Deteriorating environmental conditions, mainly caused by human activities, are a major health risk. Pollution, environmental degradation, deforestation and biodiversity loss are not only affecting ecosystems and climate, but also have serious consequences on the production of safe and quality food and on the population.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the safety of the food we consume and the environment where we live in has become a top priority for consumers and public authorities alike. The Research Group on Food and Environmental Safety (SAMA-UV) is dedicated to research in environmental and food sciences and provides state-of-the-art technology and analytical services for the determination of contaminants and natural compounds, focusing its activities in the areas of environmental health, food quality and safety as well as risk assessment and human exposure studies. The pollutants with which the research group works and for which it has advanced analytical methodology include both regulated and emerging pollutants and their degradation products (ex. pesticides, drugs of abuse, human and veterinarian medicines, perfluorinated compounds, flame retardants, etc…).
The results of this activity has enabled the research group to interact and collaborate with other national and European teams researching similar topics through the attendance and paper presentation at numerous international meetings and conferences and articles in scientific journals. As a whole, the research activity carried out has generated 15 book chapters and more than 180 publications in international CSI journals with a high impact rate such as Analytical Chemistry, TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry, Journal of Chromatography, Analytica Chimica Acta, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, Food Chemistry, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, etc.
The group’s research is mainly funded through research projects within the framework of grants for R&D projects at both regional and national level, and also within the framework of various integrated actions with the cooperation of other research groups in the European Union. The group also has collaborations and agreements with companies in the food and environmental sector.
The group's multidisciplinary research ranges from quantitative and radiological anatomy, together with medical imaging techniques applied to the identification of the anatomical bases of the pathology, to geometric morphometry. In terms of the anatomical bases of pathology, we specialise in the study of vertebral anatomical variants and their association with clinical symptoms (pain, neuropathies, dizziness, etc.) in both modern sapiens and extinct human species (Homo Neanderthalensis). Geometric morphometry has been used to investigate hominin craniofacial biology (morphological integration), with a special interest in the cranial base as an interface between the brain and the facial skeleton. A "systems model" of human evolutionary anatomy has been developed, which conceptually employs an organism-based perspective on craniofacial and postcranial variation in hominins.
The group has also focused in recent years on the form, function and integration of the respiratory apparatus, which is an anatomical system connecting the skull and postcranium, of the human organism, as well as on the relationship between thoracic form in osteogenesis imperfecta and respiratory function, and on variations in form and their association with pain at both the cervical and lumbar levels.
The group is also investigating the development of the trunk at the evolutionary level in both extinct hominins and modern sapiens. Members of the group are also specialising in the study of geometric shape and anatomical variants in fossil records of Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo Naledi and Australopithecus Sediba.
