The main interests of the Environmental Sciences Research Group include a holistic approach of research on multidisciplinary fields that integrates the chemical, biological, physical, biogeochemical, mathematical and computational, as well as the earth sciences (geology, mineralogy, soil). It aims to identify, control, and prevent pollution and disruption to its environmental systems (water, air, soil) and species caused by natural hazards and human activity, as well as advance with finding real solution to the main world concerns such as environmental issues, human health, food chain and climate change.

The Environmental Sciences Research Group interest focuses on a variety of research domains, such as:

Environment and pollution

• Persistent organic and inorganic pollutants (plastics, drugs, pharmaceutical, toxic and heavy metals) – as real treats for the environment and human health.
• Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) applied to the treatment of wastewater, monitoring of the persistent organic pollutants (POPs).  Photooxidation reactions and mechanistic studies. The development of analytical strategies for the analysis of important micro pollutants.
• Bio-technologies applied in waste water and soil depollution and treatments with enhance on solid – liquid interface processes, such as adsorption, ion exchange, precipitation, accumulation, dissolution etc; uptake mechanisms, kinetics and thermodynamics; process engineering, simulations and optimization.
• Microplastics pollution of aquatic ecosystems and their effects on biota.

Nanosience and the environment

• Nanoparticles synthesis, characterization and their applications in environment depollution and engineering.

Geochemical and Molecular modelling 

• Geochemical modelling of pollutants in synthetic and natural systems.
• Molecular modelling of heavy metals at surface and within various bio- geo- matrixes.

Field studies and environmental monitoring 

• Industrial and mining pollution: field studies.
• GIS – applications in environmental pollution, and monitoring.
• Environmental risk and safety assessment; assessment of flash flood susceptibility and vulnerability.
• Species distribution modelling.

Advanced tools for the environment research

• Cutting edge lab based and synchrotron analytical tools applied in environmental sciences research.
• Genetics sequencing

Scientific activities imply active collaboration between chemists, physicians, biologists, geologists, biogeochemists, environmental and process engineers, specialists in material sciences, ecologists and ecotoxicologists.