Faculty

Vasilis Vasiliou, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. He received his BSc in Chemistry (1983) and PhD in Biochemical Pharmacology (1988) from the University of Ioannina, Greece. He then trained in gene-environment interactions, molecular toxicology and pharmacogenetics at the Department of Environmental Health in the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (1991-1995). In 1996, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy where he rose through the ranks to become Professor and Director of the Toxicology Graduate Program. Since 2008, he was also Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. In July 2014, he joined the faculty of Yale University in his new position.

Professor Vasiliou has established an internationally-recognized research program that has been continuously funded by NEI/NIH and NIAAA/NIH since 1997. His research interests include mechanisms of cellular responses to environmental stress, gene-environment interactions, alcohol toxicity, pharmacogenetics and the evolution of gene families. His research focuses on the role of aldehyde dehydrogenases, cytochrome P-450s and glutathione in metabolism and disease (specifically, alcohol-induced tissue injury, diabetes, gout and cancer).

Dr. Vasiliou has published over 140 papers and edited a book on Alcohol and Cancer. He has trained over twenty doctoral and post-doctoral students. Dr. Vasiliou is the editor of Human Genomics and serves on the editorial boards of several toxicology and visual sciences journals.

Paul T. Anastas is the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment. He has appointments  in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Chemical Engineering. In addition, Prof. Anastas serves as the Director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale. Anastas took public service leave from Yale to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Agency Science Advisor from 2009-2012. From 2004 -2006, Paul Anastas served as Director of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. He was previously the Assistant Director for the Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he worked from 1999-2004. Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, Dr. Anastas received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and worked as an industrial consultant. He is credited with establishing the field of green chemistry during his time working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as the Chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch and as the Director of the U.S. Green Chemistry Program. Dr. Anastas has published widely on topics of science through sustainability including eleven books, such as Benign by Design, Designing Safer Polymers, Green Engineering, and his seminal work with co-author John Warner, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice.

Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering in 2016 from Nanjing University in China. During 2014-2015, he served as a Visiting Scholar at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to joining the Yale School of Public Health faculty in July 2019, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoc Fellow at Helmholtz Zentrum München-German Center for Environmental Health.

Dr. Chen’s research focuses on the intersection of climate change, air pollution, and human health. His work involves applying multidisciplinary approaches in climate and air pollution sciences, exposure assessment, and environmental epidemiology to investigate how climate change may impact human health. Much of this work has been done in China, Europe, and the U.S. 

Dr. Deziel obtained a Master’s of Industrial Hygiene and Doctorate in Environmental Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research involves applying statistical models, biomonitoring techniques, and environmental measurements to provide comprehensive and quantitative assessments of exposure to combinations of traditional and emerging environmental contaminants. Her exposure assessment strategies aim to reduce exposure misclassification for epidemiologic studies, advancing understanding of relationships between of exposure to environmental chemicals and risk of cancer and other adverse health outcomes. Dr. Deziel serves as the Principal Investigator of a study funded by the American Cancer Society investigating co-exposures to multiple flame retardants, pesticides, and other persistent pollutants and thyroid cancer risk. She is also leading an inter-disciplinary team of investigators on a project entitled “Drinking water vulnerability and neonatal health outcomes in relation to oil and gas production in the Appalachian Basin.” The goal of this 3-year study is to evaluate whether exposure to water contaminants from the process of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is associated with adverse human developmental and teratogenic effects. In addition, Dr. Deziel is an Investigator for an NIH project examining how environmental and social stressors jointly contribute to health disparities in elderly populations. 

Dr. Dubrow has been heavily involved in the educational mission of Yale School of Public Health, as well as in research. Moved by what he sees as the greatest public health challenge in this century, Dr. Dubrow has committed himself to a new direction of education, training, and research on climate change and health. He serves as Faculty Director for a new Climate Change and Health Initiative at Yale School of Public Health, which aims to 1) create a cohort of leaders dedicated to addressing climate change and health; 2) establish an educational program on climate change and health for students across the University; 3) catalyze research on climate change and health utilizing Yale’s multidisciplinary expertise to generate innovative interventions and policy prescriptions; and 4) utilize public health science to support legislative, litigative, regulatory, executive, community, and other efforts to mitigate or adapt to climate change and to achieve climate justice. Dr. Dubrow serves on the Advisory Board of Cool Effect, a program that identifies some of the best carbon emission reduction projects in the world and makes it simple for supporters to donate.

Dr. Dubrow has taught both Principles of Epidemiology I and Principles of Epidemiology II and was chosen by the Classes of 2002, 2007, and 2012 to be Teacher of the Year. He co-Chaired the Yale School of Public Health Accreditation Advisory Committee, which oversaw the School's self-study process leading up to its successful 7-year re-accreditation by the Council on Education for Public Health in 2014.

