Environmental Chemistry Center in Marseilles

A 17,000 sq. ft. - site at the heart of the Saint-Charles faculty entirely renovated and fully equipped for research

On June 19 last, Aix-Marseille University inaugurated a new science unit, the Environmental Chemistry Center.

Now, researchers in three teams -Instrumentation and Atmospheric Reactivity, Metrological Development and Chemistry of Environments and Organic Micro-Pollutants- are gathered under one roof to carry out work on air, water and soil pollution.

The €5 M+ investment, funded for the most part by the Conseil Général, the Conseil Régional, the FEDER fund and the City of Marseilles, has enabled the laboratories to be the only ones in France, and indeed Europe, to be equipped with such leading-edge instrumentation as:
- a “sniffer” truck containing a complete mobile scientific laboratory and dubbed MASSALYA;
- a simulation chamber for experiments in artificial atmospheres; and 
- special equipment to analyze metals in airborne particles, acquired as part of the NANO-ID project, funded by the Equipex program for investments for the future and due to be delivered towards the end of 2012.

This new center, open both to students and businesses alike, is the perfect answer to the current need for ways to identify the causes of the environmental upheavals that are threatening our ecosystem.