PhD student Jacqueline Hilgendorf, from CESAM/DBIO, supervised by Susana Loureiro, CESAM researcher and professor at the Department of Biology of the University of Aveiro, Diogo Cardoso, CESAM/DBIO researcher, and Jesper Sørensen from Aarhus University, received the ECETOC Best Platform Presentation Award at the 36th SETAC Europe Annual Meeting (Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry), held in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
acqueline presented her research on Lumbriculus variegatus, an oligochaete that inhabits the sediments of ponds and rivers and has remarkable regenerative abilities. This organism is recommended for toxicity testing with chemical substances in sediments. Her presentation addressed the reasons why this organism is still underused in sediment risk assessment, as well as the implications of this underuse for environmental assessment and the protection of benthic biodiversity. This work was recently published in the journal Aquatic Toxicology (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquatox.2026.107763).
This recognition is particularly significant, as the SETAC annual meeting is the leading European scientific conference bringing together academia, government bodies and industry, fostering collaboration, the presentation of research, and discussion on topics such as chemical risk assessment, ecotoxicology and sustainability. This year’s edition was attended by more than 2,600 scientists from around the world.
CESAM was strongly represented at the event, with around 20 researchers affiliated with the Associate Laboratory, including Susana Loureiro, President of SETAC Europe 2025/2026. Together, they presented work in areas such as risk assessment in soils and sediments, as well as the effects of insect residues, bioplastics and light pollution.
Jacqueline’s work was funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the project CESAM – Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (UID/50017/2025 and LA/P/0094/2020), by the CHRONIC project (No. 956009), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, and by a doctoral grant from the University of Aveiro (Ref. BI/BIO/9766/2024).