Historically, Dr. Dubrow's research has focused on cancer, HIV, and their intersection. Most recently, his research has focused on two distinct areas: glioma (the main form of brain cancer) and HIV-related malignancies. He is currently developing a research and public health practice program in the area of climate change and health.

Caroline H. Johnson, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. She graduated from Imperial College London in 2009 with a PhD in Analytical Chemistry. Since then she has held postdoctoral and staff appointments at the National Cancer Institute and The Scripps Research Institute.

Dr. Johnson's research uses mass spectrometry-based metabolomics to understand the role of metabolites in human health. Her primary research interest is to investigate the relationship between genetic and environmental influences (diet, hormones and microbiome) in colon cancer. She is also examining exposures during pregnancy.

Dr. Brian Leaderer is the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health and he is Professor at the Yale School Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is the Co-Director of the Yale Center of Perinatal, Pediatric & Environmental Epidemiology (the Yale CPPEE, or the "Center"). In his role as the Deputy Dean at the Yale School of Public Health for over 14 years (during which he was also Interim Dean for 2 years), he oversaw Faculty Affairs including the Appointments and Promotion Committee and Faculty Mentoring Program. He has served on several Committees and Review Panels (NRC, EPA, HEI, etc.). 

Dr. Leaderer's research interests, resulting in over 300 publications, are interdisciplinary in nature with a focus on assessing exposures (measured and modeled in both environmental chamber and field studies) to air contaminants (indoor and outdoor) and assessing the health impact resulting from those exposures in epidemiological studies. Over the past 30 years he has been Principal Investigator on numerous research grants (totalling approximately $40 million). Several of these grants have been large epidemiologic-based grants (R01s) centered on the role of environmental and genetic factors on the respiratory health of children with particular attention to their role in the development of asthma and asthma severity.  He has collaborated with colleagues from several disciplines at the Yale CPPEE for over 30 years on several epidemiologic studies examining the impact of pollutants on perinatal and pediatric outcomes. With funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), he investigated the relationship between exposures to indoor levels of nitrogen dioxide, traffic contaminants and the exacerbation of asthma in 1,401 children (in the STAR Study).  The findings of from this study resulted in another ongoing NIH-funded (NIEHS) grant to conduct a double-blind, randomized control, triple cross-over design intervention trial in urban homes of asthmatic children to examine the efficacy of reducing exposure to indoor levels of PM_2.5 and NO₂ on reducing asthma severity.

Dr. Liew is an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist and a research methodologist. A core focus of his work is understanding how exposures that occur during critical and vulnerable periods of development may shape disease risks and influence health outcomes throughout our life span. Dr. Liew is leading numerous studies with funding from the NIH to evaluate whether fetal exposures to endocrine disrupting compounds and/or neurotoxicants could harm fetal brain development leading to neurological disorders or impaired neuropsychological function in childhood and young adulthood. He is also interested in methodological research, especially the development of novel study designs and analytical techniques that could help us better address biases in observational studies or research using “real-world” data.

Dr. Pollitt’s research explores the human exposome through characterisation of environmental and biological samples using analytical and mass spectrometry (MS) techniques. Her group has developed various mass spectrometry (ICP-MS, LC-MS and GC-MS) to measure exposure to complex mixtures of trace elements and organic compounds. She has applied these exposure assessment methods in numerous in epidemiological studies. 

Visit our lab website: pollittlab.weebly.com

Dr. Wallach’s research focuses on synthesizing, evaluating, and establishing the best evidence to inform research, regulatory, and public health decisions. His primary area of research, known as meta-research (i.e. the study of research itself), includes the key thematic areas of research methods, reporting/transparency, and reproducibility. Dr. Wallach’s research interests include meta-analytical methodology, evaluating study biases, clinical trial design/conduct, pharmacoepidemiology, and regulatory science. His work with the Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency (CRIT) at Yale focuses on evaluating the tools, standards, and approaches used to assess the safety, efficacy, quality, and performance of FDA-regulated products using epidemiologic and meta-research methods. Dr. Wallach is also a Faculty Affiliate of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS). He is currently working to create a meta-research group within the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, with a particular focus on environmental exposure/climate change related research.    

Dr. Zhang's research focuses on cancer prevention and prognosis, early life exposures, and surgical outcomes. In particular, she has been pioneering the causes of increasing trends of thyroid cancer observed worldwide. As thyroid cancer is the fifth most common cancer among women in the United States, and factors that are responsible for this increasing trend are largely unknown. She is currently leading research activities in these areas as the PI of a population-based case-control study of thyroid cancer in Connecticut and a large nested case-control study of thyroid cancer in the Department of Defense Serum Repository (DoDSR) cohort. Dr. Zhang has been studying a wide array of environmental exposures, lifestyle factors and gene-environment interaction in the etiology and prognosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She plays a major role in the International Lymphoma Epidemiology Consortium (InterLymph), and her research on hair dye use served as key evidence for IARC Monograph. She has also been studying environment factors and gene-environment interactions for multiple myeloma and cancers of the testes, pancreas, lung, liver, breast, and bladder. Currently, she is leading a large project developing novel approaches of monitoring and controlling major cancer risk factors in China.

