity and joined Bayer Crop Science in 2005 after having spent 17 years at Syngenta. Until recently, she has worked in research toxicology focusing on method development and mode of action investigations to address endocrine disruption. In 2017 she became team leader of the Regulatory Toxicology group. She leads the development and application of testing strategies for evaluating potential endocrine-disrupting properties of plant protection molecules in mammals and is a member of the ECPA ED Expert Group.

Christian Unkelbach holds a PhD in chemistry and a certificate in toxicology. He is currently a scientific officer at the Federal Institute for Occupational Safefy and Health (BAuA), the German Competent Authority for REACH, Biocides, CLP and PIC regulations. Christian serves as the Alternate German member in ECHA's Member State Committee and participates in the Endocrine Disruptors Expert Group.

Lennart Weltje holds a PhD in ecotoxicology and environmental chemistry and currently works as a Senior Ecotoxicologist at BASF conducting risk assessments for PPPs and biocides. He is also an honorary Professor at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the Georg-August University in Goettingen. His former stations include the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).

James Wheeler works as Global Regulatory Ecotoxicologist at Corteva Agriscience. His work focuses on environmental risk assessment and ecotoxicology testing. He has a particular interest in fish and amphibian endocrine test methods and is a member of several industry and OECD work groups active in this area.

Jordane Wodli currently serves as a policy advisor national expert on chemicals in the European Commission’s DG Environment.