Ioar Rivas

Ioar Rivas is a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), where she coordinates the environmental component of the Barcelona Life Study Cohort (BiSC) birth cohort led by Jordi Sunyer. Her work focuses on assessing exposure to air pollutants and their health impacts, particularly on children's neurodevelopment in urban environments.

She earned her Environmental Sciences degree (2008) and PhD in Environmental Science and Technology (2015) from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Her doctoral research at CREAL (now ISGlobal) and IDAEA-CSIC investigated air quality and children's pollutant exposure in school settings through the BREATHE project. Postdoctoral positions followed at the University of Surrey (2016) and King's College London (2017-2019).

Dr. Rivas' research spans air pollution exposure assessment, child health impacts, and neurodevelopmental outcomes. She employs epidemiological methods and environmental monitoring to study school environments, commuting exposures, and prenatal pollution effects. Her work integrates field measurements with health outcome analysis to develop evidence-based interventions for vulnerable populations.

Her publication portfolio reveals consistent focus on air pollution's cognitive impacts in children, with methodological emphasis on source apportionment, longitudinal cohort analysis, and socioeconomic exposure disparities. Key themes include school-based interventions, prenatal exposure consequences, and urban mobility patterns across European contexts.

At ISGlobal, she contributes to the Child Health program through the BiSC cohort, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams of epidemiologists, exposure scientists, and public health specialists on environmental health initiatives targeting vulnerable pediatric populations.