Professor Iseult Lynch PhD, MBA

Professor Iseult Lynch

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Professor of Environmental Nanosciences
Theme lead for Environmental Sciences
Director of Research for Environmental Research and Justice (CERJ)

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 5532
Email
i.lynch@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Iseult Lynch is an environmental chemist working at the interface of chemical (and materials) pollution and environmental policy.  She is the Director for Research of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Environmental Research and Justice (CERJ), an affiliate of the Birmingham Institute of Sustainability and Climate Action, Chair of DEFRA’s Hazardous Substances Advisory Committee (HSAC) advising the UK government on all aspect of chemicals in the environment, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistryand an Editorial Board member of Environmental Science: Nano.

Iseult has a very broad overview of all aspects of nanomaterials and chemical safety assessment and plays a leading role in making toxicology research data and models Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable (FAIR).  She co-leads the workpackage on FAIR Research data for the EU Horizon Europe funded Partnership for Assessment of the Risks of Chemicals (PARC) and is the Chemical Lead for nanomaterials.

Iseult’s research focuses on the environmental interactions of nanoparticles and nanostructured surfaces with biological entities from macromolecules to organisms, and the interactions of nanoscale materials with other co-pollutants as part of mixture toxicity.  She collaborates with a wide range of colleagues internationally, to develop predictive modes of nanomaterials toxicity, to develop safe and sustainable by design materials and chemicals, and to apply nanoscale and advanced materials in a range of applications to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including for precision agriculture, for water purification and for clean energy.

Iseult is part of the Birmingham Plastics Network, an interdisciplinary team of more than 40 academics working together to shape the fate and sustainable future of plastics.  This unique team brings together chemists, environmental scientists, philosophers, linguists, economists, and experts in many other fields, to holistically address the global plastics problem.

Qualifications

BSc. (Hons) Chemistry (1995)

PhD (Chemistry, 2000)

MBA (2012)

Teaching

Professor Lynch is the undergraduate admissions tutor for Environmental Science.

Leads and contributes to undergraduate modules on the following topics:

  • molecules and materials
  • environmental protection
  • environmental pollution

Deputy director of the MRes in Biological and Environmental Nanoscience, and module leader for the MRes module 'Biological and Environmental Nanoscience'.

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Lynch’s research interests include:

Synthesis of novel materials for environmental applications - remediation, agriculture, solar desalination and more.
Nanoparticle interactions with biomolecules in the environment (natural organic matter, secreted proteins, organic pollutants, etc.) - the “eco-corona” and secondary pollutant effects
Determination of the fate and behavior of nanomaterials in the environment
Development of high throughput screening applications: nano(eco)toxicology, bionanointeractions and assessment of environmental fate of nanomaterials.
Nanoinformatics approaches for safe and sustainable by design chemicals and materials.
FAIR data and data management workflows and tools. Ontology and metadata schema.

Research

Understanding the role of the bio-nano interface, and interactions with biomolecules, in determining nanoparticle fate and behaviour in the environment and for human health.

FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) data and approaches and tools to suppport FAIR data

Interactions between pollution, hydrology and climate change

Other activities

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Junqué, E, Llorca, M, Bautista, A, Barber, J, Dondero, F, Farré, M & Lynch, I 2026, 'Assessment of PFAS pollution in fish and water from the United Kingdom and Spain and implications for human exposure', Environmental Pollution, vol. 390, 127515. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2025.127515

Chakraborty, S, Mikulska, I, Dhumal, P, Langford, N, Nehzati, S, Boseley, R, Pham, S, Pfrang, C, Kaur, M, Valsami-Jones, E, Ignatyev, K, Menon, D, Misra, SK & Lynch, I 2026, 'Mapping the Hierarchical Environmental Transformations of Nanoscale UiO-66 Metal–organic Framework', Environmental Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c14487

Papadiamantis, AG, Tsoumanis, A, Melagraki, G, Lynch, I & Afantitis, A 2026, 'nanoPharos: A case study on FAIR (Nano)material (Meta)data management', NanoImpact, vol. 41, 100602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.impact.2025.100602

Varsou, D-D, Theodori, A, Papadiamantis, AG, Tsoumanis, A, Zouraris, D, Antoniou, M, Koutroumpa, N-M, Melagraki, G, Lynch, I & Afantitis, A 2026, 'Rigorous data curation, enrichment and meta-analysis enable autoML prediction of plant length responses to nanoparticles powered by the Enalos Cloud platform', Environmental Science: Nano, vol. 13, no. 1, 621. https://doi.org/10.1039/d5en00897b

