As climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, this is exactly where DI Dr. Lisa Emhofer's dissertation titled "Investigations on the Metabolization of Pharmaceuticals in Plants and Approaches for their Trace Level Analysis" (written at the Institute of Analytical and General Chemistry) comes in. Using a fairly simple plant pertinent to food production as a model, namely garden cress, she explored the way this plant absorbed and processed pharmaceuticals. In more southern countries experiencing increasing drought, the drier climate requires using more treated wastewater to support agriculture. Despite treatment at wastewater treatment plants, the water can still contain drug residues on a nanogram to microgram per liter scale. Emhofer's work was part of a project titled "Pharmazeutika in der Umwelt und Interaktion mit Pflanzen" funded by the Austrian Science Fund.

Postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Erwin Wenzl Award was presented to Dr. Emhofer on July 15, 2021. She placed first out of over 50 submissions in the category of "University Graduates".