Invited speakers

Tara Olsen : “Interactions between science and policy: from scientific understanding to global policies to combat plastic pollution”

Tara Olsen has an interdisciplinary background, having first completed a BA in Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics at the University of Amsterdam, followed by a Joint Nordic Masters in Environmental Law at three Nordic universities (Uppsala University, University of Eastern Finland and UiT - Arctic University of Norway). Tara recently started her PhD at the University of Copenhagen, in the ‘Food and Resource Economics’ department, on a project focusing on the analysis of policy mixes in energy-intensive industries in Scandinavian countries. Before starting her PhD, she was a research assistant at Lund University, where she worked on mapping the position of states involved in the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations. As part of this project, she attended three of the five negotiating rounds of the Global Plastics Treaty and is a member of the Coalition of Scientists for an Effective Plastics Treaty.

Publications: orcid.org/0009-0004-4706-5239              

Miren P. Cajaraville : “One health approach to address the impact of micro and nanoplastics on environmental and human health”

A professor of cell biology since 2002, she teaches and researches at UPV/EHU's Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on the development and application of molecular and cellular biomarkers of pollution, cell cultures and in vitro toxicity mechanisms, transcriptomics and proteomics, cellular pathology and histopathology, in relation to chemical contamination by aromatic hydrocarbons and petroleum, endocrine disruptors, nanomaterials and microplastics. A researcher at the Plentzia Center for Experimental Marine Biology and Biotechnology, she headed the “Cell Biology in Environmental Toxicology” research group from 2001 to 2021. An expert in the field of “Toxicology of nanomaterials, micro and nanoplastics and other emerging pollutants”, she teaches in Erasmus Mundus Masters courses in “Environment and marine resources” and “Environmental pollution and toxicology”, and co-directs the LTC AquEus laboratory for cross-border cooperation on plastics, as well as the ENLIGHT PLASTIMPACT thematic network (Universities of the Basque Country, Bordeaux, Ghent, Groningen, Galway, Bern and Tartu).

    Publications: orcid.org/0000-0001-6527-6137

Philippe Loubet : “The role and challenges of life cycle assessment in guiding the transition to low-impact plastics”

Philippe Loubet is a lecturer specializing in life cycle assessment (LCA), which he teaches at ENSMAC - Bordeaux INP. He conducts research on this method at the Institut des Sciences Moléculaires (ISM). He is also in charge of Sustainable Development at Bordeaux INP, where he works to integrate these issues into training and campus management.
His work focuses on the development and application of LCA to help research and business identify solutions to the triple global crisis of climate change, declining biodiversity and pollution.
For some years now, he has been particularly interested in integrating plastic leakage and its impacts into LCA, in order to more accurately assess plastic substitution scenarios.

Publications: orcid.org/0000-0002-8600-0874