Profile

I moved to Aberdeen from Germany to go back to university. Luckily, I found amazing housemates to live with, and we became close friends very quickly. We go on hikes together, or just hang out in the house, where we watch a movie or play boardgames. With four people, there is always someone around! My housemates would tell you that I talk way too much about wastewater, science, and dolphins.

We can find drugs in many water sources all over the world, for example in our rivers. When we take pharmaceuticals, they are not completely used in our bodies, and enter a wastewater treatment work. Unfortunately, our wastewater treatment works are not designed to remove all the drugs, and some get discharged into the water environment. Pharmaceuticals are often harmful for animals or bacteria. I want to make authorities aware of this problem, so that they can improve the wastewater treatment. One thing all of us can do is to make sure that we dispose unused pharmaceuticals correctly through a pharmacy – Don’t flush them down the toilet.

Every day is very different, that is one of the things that I love about doing a PhD. Sometimes, I spend my day looking at computer screen. I write a report, prepare a presentation or do calculations. On other days, I am out at a real river, and take samples from it. Then, I spend days in the laboratory, working with the samples. For example, I need to filter every sample, to remove all the solids from it.