Some journeys begin with a carefully defined career plan. Mine began with a question: How can I help protect water, ecosystems, and the people with my work?
Growing up in one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, made me aware of both the extraordinary value of natural ecosystems and their vulnerability. Water was not only a research topic to me. It represented public health, environmental protection, and the responsibility we carry towards future generations.
That motivation became deeply personal through my family’s long battle with cancer. It strengthened my interest in understanding how environmental contaminants, particularly persistent, emerging endocrine-disrupting, and carcinogenic substances, can reach us and our ecosystem out.
Over time, this personal concern developed into a scientific purpose: contributing to safer water through sustainable treatment.
My academic path eventually took me from Colombia to Canada and Spain, where I worked with the advice of Bioremediation companies in Canada and Universities in Spain, studying how microbial cooperation and biomaterials could improve the degradation of BTEX contaminants under challenging environmental conditions.
This experience changed the way I understood microorganisms and enzymes. Sometimes, the missing element is not a new biological pathway, but a better way to support, protect, stimulate, or deliver the biological agents involved.
That idea eventually led me to the NANAQUA Doctoral Network and, more specifically, to the DC7 position.
When I first read the DC7 project description, I immediately recognised a connection with my previous work. The project brought together several fields I wanted to explore more deeply: anaerobic treatment, enzyme technology, nanomaterials, and the removal of persistent pharmaceutical pollutants. It offered an opportunity to move from studying microbial degradation towards designing smarter systems that could improve biological transformation in complex wastewater environments.
Today, as a NANAQUA DC7 researcher at KU Leuven, my work focuses on nanotechnology-enabled biostimulation using proteases to enhance the degradation of pharmaceuticals during sewage-sludge anaerobic digestion. This work sits at the intersection of environmental biotechnology, enzymology, materials science, and chemical engineering. It also reflects the scientific direction I described when applying to NANAQUA: combining biological processes with nano-functional materials to develop more selective, efficient, and sustainable approaches for micropollutant removal.
