María Esther
Lasheras Adot

Bachelor’s degree in Geological Sciences from the University of Zaragoza (1991-1996). She joined the University of Navarra in 1997 to carry out her doctoral thesis on soils developed on igneous rocks. Initially, she specialized in the rock-soil relationship and geochemical implications and later she completed her training through two postdoctoral positions, in Barcelona (2003-2004) and Pau (France) from 2005 to 2006. In both positions, she specialized in the use of specific determinative techniques for the analytical determination of metals in soils and other environmental matrices (ICP-AES and ICP-MS). Since 2006, she has been part of the research team of the Integrated Laboratory of Environmental Quality (LICA) at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Navarra, where she has been involved in numerous national and international projects focused on the study of the impact of air, soil and water pollution on health and the environment. In relation with International cooperative programs, for more than a decade she has been involved in three European research programs: ICP-Integrated Monitoring (ICP-IM), ICP-Vegetation, and ICP-Forests, belonging to the Geneva Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), as well as the CaperMed (Committee on Air Pollution Effects Research on Mediterranean Ecosystems) and REPLIM (Network of observatories of sensitive ecosystems to climate change in the Pyrenees) networks. Throughout her career, she has supervised a Ph.D. (dealing with the study of soil pollution in the Spanish plot of the ICP-IM program) and she is currently co-directing a thesis entitled "Application of advanced methods of physicochemical characterization to the Study of historical ceramic materials in Navarra". In the last 10 years, she has participated in several national and international projects, in which she has collaborated in the field of geochemistry, in several environmental matrices and from different approaches. During the performance of these projects, she has participated in the publication of papers in high-level scientific journals. Eight out of these publications, framed in two PhDs, were focused on the origin and effects of particulate matter on health, reconstructing their sources through analytical data and its statistical treatment. The rest of publications were devoted to the detection of nitrogen imbalances in Mediterranean ecosystems (3); the study of air pollution by using mosses and lichens (3); long-range pollution in background areas (3) and, the latest, with the first results of the PhD in progress about geochemical data of archaeological ceramics (1). Currently, she is part of the Institute of Biodiversity and Environment of the University of Navarra BIOMA. She has a long teaching experience, in which she has taught more than 4000 hours of classes in 2 undergraduate and 5 postgraduate subjects. Throughout her academic career, she has co-directed 3 Master’s Degrees and 15 End-of-degree projects. As a result of the aforementioned research and teaching activity, she regularly participates in scientific dissemination activities. Among them, it is worth mentioning the organization of a mineral exhibition about the ‘International Year of Crystallography’ in 2014, or being the keynote speaker in several conferences organized by the regional government (Government of Navarra), highlighting that given in the framework of the ‘International Year of Crystallography’ in 2014 and the ‘European Mineral days (MinerETICA)’ in 2019. In addition, she is responsible for the collections commission (Geology) of the Science Museum of the University of Navarra.