The 3rd International Online Conference on Toxics
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The 3rd International Online Conference on Toxics
Connecting Ecosystems, Animals, and Humans: Toxicology in the One Health Era
Part of the International Online Conference on Toxics series
Event's Timezone: Central European Summer Time
8 May 2026
8 July 2026
4 September 2026
Ecotoxicology, Ecosystem Health, Exposure Routes, Emerging Contaminants, Innovating Toxicology, Comparative Toxicology, One Health, Environmental Health
The IOCTO 2026 is Now OPEN for Abstract Submission and Registration.
Instructions for authors are available online.
Submit your abstracts HERE.
For any inquiries, please contact us at iocto2026@mdpi.com.
Welcome from the Chairs
Dear colleagues,
On behalf of the MDPI journal Toxics (ISSN: 2305-6304; Impact Factor: 4.1) and its Scientific Committee, I am pleased to invite you to participate in the 3rd International Online Conference on Toxics (IOCTO2026). This meeting will be held online from 9-11 September 2026.
The aim of this platform is to bring together students, researchers, and scientists from around the world to present their work and exchange ideas on the exposure, effects, and risks regarding chemicals and materials in terms of humans and the natural environment, as well as on the development of new approaches to assess and/or manage the toxicological and ecotoxicological risks of chemicals and materials.
The topics are organized into five sessions, corresponding to the following journal sections:
S1. Exposure Routes / Exposome of Emerging Contaminants and Materials in the Environment;
S2. Wildlife Ecotoxicology, Sentinel Species, and Ecosystem Health;
S3. Innovating Toxicology: NAMs and Computational Tools for Next-Generation Risk Assessment;
S4. Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms, Comparative Toxicology, and Multi-Omics Integration;
S5. Risk assessment, Policy, and Environmental Justice in Chemical Safety.
Submitted abstracts will be reviewed by the conference committee and, if accepted, authors can choose to submit an extended proceedings paper of their work. All accepted abstracts will be published as one dedicated volume in the Environmental and Earth Sciences Proceedings (ISSN: 3042-5743).
The 3rd International Online Conference on Toxics offers you the opportunity to participate in this international, scholarly conference without having the concern or expenditure of travel fees. We would like to invite you to “attend” this conference by presenting your latest work. Abstracts (in English) should be submitted online before 8 May 2026.
Kind regards,
Dr. Natalia Garcia-Reyero
Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing & Biotechnology, Mississippi State University, Starkville, USA
Dr. Carlos Barata
Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain
Event Chairs
Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing & Biotechnology, Mississippi State University, Starkville, USA
Natàlia Garcia-Reyero Vinas received her BS in Biology from Universitat de Girona, and her MS and PhD from Universitat de Barcelona, in Barcelona, Spain. She has held several positions at the US Department of Defense and holds adjunct professor positions at Mississippi State University and University of Florida. Her research was geared towards predictive (eco)toxicology and now aims to advance the use of New Approach Methodologies and use science to inform policy and vice versa.
Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Carlos Barata is a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA-CSIC), where they have served as a Researcher and Tenured Scientist since 2007. They earned their PhD in Biology (1994) and Degree in Biology (1988) from the University of Barcelona, followed by prestigious postdoctoral fellowships across Europe and research stays in Australia and the USA. Dr. Carlos Barata leads the ""Toxicology and Environmental Impact"" group, focusing on multidisciplinary studies in ecotoxicology and toxicogenomics. Their work involves developing novel, cost-effective, and ecologically relevant toxicity assays to assess toxic effects and identify hazardous substances. They apply ecological expertise to lab, field, and mixture toxicity studies, and have pioneered tissue/cell-specific toxic effects using advanced molecular tools. Their research, developed through extensive collaborations, has been applied globally in Portugal, Costa Rica, Australia, Germany, and the UK. A highly influential researcher, Dr. Carlos Barata has authored over 253 SCI papers and 25 book chapters, cited more than 9000 times (H-index: 54). They have supervised 30 PhD students and 20 Master's students, many of whom have gone on to prominent careers. An active leader in the scientific community, they have chaired numerous sessions for SETAC Europe and co-chaired the 30th ESCPB Meeting, notably chairing the 25th SETAC EU Annual Meeting in Barcelona (over 3000 participants) in 2015. He is also the Chief Editor for Toxics (ecotoxicology), an Associate Editor for Ecotoxicology, and an elected council member for SETAC EU (2012-2017) and SICTA (since 2011).