Dr. Zhang became interested in adverse pregnancy outcomes because the fetal origin hypothesis suggests that growth and developmental delays in utero may influence not only childhood mortality and morbidity but also the risk of diseases in adulthood including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Dr. Zhang’s birth cohort studies in Lanzhou and Taiyuan, China focus on investigating a wide range of environmental and lifestyle factors, genetic and epigenetic changes, gene-gene and gene-environment interactions, and risk of adverse birth outcomes and maternal complications.

Dr. Zhang is bringing in her expertise to surgical outcome research in the Department of Surgery to develop a world-class frontier surgical outcome research program through cutting-edge evidence-based surgical outcome research projects, surgical outcome educational program, and international collaborations.

Dr. Yong Zhu is an Associate Professor at Yale University School of Public Health and Assistant Director of Yale Cancer Center for Global Cancer Epidemiology. Dr. Zhu's research interests are oriented towards the use of the molecular epidemiological approach in the study of genetic susceptibility biomarkers and their interactions with environmental exposures in human disease development. Dr. Zhu has been developing and validating novel phenotypic and genotypic assays and biomarkers for several cancer types, including non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, breast, bladder, lung and prostate cancer. By utilizing various techniques in genetics, epigenetics, cytogenetics, cell biology, and computational biology, his studies have identified biomarkers that can characterize inherited predisposition and cellular response to environmental factors. Current research focuses on studying the role of two transcriptional factors, circadian genes and small noncoding RNAs, in tumorigenesis.

Georgia Charkoftaki received her pharmacy degree from the University of Athens, Greece, where she also earned a MSC in drug delivery and a PhD in biopharmaceutics-pharmacokinetics. In August 2013 she moved to the University Colorado Denver to start a postdoc in clinical and translational science, focusing on kidney related diseases. Charkoftaki studied the pharmacokinetics of cyclophosphamide in patients undergoing dialysis and how Vitamin D affects drug metabolism in the kidneys, among other projects. At Yale she has focused on metabolomics working with Waters Xevo G2 QTof and molecular biology. Her main project is a study the importance of aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDHs) on cancer and diabetes and the discovery of new potential drug targets.

Ying Chen has a broad background in environmental genetics and molecular toxicology, with specific training and expertise in redox biology, oxidative stress related disease and transgenic animal models of glutathione (GSH) deficiency. Her research in the past over ten years has focused on understanding the mechanistic roles of GSH redox homeostasis in human disease conditions related to environmental (including dietary) exposures. Other ongoing research projects in the Vasiliou lab include studies of: (i) the mechanistic roles of ALDH1B1 in alcohol-associated colon cancer, and (ii) the functional roles of ALDH1A1/3A1 in corneal pathophysiology.<_o3a_p>

Dr. Gent’s primary research focus is the effects of air pollution on childhood asthma. She has participated as a Co-investigator, as well as PI,on studies specifically focused on exposure to traffic, a major source of air pollution in our region. These studies take advantage of the large data base of ambient air contaminants measured by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at central monitoring sites. Using this information as well as data collected by the research team at the CPPEE inside and outside of study subjects’ homes, Dr. Gent and her colleagues hope to contribute to the understanding of public health effects of short-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution.

Dr. Gent has served as a consultant for the EPA reviewing literature on the effects of nitrogen dioxide and particles on health. Her work for the EPA contributes to the production of their Integrated Science Assessments for these pollutants. This in turn is an important step in the regulatory process that leads to the setting of the National Air Quality Standards.

Dr. Gent is a Senior Research Scientist and the Deputy Director of the Yale Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology.

Dr. Bell's research investigates how human health is affected by atmospheric systems, including air pollution and weather. Much of this work is based in epidemiology, biostatistics, and environmental engineering. The research is designed to be policy-relevant and contribute to well-informed decision-making to better protect human health.

She is a Professor of Environmental Health at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, with secondary appointments at the Yale School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science, Environmental Engineering Program. She is the recipient of the Prince Albert II de Monaco / Institut Pasteur Award, Rosenblith New Investigator Award, and the NIH Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) Award.

Dr. Bogucki has been Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Emergency Medicine, and joined the Yale Emergency Medicine faculty in 1989. Dr. Bogucki has held several positions of leadership in the Fire Service and EMS communities. She chaired the NFPA 1582 Task Group, and remains a principal member of the NFPA 1500 Technical Committee; she served on the Board of Visitors of the National Fire Academy, and conducted on-site investigations of fire fighter line-of-duty deaths for NIOSH.

She's on the editorial board of Pre-hospital Emergency Care, and was an Associate Editor of Academic Emergency Medicine. She served two terms on the Board of Directors of the National Association of EMS Physicians, and spent 15 years on the Board of Directors of the National Registry of EMTs; 2 of them as Chairman of the Board. Dr. Bogucki was a Senior Medical Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the US Department of Health&Human Services from 2004-2008, participating in the Federal medical responses to major disasters.

