Postdoc on Marine Pollution, Mixture Toxicology and One Health Modelling

Within the EU Horizon Europe project HARMONY – Hazard Assessment of Marine Mixtures and New Pollutant Synergies, Utrecht University is offering a three-year postdoctoral position starting on 1st September 2026. Utrecht University research will focus on cumulative effects of pollutants from organism to population and community levels within an integrative One Health framework.

Your job
Are you an ambitious researcher eager to advance the scientific understanding of marine pollution and its consequences for ecosystems, food safety, and human health? Do you want to work at the interface of ecological modelling, mixture toxicology, and One Health within a major European consortium?

The project
Marine ecosystems harbor complex mixtures of contaminants, including emerging pollutants and experience shifts in microbial communities linked to specific contamination, such as plastics. HARMONY addresses this gap by developing integrated approaches to assess mixture toxicity, bioaccumulation, ecological risks, and possible associated effects on human health. WP4, led by IRAS (UU), investigates how pollutants and mixtures propagate from individual organisms through food webs to humans. The work strategically combines reuse of European monitoring datasets (e.g. WFD and EMODnet), laboratory experiments, field observations, advanced modelling approaches, and mechanistic analyses. The objective is to generate robust and time-efficient evidence on bioaccumulation, biomagnification, ecological impacts, seafood safety, and plastic-promoted antimicrobial resistance (AMR), applying a One Health perspective.

Your responsibilities
As a postdoctoral researcher, you will contribute to and help integrate several tasks: You will contribute to modelling bioaccumulation and biomagnification of priority pollutants and mixtures across aquatic food webs. Empirical measurements from laboratory and field studies will be integrated into chemical fate and trophic transfer models, including the Merlin-Expo platform and physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) approaches. You will contribute to estimating bioaccumulation, biomagnification and trophic magnification factors, and link modelling outputs to spatial and temporal monitoring data across Europe.

You will help uncover how pollution reshapes life in our seas—from the biology of individual organisms to the health of entire populations, and ultimately to people. Using a multi-scale modelling framework that links Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB/DEBtox) theory, Species Sensitivity Distributions, and Individual-Based Models, you will translate sublethal and chronic contaminant exposure into mechanistic insights on growth, reproduction, and long-term population viability under realistic environmental scenarios.

By connecting these ecological outcomes to seafood safety, you will bridge ecosystem change and human health. Through cumulative exposure assessments (following EFSA guidelines), Monte Carlo–based probabilistic modelling, and dietary variability analyses, you will evaluate indirect health risks and nutritional consequences for different consumer groups. A key innovation lies in integrating ecological model outputs directly into food availability and food safety assessments—advancing a truly systems-based perspective.

In parallel, you will explore long-term exposure patterns in harbor porpoises using retrospective blubber samples (2009–2025) from the UU biobank. By combining chemical monitoring data with epigenetic analyses and meta-regression approaches, you will investigate how chronic pollution relates to marine mammal mortality.

Beyond the research itself, you will share findings through publications and international conferences, while shaping new funding initiatives in marine pollution, water quality, and environmental health. Together, this work contributes to a central One Health question: how do environmental changes influence the intertwined health of humans, animals, and ecosystems?

During the project lifetime (September 2026–September 2029), you will travel to India twice for collaboration meetings and joint research activities.

We are looking for a highly motivated and independent researcher with:

• A PhD in environmental sciences, ecotoxicology, marine biology, environmental modelling, computational biology, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated experience with mixture toxicology, ecological modelling, bioaccumulation modelling, DEB/DEBtox, SSD, IBM, PBPK, or related quantitative approaches.
• Strong quantitative and programming skills (R and/or Python).
• Experience integrating large monitoring datasets and conducting statistical or probabilistic risk assessments.
• A solid publication record.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Willingness to work in an interdisciplinary, international consortium and to travel internationally.

Experience with One Health approaches, cumulative risk assessment, or marine monitoring frameworks will be considered a plus.

A better future for everyone. This ambition motivates our scientists in executing their leading research and inspiring teaching. At Utrecht University, the various disciplines collaborate intensively towards major strategic themes. Our focus is on Dynamics of Youth, Institutions for Open Societies, Life Sciences and Pathways to Sustainability. Sharing science, shaping tomorrow.

You will be working at the Department of Population Health Sciences from Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS), Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, and collaborate closely with the marine mammal stranding research team at the Division of Pathology from the Department Biomolecular Health Sciences, as well as European and Indian partners. You will work in an interdisciplinary consortium spanning ecotoxicology, modelling, microbiology, marine biology, and human health sciences.

Utrecht University provides an inspiring academic environment, strong institutional support for professional development, and excellent facilities. You will be part of a highly international and collaborative research community at the forefront of environmental risk assessment and One Health research.

Candidates from both inside and outside the Netherlands are welcome to apply.