STATE
Dr. Stephanie Spahr
Research Group Leader, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries
Dr. Stephanie Spahr is a tenure track research group leader at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on the sources, fate, and removal of trace organic contaminants such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and industrial chemicals in natural and engineered aquatic ecosystems. Currently, she investigates pollutant dynamics during storm events, oxidative transformations of organic contaminants, and stormwater purification in biochar-amended urban blue-green infrastructure.
Stephanie obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Geoecology at the University of Tübingen in Germany. In 2016, she received her PhD in Environmental Chemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). She conducted her PhD research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag). From 2016-2019, Stephanie was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University (California, USA) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and within the NSF Engineering Research Center for Reinventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt).
She was a junior research group leader at the University of Tübingen prior to starting at IGB in Berlin. Stephanie was a selected fellow in the Rising Environmental Leaders Program of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and is currently a fellow in the Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