Dr. Bogucki is currently co-PI on a CMS Innovations project that established a program of coordinated community resources to improve health and independence of elders, while decreasing their reliance on EMS and EDs for medical care.   

Radiation oncologist Peter M. Glazer, MD, PhD, is the chair of the Department of Therapeutic Radiology. He has dedicated his career to helping cancer patients receive the highest quality of care available in a supportive environment.

“When patients are undergoing radiotherapy for cancer, it can be a sensitive and challenging time for them and their families,” he says. “Our team does everything possible to keep our patients safe and comfortable throughout treatment.” 

Dr. Glazer makes it his priority to provide patients seeking care at Smilow Cancer Hospital and its Care Centers with the most advanced technologies and evidence-based treatments. “We take great pride in giving our physicians the best tools to treat cancer,” he says.

As a professor of both therapeutic radiology and genetics at Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Glazer researches new therapeutic strategies for treating cancer and the role of altered DNA repair in tumor progression. His research was recently recognized by the National Cancer Institute of the NIH with a prestigious Outstanding Investigator Award of $7 million that will support his efforts to develop novel DNA repair inhibitors for cancer therapy.

Dr. Redlich, a graduate of Williams College and Yale University School of Medicine, is trained in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, and occupational and environmental medicine. Her clinical practice and research interests focus on occupational and environmental lung diseases, in particular work-related asthma, and health effects and prevention of exposure to isocyanates, chemicals widely used to produce polyurethane foams and coatings and other products.

Dr. Russi is a professor of medicine at the Yale Medical School. He graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1984, was a Fulbright Scholar, earned his medical degree from the University of California San Francisco, and his public health degree from Yale. He completed both internal medicine residency and occupational and environmental medicine fellowship at Yale, joining the faculty in 1993. He is interested in the occupational medicine of healthcare workers and is active nationally in both guidance development and educational programs to enhance the safety of medical centers. Dr. Russi teaches in several courses at Yale, attends on the internal medicine inpatient service, and directs Occupational Health Services at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Jodi Sherman is Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine, and Associate Professor of Epidemiology in Environmental Health Sciences and Affiliate Faculty of the Climate Change and Health Initiative at the Yale School of Public Health, and Director of Sustainability in Anesthesiology at Yale-New Haven Hospital.  Dr. Sherman is an internationally recognized researcher in the emerging field of sustainability in clinical care.  Her research interest is in life cycle assessment (LCA) of environmental emissions, human health impacts, and economic impacts of drugs, devices, clinical care pathways, and health systems. Her work seeks to establish sustainability metrics, paired with health outcomes and costs, to help guide clinical decision-making and professional behaviors toward more ecologically sustainable practices to improve the quality, safety and value of clinical care and to protect public health. Dr. Sherman routinely collaborates with environmental engineers, epidemiologists, toxicologists, health economists, health administrators, health professionals, and sustainability professionals. Dr. Sherman is Founding Director of the Yale Center for Healthcare Environmental Sustainability.

I am an expert in the genetics, cell biology, mutagenesis and biochemistry of DNA repair and cancer and have been funded continuously by the NIH since 1994.  A major focus of my laboratory is to understand how single nucleotide polymorphisms in DNA repair genes, including genes that function in homology directed repair (HDR), nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) and base excision repair (BER) in the germline and somatic tissues impact cancer risk and treatment. We have recently found that RAD51, DNA glycosylase, and POLB germline and somatic tumor variants exhibit functional phenotypes that lead to cellular transformation, genomic instability, and sensitivity or resistance to chemotherapies and ionizing radiation.  We have also developed methods to monitor DNA damage in tissue including the presence of single and double strand breaks that lead to PARP activation and trapping. In addition to this, I have focused on determining the roles of DNA repair in a vertebrate organism and have concentrated my studies on mouse models of DNA repair variants.  Using these models I have revealed critical roles for DNA repair in preventing the autoimmune disease of lupus.  As Associate Director for Basic Research at the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center, I oversee several pilot and internal grant competitions, am the Principal Investigator of the American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant, and am currently leading the development of a Translational Research Core which is designed to link patient health records to biospecimens, genomics data, and a living tumor registry. 

Dr. Shannon Whirledge received her B.S. in Biology and B.A. in Political Science in 2003 from Winthrop University and was awarded her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology in 2009 from Baylor College of Medicine. She continued her studies in reproductive endocrinology as an NIH IRTA fellow at the NIEHS. During her postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Whirledge received her Masters in Health Science in Clinical Research from Duke University. In 2016, she joined the faculty of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine.

Dr. Whirledge is an active member of the Endocrine Society, Women in Endocrinology, and the Society for Reproductive Investigation. Dr. Whirledge is an editorial board member for Endocrinology and serves as an ad hoc reviewer for other journals within the fields of Cell Biology and Reproductive Sciences.

