Begoña Espiña is, since October 2016, the Leader of the Water Quality Research Group at INL. Dr Espiña focuses her research on developing portable and automated measuring devices for the selective detection and quantification of water chemical and biological contaminants and developing methods for nanomaterials’ fate, bioaccumulation and toxicity with special emphasis on implementing the safety-by-design concept.

Begoña Espiña holds both Bachelor's (2003) and PhD (2009) degrees in Biology from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Spain. During her PhD, she focused on the study of biotoxins toxicity and the development of biologically-based sensitive and accurate detection methods for them. Afterwards, she was granted an Isabel Barreto grant. She spent two years (2009-2011) in the Department of Pharmacology of USC as a researcher involved in the technical development and management tasks for two trans-national projects from the Atlantic Area Operational Programme: Advanced Tests about New Toxins Appeared in the Atlantic Area (ATLANTOX) and Knowledge Transfer Network for Prevention of Mental Diseases and Cancer in the Atlantic Area (PHARMATLANTIC). Begoña became a postdoctoral researcher at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in September of 2011. She has been the principal investigator (PI) of several European and national funded projects and coordinated the Interreg Atlantic Area project NANOCULTURE (2019-2022). She is currently the PI for several EU projects (LABPLAS, D4RUNOFF, SbD4Nano, AIHABs and DIGIRAS) and coordinator of the EEA grant OPTIRAS. Begoña is a core member of 2 working groups in Water Europe (European Platform for Water) and a member of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC). She has >60  peer-reviewed publications (h-index=23 Scopus) and 2 filed patents.