Biography
Teodóra has an MSc in geology, specialised in hydrogeology and environmental geology and a PhD on flow systems and water-rock interaction (2006), both from the Eőtvős Loránd University. She began work at the Geological Institute of Hungary (MÁFI) in 1993, was Head of the Hydrogeology Department from 2007 and from 2012-2017 at the Geological and Geophysical Institute of Hungary (MFGI). She became Head of the Hydrogeology Department, leading a team of 17, when MFGI joined the Mining and Geological Survey of Hungary.
Her main research areas are groundwater surveys and hydrogeochemical evaluation, particularly arsenic, water-rock interaction, and hydrogeological modelling of flow systems, including stable and radioactive isotopes.
For 15 years she was a hydrogeological-hydrogeochemical expert in a Hungarian national project investigating a site for low and intermediate level nuclear waste disposal. She leads a team of scientists and is the hydrogeochemical expert for background values, threshold values and evaluation of chemical status of groundwater bodies of Hungary for the WFD River Basin Management Plans. For the past decade she focused on transboundary aquifers and thermal-water geothermal energy resource evaluation and management.
She is an invited lecturer in hydrogeochemistry at the University of Miskolc, Hungary. She has more than 40 peer reviewed publications and more than 120 internal reports.
Teodóra was Secretary of the IAH Hungarian National Chapter (2006-2008), President (2008-2010) and a board member from 2010. In 2013 she initiated the bi-annual Central European Groundwater Conference held in Mórahalom (HU), and 3 subsequent conferences. She was IAH Regional Vice President for Western Europe (2012-2016) and VP for Finances and Membership from 2016.
She is active in the International Association of Geochemistry, national representative for Hungary in the EuroGeoSurveys Water Resources Expert Group, member of the Hydrogeological Subcommittee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 2012, and hydrogeology expert of the IGCP Scientific Board (2017-2020).
Personal statement
Since being elected Vice President (Finance & Membership) of IAH, I have worked with the Executive, Council, Secretariat and with National Chapters to support the continued development of IAH. There has been a steady growth in IAH membership by about 7% since 2016, to more than 4400 members. However I see one of the main challenges is growing the membership to achieve the goals of Forward Look. Not only should current members be encouraged to renew their IAH membership, but new members must be recruited from industry and academia. Achieving this requires promoting IAH as the key international hydrogeological organisation for sharing state of the art fundamental and applied research results and disseminating information on all aspects of hydrogeology to a wider audience.
I have been working with Executive, Council and Secretariat members to ensure a stable financial background for IAH, which has resulted in a positive balance between the incoming resources and the resources used for the last two financial years (2017 and 2018). However new income streams are needed, diversifying sources of income for IAH in order to support the growth of IAH, so developing these will be important. We are living in a changing world where several new challenges might rise, like those caused by to Brexit or global pandemics. I will pay special attention to follow these and come up with realistic proposals to adapt to any new circumstances as needed. I will also maintain a critical overview of IAH corporate finances.