Dr. Ginsberg is the director of the Center for Environmental Health for the New York State Dept of Health and has a Clinical Professor appointment at the Yale School of Public Health. He serves on a number of national committees including US EPA’s Science Advisory Board (2008-present) and the National Academy of Sciences (Biomonitoring committee 2004-2006; USEPA Risk Methods committee which produced Science and Decisions, 2006-2008; Inorganic Arsenic Risk Assessment committee, 2012-2015, Emerging Science committee 2016-present). He also served on USEPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (2004-2009) and has been an external reviewer on a number of USEPA IRIS documents. Dr. Ginsberg has been called on by other federal agencies to provide reviews including OSHA (silica workplace standard), CPSC (cadmium in children’s jewelry) and FDA (dental amalgam). His risk assessments on fish contaminants, synthetic turf fields, acrylamide, cadmium, and assessments pertaining to risks in children and those with genetic polymorphisms have been published in peer review journals. Dr. Ginsberg co-authored a book for the lay public called “What’s Toxic What’s Not” (Berkeley Books, 2006).

Catherine Weikart Yeckel, MS, Ph.D. is an Assistant Clinical Professor. She received a master’s degree in exercise physiology from the University of Pittsburgh and a doctoral degree from University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB)-Galveston in preventive medicine and community health in the areas of human metabolism and nutrition. In collaboration with researchers at UTMB-Galveston, and more recently with researchers and clinicians specializing in pediatric and adult endocrinology at the Yale School of Medicine, she focused her research interests along the spectrum of insulin resistance and ß-cell dysfunction. These interests broadly include cardiometabolic health issues and protection as a consequence of obesity from young to old age, and physical activity/fitness from sedentary to physically fit. She has used physiological challenge models to unmask the impact of arsenic exposure on blood pressure (stress) hyperreactivity, and most recently, to help innovate imaging for brown adipose tissue metabolism in human. Dr. Yeckel created and directs an integrative course for YSPH, Physiology of Public Health. She also initiated and co-directed The Art of Public Health workshops involving MPH and MA student match-ups between YSPH and YSA. She serves as a reviewer/scientific advisor and consultant for diverse entities, including government agencies, museums and companies.

Dr Edward has been a basic sciences researcher since 2000. He has been involved in clinical trials management since 2005. Dr Edward is registered as a professional natural scientist, which allows him to have a broad focus in the biological sciences. He has a good understanding of working with various donors and delivering various projects simultaneously. Dr Edward is passionate about building clinical research capacity in South Africa and strives to achieve efficiencies in all facets of research.

Dr Edward is responsible for the Clinical Research Division and Implementation Research Division at Aurum. These two divisions have more than 400 permanent staff, more than 60 active research grants and an annual operating budget exceeding $30 million. He is currently the Aurum Principal Investigator for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) grant and the Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence (SANTHE) grant. Dr Edward is also a co-investigator on a number of clinical trials at Aurum.

He is the Chief Operating Officer for the SA MRC-funded ACT for TB/HIV collaboration. This collaboration brings together a cross-disciplinary consortium of TB and HIV experts with complementary interests and skills to do transformative and translational TB and HIV research that will advance understanding, contribute to developing new tools and interventions to improve patient, programme and population relevant outcomes and build capacity of early stage investigators.

Dr Edward holds a Bachelor of Science degree with majors in Microbiology and Physiology as well as a Doctor of Technology Degree in Biotechnology. He has published in the areas of basic sciences and clinical research.

Dr. Friesen received a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in occupational and environmental health from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She completed postdoctoral studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a Senior Investigator at the U.S. National Cancer Institute in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. Dr. Friesen's research focuses on quantitative assessment strategies to characterize study participants' workplace exposures through their entire working life to minimize exposure misclassification in occupational epidemiologic studies. She has focused on improving exposure estimates, evaluating the robustness of exposure-response relationships to exposure assessment strategies, and using statistical models for both developing exposure metrics and evaluating their exposure-response relationships.

Dr Salmaan Inayat-Hussain is the Head, Product Stewardship and Toxicology Section, Group Health, Safety and Environment at Petroliam Nasional Berhad  (PETRONAS) and was  a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Yale School of Public Health. He has previously held senior positions including Professor of Toxicology & Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, The National University of Malaysia and Director, Melaka Biotechnology Corporation. Salmaan obtained a PhD in Biochemical Toxicology from the University of Leicester, England in 1997. Salmaan is an American Board Certified Toxicologist, European Registered Toxicologist and Fellow of the Academy of Sciences, Malaysia. He has more than 26 years of research and teaching experience  at various organizations including University of Colorado, Karolinska Institutet, University of Osaka, King’s College London and Kyoto University. He is the Associate Editor for Food and Chemical Toxicology journal and editorial board member for several journals including Human and Experimental Toxicology, Journal of Toxicological Sciences, Toxicology Methods and Mechanisms and Genes and Environment.  Furthermore, Salmaan serves on a number  of international committees including as an expert on Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues, Chairman of the IPIECA Globally Harmonised System for Classification and Labeling Task Force and Director, International Union of Toxicology (IUTOX) Executive Committee. He is an Advisor to the Department of Occupational Safety and Health, Malaysia. Salmaan has participated in working groups organized by international organizations such as WHO, UNEP and APEC Chemical Dialogue.  

