May brought two significant collaboration visits to and from the ENVMS Group AUTh at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, reinforcing the interdisciplinary partnerships that lie at the heart of the SPECTRA project’s approach to environmental research.
Meeting the HEPHAESTUS Laboratory in Kavala
On 26 May, Prof. Dimitra Lambropoulou, Prof. Dimitrios Bikiaris and early-stage researchers from SPECTRA travelled to Kavala for a meeting with Prof. George Kyzas and the HEPHAESTUS Laboratory team at the Department of Chemistry of Democritus University of Thrace. The visit was highly productive, with discussions ranging across sustainable materials, environmental applications, circular economy strategies and advanced analytical technologies, all areas where the two groups share both expertise and ambition.
A particular focus of the exchange was the active involvement of young researchers in developing innovative solutions at the intersection of materials science and environmental chemistry. The HEPHAESTUS Laboratory has built a strong reputation in the design and application of functional materials for environmental remediation, and the meeting opened up concrete avenues for joint activity within the SPECTRA framework.
The visit underlined something that SPECTRA has demonstrated consistently: that the project’s twinning structure, designed to build research capacity and foster collaboration across institutions, creates the conditions for exactly this kind of substantive, long-term scientific partnership to develop.
Welcoming the Hellenic Mediterranean University
Later in May, the ENVMS lab welcomed a visit from Prof. Thrassyvoulos Manios and his research team from the Department of Agriculture at the Hellenic Mediterranean University. The focus of the discussions was emerging contaminants of major environmental concern, including PFAS, pharmaceuticals, and micro- and nanoplastics in environmental and food samples.
The exchange drew on complementary expertise across the two institutions, with the Hellenic Mediterranean University team bringing agricultural and environmental science perspectives to bear on questions that SPECTRA is addressing through advanced analytical chemistry. Topics included the occurrence, fate and environmental and human health impacts of emerging pollutants across soil, water and food matrices.
Both visits reflected the value SPECTRA places on building a genuinely interdisciplinary research community around its core themes. Understanding how emerging contaminants move through agricultural and marine systems, how they accumulate and transform, and how they can be detected reliably across different matrices requires exactly the kind of cross-institutional dialogue these meetings represent. The connections made and deepened in May will feed directly into ongoing and future collaborative activities within the project.
