Laurent Charlet

University of Grenoble I/CNRS, France

Biography

Laurent Charlet is Professor of water biogeochemistry at the University of Grenoble and he is senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France and the recipient of the CNRS Silver medal for excellence of research. He investigates the biogeochemical processes in soils and underlying aquifers – particularly the SE Asia anoxic arsenic rich aquifers- and their influence on mobility, bioavailability, biotransformation and chemical speciation of trace elements and organics (e.g. PrP proteins and antibiotics) in terrestrial aquatic environments under varying redox and hydrological conditions. He aims to develop general methods for understanding the reactivity of natural and engineered nanoparticles when present in natural systems, particularly as a mean of predicting processes that are relevant to environmental quality, sustainability, nanotoxicity, risk assessment and paleoenvironment reconstruction. His research group maintains a modern environmental chemistry laboratory specialized in trace element analysis (particularly Hg, As, Se), surface chemistry, oxygen-free synthesis, solute and gas sorption analysis. In several projects he makes use of synchrotron X-ray techniques, such as X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy, X-ray tomography, neutron scattering, Mössbauer, ESR and XPS spectroscopy. Insights provided by molecular simulations (DFT, MD) confronted to the spectroscopic/scattering data are critical to a fundamental understanding of the structure and surface chemistry of natural (nano)particles (in particular imogolite nanotubes, clays and carbonates). Current research projects are mainly funded by CNRS, ANDRA and the European Union.