Senior Aquatic Scientist Tania Iglesias

I joined APEM in 2021. I bring over 10 years of water quality planning and modelling experience to the team, but it has been a long journey.

How did you get into science and this career?

Being originally from Spain has some advantages (I am sure you can guess a few of them) but, sadly, I didn’t grow up with the fantastic documentaries of David Attenborough. Unforgivable, I know!  

Fortunately, I binge-watched all of Jacques Cousteau’s oceanography films, after all he is the father of scuba diving as we know it today. I was amazed by all the biodiversity of the coral reefs, the majesty of the blue whales and the voracity of the great white shark. That’s where my love for science, animals and water started. 

I am a very curious person (I must have been horrendous during the “why” phase as a three-year-old), so science was the natural place for me. You answer one question and five more pop up. I took my biology degree and worked in academia for several years with eels. 

I worked in fisheries for a while, which is a hard job, but it had the perk of seeing sperm whales and other marine mammals daily, so I can’t complain at all.

Fast forward a few years and I moved to the UK where I took an MSc in GIS (because maps are both beautiful and useful) and eventually landed a job in water quality planning and modelling at the Environment Agency. 

What does your typical day look like?

A typical day doesn’t really exist for me. It varies between carrying out water quality modelling with simple (RQP and MPER) or complex tools (SIMCAT and SAGIS), managing projects making sure new discharges don’t pollute a river, and talking to clients to see how our skills can meet their technical needs. 

What do you love about your job?

I think that variety is one of the things I like the most about my job. There is definitively not a dull moment. Because there are always new things to do and the incredible breadth of knowledge we have at APEM, I am learning all the time, which is very appealing to me. I also find it rewarding that I am contributing to making the world a cleaner and more sustainable place. This will mean future generations can still enjoy those amazing places that captivated my imagination as a child instead of them just being a distant memory of the past.