Amaya Azqueta, a native of Echarren de Guirguillano, has been appointed president of the European Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society (EEMGS). Amaya Azqueta, professor of Toxicology at the School of Pharmacy and Nutrition of the University of Navarra, is the first Spaniard to be a member of the board board of this organization.

The EEMGS, founded in 1970, was born out of concern for the possible long-term adverse effects deadline of chemicals on human and environmental health. Specifically, its goal is to promote the study of compounds that affect our DNA and are related to the development of different diseases, including cancer.

"I face this appointment with enthusiasm, respect and a desire to work," says the professor from Navarra. "The society works very well, but there are always aspects to improve, such as the link between universities, companies and regulatory bodies, the training of junior researchers, or the relationship between junior and senior researchers, and between the affiliated societies and the European one".

Among its functions is also the financial aid and inclusion of partners and affiliates from European countries with limited research activity and resources: "We want to facilitate by different means, especially economic, that researchers from certain countries become part of the society. There are brilliant scientists with very few resources to develop who can contribute value to society; we want to at least give them a voice and help them find synergies with other groups at research".

Amaya Azqueta was elected vice-president of the society in 2021, after having been a councilor of the society for 3 years. She is also one of the councilors of the association International Association of Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Societies (IAEMGS) on which the European, Latin American, Brazilian, North American, Canadian, Australian, Indian, Iranian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean Societies depend.

In addition, EEMGS has several cross-cutting interest groups, one of them founded in 2020 by Dr. Azqueta together with Dr. Langie, Maastricht University, and Dr. Pourrut, University of Toulouse. This group of interest is focused on the use and development of essay of the comet, used to measure different types of DNA lesions.

A researcher with international recognition

Amaya Azqueta did her doctoral thesis at the laboratory of Toxicology at the University of Navarra and later worked at the University of Oslo and at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She returned to the University of Navarra with a Juan de la Cierva contract, which she combined with a Ramón y Cajal contract at research . "work with researchers from other countries on an almost daily basis. The partnership with other research groups, whether national or international, is crucial for scientific progress, it is the only way. If the groups that collaborate are also interdisciplinary, progress is exponential; there should be more dialogue between different disciplines," he confesses.

For her scientific contributions and projects at partnership, she is considered an expert in her field research field. She has published more than 120 scientific articles and is a member of several international expert groups.