Dr Andrea Garduño Jiménez

Profile

Andrea is an environmental engineer by training, with expertise in analytical and environmental chemistry. Her work is driven by an interest in waste valorisation for positive social and environmental impacts. She has a PhD from the University of Nottingham on monitoring pollutants of emerging concern in the context of wastewater reuse for agriculture in Mexico and conventional wastewater treatment in the UK. She has led and worked on international collaborative projects (UK-Mexico and UK-India), on enzymatic removal of pharmaceuticals and environmental monitoring and behaviour of emerging pollutants.

Currently Andrea is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds working on a project to understand the risks posed by emerging pollutants entering the agricultural environment through waste valorisation practices such as biosolid use instead of chemical fertilisers. Her current work is using proteomics and metabolomics to understand sub-lethal effects of pharmaceuticals on plants. She is also part of SPADE, a community science project to understand the extent of chemical pollution in UK agricultural soils following biosolid, slurry and manure application to soil. 

Her broader interests include omics techniques, such as proteomics and metabolomics which aid in identifying molecular changes in an organism following contact with a pollutant and help understand sub-lethal effects of pollutants on different life forms. Further interests include international and inter-disciplinary collaborations in the context of decolonising environmental science. In 2023 she was awarded a White Rose Collaborative grant as a PI (£15 k) to undertake an interdisciplinary project to engage farmers in the topic of emerging pollutants in the agri-ecosystem: From Circular Economy to Soil Health. This project aims to open up a dialogue between farmers and academics around the benefits and practicalities of waste reuse as agricultural fertilisers and the negative effects associated to the emerging contaminants often present in these waste streams.

2022-ongoing: Research Fellow in Environmental Chemistry, University of Leeds 

2021-2022: Post-doctoral Research Assistant, University of Nottingham and National Autonomous University of Mexico 

2016-2021: Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham 

2012-2016: BEng in Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham 

Research interests

Waste valorisation in agriculture. 

Omics techniques to understand sub-lethal effects of pollutants.  

Environmental fate of pollutants. 

Analytical method development (targeted, untargeted LC-MS/MS analysis, metabolomics, proteomics) 

Decoloninisg emerging pollutant reserach