Dr. David A. Jett is Director of the NIH Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) Program, a program supported by a specific Congressional appropriation to the NIH for the development of new drugs and diagnostic tools for treating victims of chemical exposures during an emergency. He also serves as Program Director and Scientific Team Leader within the Division of Translational Research at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). After receiving a Ph.D. in Neuropharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Dr. Jett conducted post-doctoral research and subsequently joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health where he conducted research as a university professor for several years. Dr. Jett's scientific interest is in the impact of chemical agents on nervous system function, including the molecular and cellular mechanisms of cognitive and neural development. Specifically he has expertise and experience with pesticides and nerve agents. Dr. Jett is has authored many scientific articles and book chapters in the area of neurotoxicology and has chaired sessions and given keynote addresses at many national and international scientific meetings. He holds the position of Professor Adjunct of Chronic Disease and Epidemiology within the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Jett has served on White House and intergovernmental committees that set the nation's research priorities, as well as science advisory panels for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Defense. Dr. Jett's other major interest at NIH is training and programs designed to increase diversity in the neuroscience research workforce.

Dr. Rena Jones’ research focuses on the application of GIS and novel methodological approaches to assess environmental exposures, especially air and water pollutants, and epidemiologic studies to investigate the health impacts of these exposures. Her interdisciplinary research has explored spatial variability in exposure-disease relationships and examined the consequences of spatial error and other sources of exposure misclassification on epidemiologic inference. She currently works on characterizing long-term exposure to numerous environmental factors and identifying and clarifying how these exposures may cause cancer.

Dr. Kleinstreuer’s research focuses on mathematical and computational modeling of biological systems and their susceptibility to perturbations that result in adverse health outcomes. Her expertise is in computational systems biology, bioinformatics, mathematical modeling, predictive toxicology, alternative models, and biomedical engineering. Kleinstreuer received B.S. degrees in mathematics and biomedical engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Canterbury, and completed her postdoctoral training at the U.S. EPA National Center for Computational Toxicology. Prior to joining the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Kleinstreuer worked for Integrated Laboratory Systems, Inc., as director of the ILS computational toxicology group. She began her role as Deputy Director of the NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM) in early 2016, leading domestic and international efforts to develop novel testing and analysis strategies that provide more rapid, mechanistic, and human-relevant predictions of potential environmental chemical hazards. In addition to her YSPH adjunct position, Kleinstreuer has a secondary appointment in the NIEHS Division of Intramural Research Biostatistics and Computational Biology Branch, and an additional adjunct faculty position in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at UNC-CH. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the 2008 B.H. Neumann Prize from the Australian Mathematical Society, the 2012 Impact Award from the U.S. EPA’s Office of Research and Development, the 2016 F. Clarke Fraser New Investigator Award from the Teratology Society and 2016 Young Researcher Americas Lush Prize, and the 2019 Society of Toxicology Achievement Award. 

Dr. Qing Lan a world leader in environmental and occupational exposures, human health studies and gene environment interaction. Her research focuses on molecular epidemiologic studies of populations exposed to several classes of chemical compounds that are known or suspected occupational and environmental carcinogens. She is one of YSPH’s main collaborators at NCI studying environmental exposures, genetic susceptibility for NHL and multiple myeloma, indoor air pollution and gene polymorphisms for lung cancer risk in Xuanwei, China. She has mentored several YSPH PhD candidates.

Dr. Lan received her M.D. at Weifang Medical University and her Ph.D. in molecular epidemiology at the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine in Beijing, as part of a joint training program with the United States Environmental Protection Agency and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and received her MPH at Johns Hopkins University.

Leon Robertson is a sociologist/epidemiologist. He has conducted research on medical care delivery, the epidemiology of injuries and the effects of various injury prevention and control efforts. His more recent research documented the effect of climate change on increased motor vehicle use and resulting fatalities. The feedback of vehicle use on increased greenhouse gas emissions, resultant warming and increased vehicle use is the subject of his latest research.

Dr. Rothman received an A.B. in biochemistry and molecular biology at Harvard College and an M.D. at Northwestern University. At The Johns Hopkins University, he received training in internal medicine, occupational and environmental medicine, and epidemiology. Dr. Rothman joined the NCI in 1990. His research focuses on using biologic markers of exposure, early biologic effect, and genetic susceptibility in epidemiologic studies of occupational and environmental causes of cancer. Dr. Rothman received the PHS Achievement Medal for research on cancer biomarkers and the Commendation Medal for studies of benzene. He is the author of more than 450 publications.

