Danae Costopoulou, PhD: Senior Researcher in the Mass Spectrometry and Dioxin Analysis Laboratory of the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos”. She holds a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Patras (1992) and a PhD in Pharmacy from the same university (2000). She is a member of the scientific team of the laboratory since 2002 which is the National Reference Laboratory of the European Commission for the control of dioxins and dioxin-like compounds in Greece. She is quality assurance manager of the laboratory which is accredited according to ISO/IEC 17025 by the National Accreditation Body. She participates in the working groups of the EU network of the European Union Reference Laboratory (EURL) and the National Reference Laboratories (NRL) for Halogenated Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in feed and food. Her areas of research include: the development of analytical methods for the determination of halogenated POPs (dioxins, perfluorinated and polybrominated compounds etc); monitoring of POPs levels in the environment and food/feed in Greece; human biomonitoring and exposure assessment; public health protection from exposure to POPs. Her research has been supported by several competitive programs funded by national and EU grants (COST Action FA0602, FP7-ENV-2013 με τίτλο HEALS – Health and Environment-wide Associations based on Large Population Surveys) and she has 25 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and more than 30 publications in international conferences.