Dr. Ruth Maria de Oliveira Pereira obtained her Ph.D. in Biology from University of Aveiro, Portugal. During her post-graduation, she attended several specialization and advanced courses, on different scientific areas and, currently she is certified for animal experimentation. Her main area of research interest related to Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecotoxicology applied to Risk Assessment. Between 2007 and 2011, she was hired as Assistant Researcher by CESAM-Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, of the University of Aveiro, under the Programme Science 2007. Since 2014 Ruth Pereira is integrated Researcher at CIIMAR-UP (Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research) and leader of the research team on Risk Assessment: soil-water interactions. As a result of her research activity she is the author/co-author of 90 publications in international journals indexed in Science Citation Index, 8 papers in national journals with peer review and 8 papers published in conference proceedings. She has also participated in multiple national and international conferences, having performed 9 oral presentations as invited speaker. Additionally she presented 12 oral communications and 136 posters at international conferences and 13 oral presentations and 19 posters at national conferences. She is/was the supervisor of 5 post-doctoral students, 14 doctoral students, (8 concluded), 29 MSc students (29 concluded) and 11 internship students. Twelve PhD students and all the Post-doctoral students awarded grants from FCT. Since 2011 she is a full-time invited Assistant Professor at the Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto. Dr. Ruth Maria is/was coordinator of an international project funded by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), of a bilateral project between Portugal-Tunisia and of 5 national projects funded by FCT, Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian and by the National Agency for the Scientific Culture. She has also collaborated or collaborates on projects funded by the European Commission and in several national funded projects. As a result of the international recognition of her scientific activity she was invited to join the group of advisers on Risk Assessment, at the European Commission (SANCO) and the Mediterranean Network on Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRM). Further she integrated a European panel for the evaluation of project proposals, as well as scientific panels at FCT for the evaluation of grants and final project reports.