Ester López

Ester Lopez earned her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry in 2014 and a Master’s in Experimental Techniques in Chemistry in 2015, both from the University of Valencia, Spain. She then completed a PhD in Analytical Chemistry and Environment at the Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA-CSIC) in Barcelona, focusing on developing analytical methods to detect illicit drugs and psychoactive substances in wastewater, sediments, and biota, studying their presence, use, and environmental impact. She was part of the Spanish Network of Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (ESAR-NET), where she contributed to the first national study on alcohol consumption in Spain using the WBE approach.
After her PhD, she spent two years at the Catalonian Antidoping Laboratory, developing and validating analytical methods to detect doping substances and their metabolites in biological samples using LC-MS (triple quadrupole and QOrbitrap), as well as evaluating results and updating standard operating procedures. In 2024, she became a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS) at the University of Queensland, Australia, where she developed and validated an analytical method for analyzing FTOH in air samples via GC-CI-MS and participated in indoor chemical exposure studies using target and non-target mass spectrometry tecniques. In 2025, she returned to IDAEA-CSIC as a Mass Spectrometry Specialist in the Mass Spectrometry-Special Techniques Service.