Dr. Elsa Noreña Barroso graduated from the Autonomous University of Yucatán with a degree in Biology, with a Master's degree in Marine Biology and a Doctorate in Marine Sciences awarded by CINVESTAV. She carried out research stays with the Geochemical and Environmental Research Group at Texas A&M University and in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Rennes, France.

Since 2007 she has been in charge of the Coastal Environmental Sciences Laboratory of the Chemistry Unit in Sisal of the Faculty of Chemistry of the UNAM (UQS, FQ-UNAM), participating in the research lines of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology. The work of Dr. Noreña Barroso focuses on the analysis and evaluation of toxic effects of organic contaminants such as pesticides, hydrocarbons, pharmaceutical and personal use products and other emerging contaminants in water, sediments and organisms, as well as the determination of fatty acid profiles in biological tissues; using gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

She belongs to the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) North America Chapter and is part of the Editorial Committee of the specialized journals Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology and Journal of Analytical and Bioanalytical Methods and participates in the Thematic Network of Pesticide Toxicology. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Laboratory for Coastal Resilience (LANRESC) and coordinator of the Sisal Coastal Observatory for Resilience (OCR Sisal). She currently collaborates in the project “Ts'onot: co-participatory care of cenotes in Yucatán through community monitoring of water quality”, as well as in the Project “C-BOYA: Citizen Science using the BiOassay with Allium cepa in Yucatán for the evaluation of the genotoxicity of groundwater”.