On the road

Award winner: Denise Mitrano conducted research at Empa for several years and is now an assistant at ETH Zurich. Image: Empa - Denise Mitrano, former postdoctoral researcher at the Environmental Risk Assessment and Management Group, led by Bernd Nowack, and now Assistant Professor of Environmental Chemistry of Anthropogenic Materials at ETH Zurich, was awarded the Marie Heim-Vögtlin Prize by the Swiss National Foundation (SNF). She is the 13th winner of the prize which honors outstanding young women researchers and is endowed with 25,000 Swiss francs. Mitrano's research focuses on tracking the spread of microand nanoplastic particles throughout the environment. These tiny particles, formed by the weathering and degradation of plastic items, are by now ubiquitous and one of the defining features of the Anthropocene, the epoch representing significant human impact on the earth's ecosystem and geology. Tracking the spread of tiny plastics allows Mitrano to assess the potential harmful effects that microand nanoplastics could have on various ecosystems, develop analytical methods to better identify these particles and interpret the risk for humans and the environment. Energy storage is one of the major challenges in the current transformation of our energy system.