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My name is Éva Valsami-Jones and I'm a Professor of Environmental Nanoscience. The aim of my
research is to try and understand processes that take place at the smallest imaginable
scale where physicochemical properties, as we understand them, begin to blur with the
quantum properties of very small particles. What I want to establish is what makes those
tiny particles, known as nanoparticles and which are tens of thousands of times smaller
than the width of a human hair, so very reactive. To do that I use some of the most advanced
analytical instruments available to science which are still, however, challenged by the
smallness of the material which I am trying to characterise. I've also developed my own
methods to tag those particles and detect them in, for example, the body of a snail
or a fish. Why is this important? For a start, the reactive
nature of nanoparticles can have important applications, some of which still remain unknown.
But also unpredictable behaviour may bring unpredictable health hazards and this is important
to know and try to fix. So another strand of my research aims to develop methods to design safer nano-products.