Session Chairs
Prof. Dr. Yankai Xia
School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China
Dr. Yankai Xia is a full professor and vice president at Nanjing Medical University. He has published over 270 papers with more than 18000 citations (H-index 65) in journals such as Nat Genet, Innovation, and Environ Health Persp. He serves as Co-Chair of the Membership Committee of ISES, sits on several Chinese academic committees, and is Editor/Associate Editor of journals including Sustain Horiz, Environ Int, and Toxics. He holds over ten national and international projects and received awards including the Second Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. His research focuses on environment and health.
environmental health; reproductive toxicology; emerging contaminants; exposome; metabolome; microbiome
Dr. Gunnar Toft
Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark; Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
Dr Toft is associate professor at Aarhus University and senior researcher at Steno Diabetes Center, Aarhus University hospital. Throughout his research career, he has been working mainly on reproductive and metabolic disturbances by chemical and environmental factors, first in animal models but since 2002 primarily in human cohort and register based studies. He has been leading several grants funded by the European Union and Danish National Research council and other national and private funding agencies. These studies primarily focused on studies of exposures before or during pregnancy and reproductive health outcomes. In addition to direct studies on male and female fertility, they studied risk of spontaneous abortion, childhood growth and neurodevelopment and reproductive health of the offspring in adulthood. Furthermore, he has been leading register-based studies utilizing the Danish biobanks and registers including studies on the effects of environmental contaminants and occupational exposures on fetal hormone production and genital malformations in offspring. He is currently co-leading a multinational project on prediction and prevention of type-2 diabetes. He has published more than 200 peer reviewed publications and have a H index of 62.
epidemiology; biomarkers; reproductive toxicology
Dr. Emilio Benfenati
Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology, Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, Milan, Italy
Dr. Benfenati is the head of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mario Negri Institute. He graduated summa cum laude in chemistry at the University of Milan in 1979. He has been the visiting scientist for one year at Stanford and Berkeley. He is the main developer of the VEGAHUB platform for in silico models and read-across (www.vegahub.eu). This platform is one of the most used by authorities and industry for the assessment of substances. He has coordinated more than 20 European Commission funded projects and participated in over 30 others. He is the author/co-author of 600 papers and editor of a few books on in silico models. He organised the SETAC conference in Milano, 2011 and QSAR 2014. He is/has been the member of several Working Groups and Committees of the OECD, EFSA, EMA, SCCS and CEFIC.
toxicity evaluation; in silico models; QSAR; prioritization
Event Committee
air pollution; climate change; health risk assessment. Air Pollution and Human Health
1. ISEP-School of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto, Porto, Portugal;
2. Centre of Biological Engineering, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
Eduardo V. Soares (EVS) is Coordinator Professor with Habilitation at ISEP-School of Engineering of Polytechnic Institute of Porto and Researcher at Centre of Biological Engineering, Minho University. EVS is graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Faculty of Pharmacy of Porto University (UP), Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences - Microbiology by Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar (ICBAS-UP) and obtained the Habilitation in Chemical and Biological Engineering by Minho University. Main current research activities include: aquatic toxicology; effect of environmental contaminants (contaminants of emerging concern, CECs; heavy metals; emerging contaminants; nanomaterials) on yeast and microalgae; mode of action (MoA) of pollutants; adverse outcome pathways; oxidative stress; development of bio-based solutions for sustainable agriculture, namely, biological production of siderophores; brewing yeast flocculation and physiology. Since 2020 (until the present), the successive studies published in the journal PLOS Biology and by Elsevier, included his name in the list of the "World's Top 2% Scientists", from Stanford University.
aquatic toxicology; microalga; mode of action (MoA) of pollutants; oxidative stress; contaminants of emerging concern (CECs); heavy metals; emerging contaminants; nanomaterials; adverse outcome pathways
Department of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China
Prof. Minjian Chen is a Professor and PhD Supervisor at the School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University. He is Chair of the Department of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health and Director of the Office of the MOE Key Laboratory of Modern Toxicology. His research focuses on environmental exposomics, metabolomics, and reproductive and developmental health. He has published 57 SCI papers as first/corresponding author (including 15 CAS Q1 papers), holds 15 granted invention patents as first inventor, and has led four NSFC-funded projects. He serves as Deputy Secretary-General of the Evidence-Based Toxicology Committee of the Chinese Society of Toxicology and as a Standing Member of its Youth Committee, and is an editorial board member/reviewer for multiple journals.
