Christelle Lopes

Christelle Lopes is a prominent academic specializing in ecotoxicology and environmental risk assessment. Her work focuses on bioaccumulation mechanisms, toxicokinetic modeling, and the development of biomonitoring tools using sentinel species such as Gammarus fossarum and zebra mussels. She has contributed to advancing methodologies for assessing contaminants in freshwater ecosystems, including heavy metals, pesticides, and emerging pollutants. Her research integrates mathematical modeling, Bayesian inference, and field studies to refine risk assessment frameworks and inform environmental policy.

Key contributions include the development of the rbioacc R-package for analyzing toxicokinetic data, the refinement of integrative biomarker response thresholds (IBR-T), and studies on cadmium and mercury dynamics in aquatic organisms. Her work bridges laboratory experiments and large-scale field applications, emphasizing the importance of multispecies approaches in biomonitoring. Lopes collaborates with institutions like CNRS and has published extensively in journals such as Environmental Pollution, Environment International, and Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety.

Her recent focus includes climate change impacts on metal metabolism in marine cephalopods and improving diagnostic tools for freshwater genotoxicity using the comet assay. Lopes’ research highlights the translational application of models like MOSAIC and the importance of standardized protocols for biomarker thresholds in environmental surveillance.