Toxicological Centre

Toxicological Centre

Research on environmental and forensic toxicology

Recent news


  • Tim Boogaerts received the Young Scientist Award at SETAC Europe 2021 for his presentation entitled “Development and Application of a High-Throughput Bioanalytical Method for Sewage Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2″
  • Michiel Bastiaensen was awarded the 2020 Prize Dr. and Mrs. D. Cuypers-Van Eeckhoudt for Environment and Health by the Executive Committee of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium. Congratulations! His PhD thesis “Human biomonitoring of phosphate flame retardants and alternative plasticizers: from method development to exposure assessment”, carried out at the Toxicological Centre, was defended in December 2020.
  • The article “Occurrence of Organophosphorus Flame Retardants and Plasticizers (PFRs) in Belgian Foodstuffs and Estimation of the Dietary Exposure of the Adult Population” (Giulia Poma et al., 2018) was included in the Top Cited Articles Published 2018 – 2020 in Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T), section Toxic Environmental Contaminants and Exposure, Fate and Risk Assessment.
  • Prof. Adrian Covaci is a Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Environment and Ecology - 2020.
  • Master thesis available at SPHERE (Oct 2020 - Jun 2021): Evaluation of the performance of a novel in situ device for monitoring pollutants in water. Promotors: Dr. Elvio Amato, Prof. Dr. Ronny Blust.
  • At the Euroanalysis conference in Istanbul, Turkey (1-5 september 2019), Olivier Mortelé and Tim Boogaerts both won an award in the category ‘best oral presentation of a young scientist’ on their work in in vitro colonic biotransformation of xenobiotics and wastewater-based epidemiology to track down antidepressants use.
  • Elias Iturrospe and Chanel De Swert, both master students who prepared their master thesis at the Toxicological Centre, were recently awarded for their efforts. Elias won the price for best Master student of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Chanel won both the jury and audience award for her master thesis on opioid use in Belgium.
  • Poster presentations from our lab members at different international conferences are available online. Check them out here. 
  • The Toxicological Centre is officially licensed (Royal Resolution of 5 June 2019) to perform analysis of oral fluid in the context of drugs-in-traffic