Ashvini Victor

Person

In 2016, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences from the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand (NZ). I had covered topics in earth sciences (mainly coastal oceanography) specific to NZ, as well as environmental and analytical chemistry. However, due mainly to the small job market for environmental scientists in NZ I packed up and returned to Europe.

My compulsion to diversify in this field, led to the enrollment into the Ecotoxicology master’s degree program, at this university in 2017. I would say, as an international student for the second time around, this program actually allows sufficient leeway for us to pursue good (and multiple) internships and receive support from the relevant members of the university’s Institute for Environmental Sciences and the International Office! I could intern at the University of Iceland's Research Centre in Suðurnes one summer for a perspective of marine ecotoxicology. I dealt with tributyltin imposex effects in Nucella lapillus snails and PAHs in Gasterosteus aculeatus fishes. I also interned at Knoell Germany for aspects of research development in modelling for exposure assessment of pesticides. Moreover, I attended a few SETAC Europe meetings where I was once a student volunteer and once a presenter of a poster on a research project about co-formulants in viticultural pesticides.

Research Interests

• Ecotoxicology and Ecology
• Analytical Chemistry

Current Research Project

I work in my master thesis in a project that encompasses my interest of Icelandic terrestrial environment, a global pollutant and hands-on work in analytical chemistry at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology. The thesis is on the examination of total and organic mercury levels in Icelandic arctic fox tissue samples.