metabolomics; exposomics; reproductive and developmental health; exposure science; toxicology; mechanism
Department of Inorganic Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Analytics, Faculty of Pharmacy, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Krakow, Poland
chromatographic techniques; method validation; drug analysis; stability studies; interactions; drug impurities; remediation; analytical chemistry; antioxidant activity
Aquatic Contaminant Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Ottawa, Canada
François Gagné has been a senior biochemical toxicologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada since 1994. He received his academic training in biochemistry and toxicology and earned his PhD (1996) in Environmental Toxicology at the University of Metz in France. He has published more than 285 papers (Scopus h index 53) in the area of biochemical ecotoxicology in international scientific journals and book chapters and has recently produced a book of methods in biochemical ecotoxicology (Elsevier Inc). He is an Associate Professor at the Marine Science Institute at the University of Québec at Rimouski. His research interests reside in the biochemical/molecular toxicity of emerging substances and the development of new alternatives methods (NAMs) and approaches for the risk assessment of new and exotic chemicals in the context of global warming. The use of nonlinear approaches to study the oscillatory and fractal behaviors of molecular changes in cells exposed to ultrafine plastic nanoparticles or other space-altering xenobiotics is currently of interest.
invertebrates; biochemical ecotoxicology; non-linear responses; fractals; biochemical oscillators; nanoplastics; emerging compounds
School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) and Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR), University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
Eduardo Rocha is a Full Professor at ICBAS – School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Porto. He is a senior researcher and founding member of CIIMAR, where he served on the Board of Directors and as Chair of the General Assembly. At ICBAS, he obtained his Licentiate in Aquatic Environmental Sciences (18/20), receiving the Eng. António Almeida Foundation Award for best student. He also attended three years of Medicine. He completed his Pedagogical Aptitude and Scientific Capacity Exams in Histology and Embryology, holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences, and the title of Agregado (Habilitation). With 30+ years in university management, he is the Director of the Microscopy Department and the Histology and Embryology Laboratory (ICBAS). He coordinates the Animal Morphology and Toxicology Team at CIIMAR and directs the Master’s in Marine Sciences and the PhD in Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS). Additionally, he is the Local Mobility Coordinator. His teaching includes Cell and Tissue Biology, Histology and Embryology, Research Methods, and Xenobiotics. Research focuses on the interface between environmental health and biomedicine, studying how endocrine and metabolic disruptors affect aquatic life. His work combines the analysis of effects in fish liver and gonads with evaluations of natural seasonal changes. He also investigates how these disruptors compromise the efficacy of anticancer drugs. Professor Rocha has supervised over 30 Master’s and 15 PhD theses and authored 8 book chapters and over 255 international publications, including 240 in Scopus.
endocrine disrupting chemicals, experimental toxicology, environmental monitoring, histology and histopathology, metabolism-disrupting chemicals, liver, gonads
Sessions
2. Wildlife Ecotoxicology, Sentinel Species, and Ecosystem Health
3. Innovating Toxicology: NAMs and Computational Tools for Next-Generation Risk Assessment
4. Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms, Comparative Toxicology, and Multi-Omics Integration
5. Risk Assessment, Policy, and Environmental Justice in Chemical Safety
Registration
The registration for IOCTO 2026 will be free of charge! The registration includes attendance to all conference sessions.
If you are registering several people under the same registration, please do not use the same email address for each person, but their individual university email addresses. Thank you for your understanding.
Please note that the submission and registration are two separate parts. Only scholars who registered can receive a link to access the conference live streaming. The deadline for registration is 4 September 2026.
Instructions for Authors
IOCTO 2026 will accept abstracts only. The accepted abstracts will be available online on Sciforum.net during and after the conference.
1. Deadline for abstract submission: 8 May 2026.
2. Abstract acceptance notification: 8 July 2026.
Please note:
An abstract acceptance email only confirms that your abstract has been accepted. Oral or poster presentation invitations are determined separately by the conference chairs, and you will receive an additional email with the presentation result.
If you do not have an account, please register at www.sciforum.net. After logging in, submit your abstract using the “Submit Abstract” button on the conference homepage. No template is required.
Abstract Requirements
1. Types of Submissions
- Accepted: Original research abstracts; systematic reviews or meta-analyses abstracts (must comply with PRISMA 2020).
