Postdoctoral position on research fellow in environmental chemistry

Within the AQUA department, the RiverLy Research Unit (riverly.inrae.fr/) brings together expertise in hydrology, hydraulics, environmental chemistry, ecology, ecotoxicology and microbiology to develop innovative approaches for understanding the quality, functioning and dynamics of water systems. These approaches span all levels of biological organisation (from the cell to communities of organisms) and the various scales that structure water systems (from microsites to large catchment areas). This interdisciplinary research aims to better account for natural and human-induced risks in order to improve the management and restoration of watercourses.  Within the RiverLy Research Unit, you will join the team at the Laboratory of Aquatic Chemistry (LAMA, lama.riverly.inrae.fr/). The LAMA team aims to assess the sources, fate and impact of contaminants in water systems in order to reduce their input and associated risks. The team develops sampling and targeted/non-targeted analytical methodologies and strategies, tailored to characterise pollution linked to urban discharges and diffuse agricultural sources.  Your mission will be to apply and also develop complementary analytical approaches – targeted, suspected and non-targeted – in an urban and industrial river context, in order to i) improve our understanding of the nature and extent of this sediment contamination, particularly by emerging micropollutants, and ii) to assess the extent to which combining these approaches enables a better characterisation of spatial trends (using surface sediments) and temporal trends (using sediment cores). Here, we are focusing on pollution originating from a major urban and industrial centre: the Lyon metropolitan area (>2 million inhabitants) and the chemical industry corridor. The analysis of sediment cores should enable to highlight: i) the disappearance or reduction of certain molecules that are particularly harmful to the environment, following regulatory bans or remediation; ii) the emergence of new molecules recently placed on the market or residues from industrial processes. The study of surface sediments should enable to identify contamination gradients, depending on geographical areas and the uses associated with the molecules, thereby helping to improve our understanding of the various sources of these numerous and diverse micropollutants. Sedimentary samples are available and have been catalogued. You will be more specifically in charge of: - implement liquid chromatography coupled with non-targeted High-Resolution-Mass-Spectrometry (HRMS) analysis combined with targeted tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) analysis to identify as yet unknown molecules (or families of molecules), including transformation or degradation products. Particular attention will be paid to emerging PFAS and pharmaceutical substances, for which we currently have information on far too few molecules.  This includes i) the sample preparation before analyses (solvent extraction); ii) the chemo-informatic data treatment (from data acquisition by HRMS through to the generation of a list of detected and identified molecules, with an associated confidence level) ; the data interpretation (using relevant statistical tests).