An update on the activities and challenges of the EU Reference Laboratory for Marine Biotoxins

Ana Gago Martinez

EU Biotoxin Reference Lab

Ana Gago-Martinez is Professor at the Analytical Chemistry and Food Department of the University of Vigo in Spain and Director at the EU Reference Laboratory for Marine Biotoxins, Co-chair of the International Association Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC) Task Force on Marine and Freshwater Toxins. Prof. Gago-Martinez completed her Ph.D studies in the University of Vigo, Spain, working in the development of instrumental methods for the analysis of marine biotoxins and conducted postdoctoral studies at the Institute of Marine Biosciences from the National Research Council in Halifax, Canada. She carried out several research projects on the development and implementation of chromatographic-based analytical methods for marine biotoxins, as a visiting scientist at the Ministry of Health in Ottawa, Canada, as well as in other Universities and Research centers in EU and USA, such as University of Jena, (Germany); Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, (Norway); Cork Institute of Technology, (Ireland), and also working in the development and optimization of sample pretreatment procedures, as well as Mass Spectrometric methods for Proteomics at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), (USA). She has been involved in several research projects through both National and EU funding and published extensively in the field of phycotoxins analysis. She has supervised 16 Doctoral Thesis and more than 25 research projects for Masters Degree based on the research areas above mentioned. At present she shares her teaching and research activities at the Analytical Chemistry and Food Department of the University of Vigo, with the responsibility of leading the activities of the EU Reference Laboratory for Marine Biotoxins (EURLMB).