- Not accepted: Narrative, scoping, comparative, perspective, opinion, or essay-style reviews
2. Content Requirements
- Length: 200–300 words
- Structure: Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions
- Language: Clear, publication-ready English
- Originality: Must be original and unpublished; previously published abstracts will not be considered
3. Authorship
- The submitting author must ensure all co-authors approve the content.
- Authors may submit multiple abstracts, but only one abstract per author may be selected for an oral presentation.
Presentation Requirements
1. Each abstract must designate one presenter. To change the presenter, please contact us after you receive the oral/poster presentation invitation.
2. Only live presentations are accepted.
3. Presenters who do not attend the live session will not be eligible for awards or presentation certificates.
The slot for the oral presentation is 15 mins. We advise that your presentation lasts for a maximum of 12 mins, leaving at least 3 mins for the Q&A session.
Authors are encouraged to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint or similar software, to be displayed online along with the abstract. Slides, if available, will be displayed directly on the website using the proprietary slide viewer at Sciforum.net. Slides can be prepared in exactly the same way as for any traditional conference where research results are presented. Slides should be converted to PDF format prior to submission so that they can be converted for online display.
- Should include the title, authors, contact details and main research findings, as well as tables, figures and graphs where necessary.
- Size in pixel: 1080 width x 1536 height–portrait orientation.
- Size in cm: 38.1 width x 54.2 height–portrait orientation.
- Font size: ≥16.
- Examples of successful submissions can be viewed here at the following links: (1), (2), (3).
- You can use our free template to create your poster.
The poster template can be downloaded HERE. We will reach out to you closer to the dates of the conference with more information.
Authors selected for this format will have their work featured in the IOCTO 2026's poster gallery section.
To be eligible for the Best Poster Award, a poster in PDF file format must be uploaded to the submission system by the deadline specified in the presentation type notification email. This format does not require a scheduled live presentation.
We will reach out to you closer to the dates of the conference with more information.
It is the author's responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state "The authors declare no conflicts of interest." This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement preceding the "Acknowledgments" and "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. Any financial support for the study must be fully disclosed in the "Acknowledgments" section.
MDPI, the publisher of the Sciforum.net platform, is an open access publisher. We believe authors should retain the copyright to their scholarly works. Hence, by submitting an abstract to this conference, you retain the copyright to the work, but you grant MDPI the non-exclusive right to publish this abstract online on the Sciforum.net platform. This means you can easily submit your full paper (with the abstract) to any scientific journal at a later stage and transfer the copyright to its publisher if required.
Publication Opportunity
Participants in this conference are cordially invited to contribute a full manuscript to a Special Issue (To be updated) published in Toxics (ISSN: 2305-6304, Impact Factor 4.1), with a 10% discount on the publication fee. All submitted papers will undergo MDPI’s standard peer-review procedure. The abstracts should be cited and noted on the first page of the paper.
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Title;
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Full author names;
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Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors' e-mail addresses;
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Abstract;
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Keywords;
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Introduction;
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Methods;
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Results and Discussion;
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Conclusions;
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Acknowledgements;
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References.
Please click HERE to submit your proceeding paper to the Environmental and Earth Sciences Proceedings.
EESP template.dot
Event Awards
To acknowledge the support of the conference's esteemed authors and recognize their outstanding scientific accomplishments, we are pleased to announce the establishment of the Best Oral Presentation Awards and Best Poster Awards.
The Awards
Number of Awards Available: 6
Eligibility: Open to all authors selected as oral speakers who have delivered their presentation.
Criteria: Evaluation based on content quality, delivery clarity, audience interaction, and overall impact.
Prize: A prize of CHF 200 and a certificate celebrating your achievement.
Eligibility: Open to all authors who have presented their work through posters.
Criteria: Evaluation based on content quality, delivery clarity, audience interaction, and overall impact.
Prize: A prize of CHF 200 and a certificate celebrating your achievement.
Winner Announcement: The award winners will be evaluated and selected by the scientific committee after the conference. Results will be announced on the website and all winners wil be individually contacted via email.
Sponsors and Partners
The 3rd International Online Conference on Toxics 2026 is expected to attract leading experts, researchers, and strategic thinkers from world-class institutions. The real-world applications of their work are relevant in fields across Toxicology, One Health, and Environmental Health.
Partnering with us offers a unique opportunity to enhance your organization’s visibility by connecting with a diverse, influential, and global audience!
Connect with our Partnerships and Marketing representative at: iocto2026@mdpi.com
Organizers
Media Partners