Mai, C, Dang, X, Zhao, L, Daria, D, Ma, F, Bao, M, Geng, F & Lynch, I 2026, 'Soil property-dependent toxicity and oxidative stress induced by perfluorooctanoic acid in Caenorhabditis elegans', Environmental Technology and Innovation, vol. 41, 104762. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eti.2026.104762

Antoniou, M, Varsou, D-D, Tsoumanis, A, Melagraki, G, Lynch, I & Afantitis, A 2025, 'Atom-level descriptors and explainable prediction of iron carbide nanoparticles' cytotoxicity via the Enalos Cloud platform', Nanoscale Advances. https://doi.org/10.1039/d5na00549c

Bhadane, P, Menon, D, Goyal, P, Reza Alizadeh Kiapi, M, Kanta Satpathy, B, Lanza, A, Mikulska, I, Scatena, R, Michalik, S, Mahato, P, Asgari, M, Chen, X, Chakraborty, S, Mishra, A, Lynch, I, Fairen-Jimenez, D & Misra, SK 2025, 'A two-dimensional metal-organic framework for efficient recovery of heavy and light rare earth elements from electronic wastes', Separation and Purification Technology, vol. 360, 130946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seppur.2024.130946

Chakraborty, S & Lynch, I 2025, 'Biomolecular Transformations Shape the Environmental Fate of Nanoscale and Emerging Materials', Accounts of Chemical Research. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.accounts.5c00587

Chakraborty, S, Dhumal, P, Mikulska, I, Pham, S, Bradford, L-J, Menon, D, Misra, SK & Lynch, I 2025, 'Biotic Transformation of Abiotically Stable Nanoscale UiO-66 Metal–Organic Framework by Daphnia magna Results in Chronic Reproductive Toxicity', ACS Nano. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.5c16532

Comment/debate

Dhumal, P, Chakraborty, S & Lynch, I 2026, 'Biomolecular coronas govern the environmental fate of metal–organic frameworks', Nature Reviews Chemistry. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-025-00789-1

Liu, N, Li, Z, Cheng, S, Monikh, FA, Ye, Z, Ma, T, Zheng, L, Wang, X, Ni, B-J, Chen, Z, Jiang, B, Zhang, P, Guo, Z & Lynch, I 2025, 'Author Correction: Extracting and characterizing microplastics and nanoplastics from environmental samples', Nature protocols. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-025-01318-6

Letter

Chakraborty, S, Drexel, R, Bhadane, P, Langford, N, Dhumal, P, Meier, F & Lynch, I 2025, 'An integrated multimethod approach for size-specific assessment of potentially toxic element adsorption onto micro- and nanoplastics: implications for environmental risk', Nanoscale, vol. 17, no. 15, pp. 9122-9136. https://doi.org/10.1039/d5nr00353a, https://doi.org/10.1039/d5nr00353a

Preprint

Chakraborty, S, Dhumal, P, Mikulska, I, Pham, S, Ellis (Bradford), L-J, Menon, D, Misra, SK & Lynch, I 2025 'Biotic Transformation of abiotically stable nanoscale UiO-66 Metal–Organic Frameworks by the waterflea Daphnia magna results in Chronic Reproductive Toxicity' ChemRxiv. https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2025-hrf4k

Review article

Karaoli, A, Tzoupis, H, Papavasileiou, KD, Papadiamantis, AG, Mintis, DG, Kiranoudis, CT, Lynch, I, Melagraki, G & Afantitis, A 2025, 'Atomistic-Level Insights into the Role of Mutations in the Engineering of PET Hydrolases: A Systematic Review', International Journal of Molecular Sciences, vol. 26, no. 16, 7682. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms26167682

Xie, C, Li, X, Wu, X, Zhang, S, Zhang, P, Vijver, MG, Peijnenburg, WJGM, Pang, Q, Lynch, I & Guo, Z 2025, 'Bridging planarian bioassays and AOP-based environmental assessment: Toward mechanistic insights into pollutant-induced disruptions', Environmental Research, vol. 286, no. Part 1, 122787. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2025.122787

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

Nanomaterials in the environment (as well as food, cosmetics, consumer products, nanomedicines, nanopesticides etc.); nanomaterials transformations; nanomaterials fate and behaviour; nanomaterials eco/toxicology; Nanosafety assessment; nanoregulation; nanogovernance; Microplastics; nanoplastics; Open data