Iván was finishing his studies in biology at the University of Girona, Spain, when he joined modelEAU. Previously, he collaborated in a research project in the field of immunochemistry and experimental medicine. Iván has worked in a quality control laboratory where he studied the water quality in some points of Barcelona, Spain.

He came to Université Laval to learn more about wastewater treatment. Within the primEAU project, he learned how micropollutants such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products behave in wastewater treatment plants. In order to reach this, he worked on the determination of lipids concentration using the Soxhlet method and the determination of total sugar from the biomass in wastewater, as well as on the determination of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) by BODTrack.