Elisabete Weiderpass, MD, MSc, PhD, is a Brazilian cancer researcher who is a naturalized Swedish and Finnish citizen. She is an expert in cancer epidemiology and cancer prevention. Since January 2019 she serves as Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer.  IARC is the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), based in Lyon, France, and home more than 350 staff dedicated to cancer research. The Agency’s membership and governance is made up of 26 countries (or ‘participating States’). 

Earlier on, Dr Elisabete Weiderpass served as leader of the Department of Research at the Cancer Registry of Norway, and of the Genetic Epidemiology Group at the Folkhälsan Research Center in Finland. She was a Professor of Medical Epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and a Professor of Cancer Epidemiology at the Arctic University of Norway. She held Adjunct Professorship positions in Cancer Epidemiology in Brazil, China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is a Visiting Professor at the Dasman Diabetes Institute in Kuwait. She has authored over 730 scientific publications in in peer reviewed international journals.  She is an editor of the World Cancer Report, to be launched in 2019.

Chelsea Austin serves as an adaptation design and evaluation consultant to national, state, and local efforts for climate and health adaptation. She has previously completed federal fellowships focused on food and water safety, environmental health surveillance, and health education programming. Her background expertise is in participatory program planning and evaluation, theory-driven program design, and project management. She earned her Master’s in Public Health from Emory University in 2013 and a Bachelors in Business Management from Georgia State University in 2007.

Andrea L. Boissevain, MPH has served as the Director of Health for Town of Stratford since 2010.  She has more than 25 years of multi-agency experience in addressing public health issues, evaluating human health risks and communicating the associated complexities to a wide variety of audiences. Prior to joining the local health department, Ms. Boissevain served as the department’s technical advisor for nearly 13 years on myriad issues pertaining to the federal Raymark Superfund clean-up project. She provided crisis management planning and execution in the early phases of project, reviewed technical documents and drafted comments on behalf of the health department. She also instituted communication and outreach strategies to residents regarding the project’s progress and its impact on public health.

 An advocate of involving the residents in addressing and solving communication issues, Ms. Boissevain orchestrated a series of neighborhood forums over several years to address neighborhood-specific concerns as the cleanup progressed. Known to take decades to clean up, the Raymark Superfund site is still active with the latest phase of remediation work where Ms. Boissevain is working with colleagues from federal and state health and environmental agencies with the fourth “generation” of stakeholder groups.

Leading a nationally accredited local health department (only the third to be accredited in CT), Ms. Boissevain is responsible for leading the development and implementation of mission, vision and strategic objectives of ensuring that the 10 Essential Services of Public Health are carried out. Local public health ranges from enforcing local and state regulations, preparing for and responding to public health emergencies, addressing health disparities, investigating foodborne illness outbreaks and linking residents to needed care or resources--all of that and more are part of part and parcel of Ms. Boissevain's work in Stratford.

 In other community engagement work, Ms. Boissevain is also an active member of Primary Care Action Group, a coalition consisting of two local hospitals, two federally qualified health centers and six area local health departments dedicated to championing health improvement in Greater Bridgeport area.  She also serves as co-chair of the steering committee of Get Healthy CT, one of the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) work groups that focuses on eliminating obesity, a health priority for Stratford as well as the region. 

Dr. Laura Bozzi is Director of Programs for the Yale Climate Change and Health Initiative where she plays a key role in broadening its online education offerings, expanding communications and community-based engagement, and developing new programs including an environmental/climate health justice clinic and a report on climate change and health in Connecticut.

Previously, Dr. Bozzi led the Rhode Island Department of Health Climate Change Program. In that role, she worked to promote policy change, increase public awareness, and support community resilience building strategies that collectively help both mitigate climate change’s negative health impacts and promote health equity. Laura was appointed as a member to the State of Rhode Island's Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council (EC4) Advisory Board and the Agricultural Lands Preservation Commission, and she also served as Co-Director of the New Leaders Council Rhode Island. Over her career, she has worked across the United States -- from Oregon and West Virginia to Washington, DC and Rhode Island – in environmental protection, food systems, and fisheries. Laura holds a Ph.D. in Forestry and Environmental Studies from Yale University.  

Dr. Canny has extensive experience as a nonprofit leader in the Greater New Haven community for many decades. Most recently, she was the senior vice president for Grantmaking and Strategy at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven until 2014. Dr. Canny led The Community Foundation’s efforts to use community knowledge and information to mobilize giving in the community and to advance Foundation efforts to strengthen the Greater New Haven region. She was also responsible for The Community Foundation’s grantmaking programs, nonprofit technical assistance and leadership initiatives, as well as community outreach.

