IAEA Profile: Shifting Focus From Pharmaceutical Chemistry to Blue Carbon

The IAEA profiles employees to provide insight into the variety of career paths that support the Agency's mission of Atoms for Peace and Development and to inspire and encourage readers, particularly women, to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) or STEM-adjacent fields. Read more profiles of women at the IAEA.

Growing up in Montevideo, Uruguay, Inés Sanz Alvarez never thought she would work in a marine science laboratory, much less in Monaco. Originally working in pharmaceutical chemistry, she is now an integral member of a team of scientists studying blue carbon - the carbon captured by the ocean and coastal ecosystems, in a natural system which helps mitigate climate change - at the IAEA Marine Environment Laboratories, the only marine science laboratory in the UN system. The daughter of a lawyer and an administrator, Sanz Alvarez was not exposed to science as a child, but in high school, she began to learn about chemistry and biology.

"Chemistry was attractive because of the lab. I loved the idea of chemistry experiments, and we got to create cool products, with different colours and smells. I was so curious about that," she said. "With biology, I remember when I started learning about how the body works, I was fascinated by it. So I wanted to learn as much as I could about both, because they inform each other."

When the time came to study at university, she decided to pursue chemistry and biology, graduating from the Universidad de la República in Uruguay with a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical chemistry, a science that uses both chemistry and biology to create medicinal drugs and to study how they interact with the human body.

It was at university that Sanz Alvarez first learned about nuclear science and met the professor who would eventually become her most influential mentor. It was also where she benefitted from the legacy of women trailblazers who demonstrated the possibilities for women in science and, particularly, in radiochemistry. In fact, the department where Sanz Alvarez studied radiochemistry is named after the chemist Estrella Campos, a pioneer in Uruguayan radiochemistry.

"I knew that women were underrepresented in this field, in nuclear science. In my experience however, I never felt a limitation. My radiochemistry professors were women; my mentors are women," Sanz Alvarez said. "The professor that truly motivated me when I was at university was Soledad Fernandez, whom I will always remember. She trained me in radiochemistry and showed me how to handle radioactive material in the lab. I learned a lot from her, and she inspired me because she was very young and a very motivated person. She was so passionate about academia and doing research. I was not used to seeing that."