INSTITUT ZA MEDICINSKA ISTRAZIVANJA I MEDICINU RADA

Their core work

The Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health (IMROH) in Zagreb is Croatia's specialized research centre for human health risk assessment, occupational medicine, and environmental health. Their core work spans human biomonitoring — tracking chemical exposure in populations — and nanotechnology safety assessment, including developing standardized test guidelines and risk governance frameworks. They bring together toxicology, epidemiology, and regulatory science to evaluate how chemicals, nanomaterials, and environmental agents affect human health, feeding results directly into EU policy and safety standards.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their early H2020 work (2015–2018) centred on population-level health monitoring: tracking chemical exposures through biomarkers, studying endocrine disruptors, and building reference values for European biomonitoring policy. From 2019 onward, the focus shifted decisively toward nanotechnology safety — risk governance frameworks, standardized testing protocols, and ultimately industrial-scale nano-pharmaceutical testing. This evolution shows a clear trajectory from observational health surveillance toward applied safety science for advanced materials.

IMROH is moving from population health monitoring toward applied nanosafety testing, positioning itself as a go-to partner for organizations needing risk assessment of nanomaterials and nano-enabled products.

How they like to work

IMROH operates exclusively as a participant or third-party expert — they have never coordinated an H2020 project, which suggests they contribute specialized expertise rather than driving consortium management. They work in large consortia (209 unique partners across 33 countries), typical of European Joint Programmes and large-scale RIA/IA actions. This makes them a low-friction partner to onboard: experienced in multi-country collaboration, comfortable in supporting roles, and accustomed to delivering within large distributed teams.

Despite only four H2020 projects, IMROH has collaborated with 209 unique partners across 33 countries, thanks to participation in large-scale European joint programmes like HBM4EU and CONCERT. Their network is pan-European with no visible geographic concentration.

What sets them apart

IMROH sits at a rare intersection: they combine deep expertise in human biomonitoring (population health, chemical exposure tracking) with growing capability in nanotechnology risk assessment. For a Croatian institute, their European network is remarkably broad — 33 countries — giving consortium builders easy access to a Western Balkans partner with genuine technical depth. Their trajectory from health surveillance toward nano-pharmaceutical safety testing makes them particularly relevant for projects needing regulatory and toxicological validation of advanced materials.

Highlights from their portfolio

• Phoenix
  Their largest funded project (EUR 468,250), an industrial-scale open innovation test bed for nano-pharmaceuticals — signals a move from pure research into applied testing infrastructure.
• HBM4EU
  Europe's flagship human biomonitoring initiative involving 100+ partners; IMROH contributed as a third-party expert on exposure biomarkers and endocrine disruptors.
• RiskGONE
  Directly addresses nano-governance with development of SOPs and test guidelines — a bridge between their biomonitoring roots and their nano-pharmaceutical future.