IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute

The Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL, www.ivl.se) is Sweden’s leading organisation for environmental research and one of the most qualified institutes in Europe. It comprises Sweden’s largest groups of environmental expertise and competence. Research into the complex environmental questions of today demands a comprehensive view and interdisciplinary expertise; qualities which IVL has built up over 40 years. The increased importance of regional and global environment issues has led to close international co-operation. IVL has gained a leading position within the international scientific community through co-ordinating, participating in and organising international projects and conferences e.g. within the European Union research programmes. IVL has approximately 180 employees, the major part with a higher university degree. IVL turnover was just above 22 M€ (2005).

IVL has expertise on effects of toxic substances on ecological status from long and wide research experience using detailed statistical analysis, QSAR and fugacity modelling for eco-toxicological effects. IVL is currently involved in several national projects and EU-projects dealing with eco­logical effect of chemicals (e.g. SOCOPSE and REBECCA). IVL has worked with development of QSARs for eco-toxicological end-points in several national and international projects, e.g. for aquatic impact assessment for Water Framework Directive (WFD) implementation in the FP6 project REBECCA. Reliability and prediction diagnostics are important corner stones in the IVL QSAR research activities.

IVL will contribute mainly to QSAR model evaluation and development in WP3 and risk assess­ment method development in WP4.

Dr Erik Furusjö is specialised in application and development of multivariate modelling methods. He has worked with QSARs for a wide variety of end-points.
Dr Andreas Woldegiorgis is specialised in chemical fate modelling and environmental risk assessment for organic environmental pollutants.

1 . Furusjö, A Svenson, M Rahmberg and M Andersson, "The importance of outlier detection and training set selection for reliable environmental QSAR predictions", Chemosphere 63, 2006, 99-108.

2. E Furusjö, "Applicability of QSAR models for assessing impacc of chemical compounds", In: A g Solimin, A C Cardos and A-S Heiskanen (eds) "Indicators and methods for the ecological status assessment under the water framework directive", Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2006.

3. E Furusjö, M Andersson, M Rahmberg and A Svenson," Estimating environmentally important properties of chemicals from the chemical structure. 2003, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute: Stockholm. IVL report
B1517.

4. Mattsson B, Näsman I, Ström J, "Sweden's voluntary environmental drug classification system", RAJ Pharma, Mars 2007, pp 153-1581.

http://www.ivl.se/en/