Staff

Kathrin Fenner

Extbase Variable Dump
'fileadmin/user_upload/tx_userprofiles/profileImages/fennerka.jpg' (64 chars)

Prof. Dr. Kathrin Fenner

Senior scientist / group leader

Department Environmental Chemistry

About Me

I am passionate about learning how chemicals degrade in the environment and whether any hazardous transformation products are formed during degradation. The ultimate goal of my research is to develop more accurate methods to assess persistence and risk from transformation product formation in regulatory risk assessment procedures. My research focuses on the following three areas in particular.

  1. Prediction of biodegradation pathways and rates
    Current (Q)SBRs tools to predict biodegradation half-lives produce highly uncertain results and available pathway prediction tools suffer from combinatorial explosion due to a lack of methods to prioritize possible pathways. In my research, I mine biotransformation pathway and rate information to develop novel algorithms for biotransformation prediction. In parallel, my team performs bioreactor experiments with pertinent microbial communities and employ high-resolution mass spectrometry to identify transformation products to use that data to further improve biotransformation prediction
  2. Hazard and risk assessment of transformation products
    The goal of this aspect of my research is to develop models and indicators to predict and assess the environmental fate of transformation products. In collaboration with the team of Prof. B. Escher (UFZ Leipzig, Universität Tübingen) we are developing methods to estimate mixture toxicity of transformation products and their parent compound, using the strong structural resemblance to the parent compounds and what is known about parent toxicity as a guiding principle.
  3. Improved tools for persistence assessment
  4. Persistence assessment is key to all chemical legislations in Europe. In my research, I try to contribute to a critical reflection of current persistence assessment paradigms and methods. For instance, I introduced the concept of joint persistence as novel persistence indicator that accounts for transformation product formation. Currently, I am also working on a project that evaluates the value of the OECD 308 guideline for evaluation of persistence of chemicals at the sediment-water interface.

[[ element.title ]]

Projects

Chemical pollution is a major threat to ecosystems and human health and current regulations seem insufficient to prevent widespread chemical contamination...
Chemicals are released to the environment through a variety of pathways...
Understanding and predicting the fate of synthetic chemicals under different environmental conditions is essential to evaluate their potential risk for humans and ecosystems...
Pesticides are major environmental pollutants. For this reason, the European Commission (EC) has imposed a stringent pesticide regulatory scheme...
At the Rhine monitoring station, the Basel-Stadt Environment and Energy Office (AUE Basel-Stadt) is measuring water contamination with organic micropollutants on a daily basis…
A large number and variety of chemicals used in households, healthcare, industry or agriculture enter our wastewater treatment plants with the domestic and industrial wastewater....

[[ element.title ]]

Curriculum Vitae

[[ entry.date || 'empty' ]]

[[ element.title ]]

Publications

[[item.title]]
Bosshard, J., Fenner, K., Singer, H., Anliker, S., & Gulde, R. (2024). Abwasser aus chemisch-pharmazeutischen Synthesebetrieben. Charakterisierung der Stoffeinträge in Gewässer. Aqua & Gas, 104(3), 43-49. , Institutional Repository
Hafner, J., Lorsbach, T., Schmidt, S., Brydon, L., Dost, K., Zhang, K., … Wicker, J. (2024). Advancements in biotransformation pathway prediction: enhancements, datasets, and novel functionalities in enviPath. Journal of Cheminformatics, 16(1), 93 (9 pp.). doi:10.1186/s13321-024-00881-6, Institutional Repository
Meynet, P., Joss, A., Davenport, R. J., & Fenner, K. (2024). Impact of long-term temperature shifts on activated sludge microbiome dynamics and micropollutant removal. Water Research, 258, 121790 (10 pp.). doi:10.1016/j.watres.2024.121790, Institutional Repository
Schittich, A. R., Fenner, K., Stedmon, C. A., Xu, J., McKnight, U. S., & Smets, B. F. (2024). Coupling pathway prediction and fluorescence spectroscopy to assess the impact of auxiliary substrates on micropollutant biodegradation. Environmental Microbiology, 26(2), e16560 (18 pp.). doi:10.1111/1462-2920.16560, Institutional Repository
Seller-Brison, C., Brison, A., Yu, Y., Robinson, S. L., & Fenner, K. (2024). Adaptation towards catabolic biodegradation of trace organic contaminants in activated sludge. Water Research, 266, 122431 (14 pp.). doi:10.1016/j.watres.2024.122431, Institutional Repository
Tian, R., Posselt, M., Miaz, L. T., Fenner, K., & McLachlan, M. S. (2024). Influence of season on biodegradation rates in rivers. Environmental Science and Technology, 58(16), 7144-7153. doi:10.1021/acs.est.3c10541, Institutional Repository
Yu, Y., Trottmann, N. F., Schärer, M. R., Fenner, K., & Robinson, S. L. (2024). Substrate promiscuity of xenobiotic-transforming hydrolases from stream biofilms impacted by treated wastewater. Water Research, 256, 121593 (9 pp.). doi:10.1016/j.watres.2024.121593, Institutional Repository
Zahn, D., Arp, H. P. H., Fenner, K., Georgi, A., Hafner, J., Hale, S. E., … Reemtsma, T. (2024). Should transformation products change the way we manage chemicals?. Environmental Science and Technology, 58(18), 7710-7718. doi:10.1021/acs.est.4c00125, Institutional Repository
Coll, C., Fenner, K., & Screpanti, C. (2023). Early Assessment of Biodegradability of Small Molecules to Support the Chemical Design in Agro & Pharma R&D. Chimia, 77(11), 742-749. doi:10.2533/chimia.2023.742, Institutional Repository
Escher, B. I., Altenburger, R., Blüher, M., Colbourne, J. K., Ebinghaus, R., Fantke, P., … Fenner, K. (2023). Modernizing persistence–bioaccumulation–toxicity (PBT) assessment with high throughput animal-free methods. Archives of Toxicology, 97, 1267-1283. doi:10.1007/s00204-023-03485-5, Institutional Repository

[[ element.title ]]

[[ element.title ]]

Address

E-Mail: kathrin.fenner@eawag.ch
Phone: +41 58 765 5085
Fax: +41 58 765 5802
Address: Eawag
Überlandstrasse 133
8600 Dübendorf
Office: BU F18

[[ element.title ]]

[[ element.title ]]

Expert on

biological degradation, mass spectrometry, micropollutants, organic pollutants

[[ element.title ]]

Research Group

See my team page

[[ element.title ]]

[[ element.title ]]