Prior to coming to The Community Foundation, she worked for a decade at Connecticut Voices for Children, a research-based policy and advocacy organization, as director of research, and in the later years, as managing director and chief operating officer. Areas of research included child poverty, children and youth indicator reports, immigration as well as educational and health disparities. Before joining Connecticut Voices for Children, Dr. Canny was assistant dean for the Yale School of Public Health where she earned a Ph.D. in Chronic Disease Epidemiology. She was also a research scientist at YSPH for many years. She maintains an appointment at YSPH and serves on its Leadership Council, Stolwijk Scholarship Committee and Centennial Committee.

After college, Dr. Canny served in the Peace Corps in Togo, West Africa as a health educator.

Currently, Dr. Canny continues to serve as the President of the Board of Datahaven, an online comprehensive source for data about the Greater New Haven area. Datahaven's recent report is a comprehensive indicator report for the Greater New Haven area: http://www.ctdatahaven.org/sites/ctdatahaven/files/DataHaven_GNH_Community_Index.pdf. She is also co-chair of the Community Impact Committee at United Way and on the Board of New Hytes.

Dr. Howard Cohen is Professor of Occupational Safety and Health Management at the University of New Haven and Adjunct Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Rhode Island. He received his BA from Boston University and earned both his PhD in Industrial Hygiene and his MPH at the University of Michigan. He is board certified in the comprehensive practice of industrial hygiene by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene. Prior to joining the University of New Haven faculty in 1994, Dr. Cohen spent sixteen years as Corporate Manager of Industrial Hygiene at Olin Corporation, a Fortune 200 company with nearly 20,000 employees.

Among the most recognized industrial hygienists in the US, Dr. Cohen was Editor-in-Chief of the American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal from 1991–2003 and currently serves as a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene. He is the current Chair of the ANSI Z88.2 Committee on Respiratory Protection and Chair of the American Industrial Hygiene Association Committee on Respiratory Protection. A member of the Industrial Hygiene Roundtable, he has served as Treasurer of the American Board of Industrial Hygiene.

Dr. Cohen has received numerous professional awards including the 1989 Warren A. Cook Award for outstanding scholarship from the University of Michigan and the 1990, 1992 and 2002 John M. White Award for excellence in respiratory protection from the American Industrial Hygiene Association. He shared the 2003 Adolf G. Kammer Award for Authorship from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and the 2004 President’s Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association. His published writings address the assessment of workplace respiratory hazards, the characterization of specific airborne particulates, and the development and implementation of respiratory protection programs.

Kathryn Conlon is an epidemiologist in the Climate and Health Program at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her research leverages epidemiology, climate science, land use planning, and statistics to study current and future climate-related exposures and health outcomes. Her most recent projects involve working closely with state and local jurisdictions to build an evidence base of public health interventions for adapting to climate change. Dr. Conlon earned her PhD in environmental health sciences from the University of Michigan School of Public Health in 2013. She completed her postdoctoral research joint appointment at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health. She has presented and published widely on topics relating to climate change adaptation and human health.

Marianne Engelman brings to the Yale School of Public Health deep experience working with environmentally overburdened communities. She currently serves as Lecturer at both the School of Public Health and Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, where she supervises interdisciplinary teams of law, environmental and public health students. She is also of counsel with the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), a non-profit civil rights law and policy organization. As a Visiting Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School from 2017 through 2018, she directed an environmental justice clinic focusing on civil rights enforcement in the environmental justice context.  She served as senior staff attorney at Earthjustice, where she focused on civil rights enforcement, as well as related issues in the areas of toxics, waste, the health impacts of industrial agriculture, and the effects of environmental contamination on vulnerable and overburdened populations. Her experience includes ten years as General Counsel at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), a non-profit civil rights law firm, where she directed a legal and advocacy program focused on racial and ethnic disparities in access to health care, environmental justice, and disability rights. She began her legal career as a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where she represented clients attempting to break barriers of access to health care and quality education. Marianne lectures widely and has taught graduate, law and undergraduate level courses at Columbia University, the School of Law at Seton Hall University, and Baruch College. She holds a B.A. in government from Cornell University, a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University.  Her publications include “Unfinished Agenda: The Need for Civil Rights Litigation to Address Continuing Patterns of Race Discrimination and Inequalities in Access to Health Care,” “Breaking the Barriers of Access to Health Care: A Discussion of the Role of Civil Rights Litigation and the Relationship Between Burdens of Proof and the Experience of Denial,” “Evaluating Systems for Delivering Legal Services to the Poor:  Conceptual and Methodological Considerations” (co-authored with Gregg G. Van Ryzin), and “A Question of Justice: African-American Legal Perspectives on the 1883 Civil Rights Cases.”  Her most recent writing focuses on civil rights enforcement in the environmental justice context.

Rolando oversees the Yale Medical Library Bioinformatics Support Program and is Lecturer in Epidemiology for the Environmental Health Sciences (EHS) Department, Yale School of Public Health. This end-user-centered bioinformatics program provides resources, training, consultations, and collaboration to the biomedical sciences researchers at Yale including finding, retrieving, analyzing and sharing molecular datasets. After obtaining his B.S. in Biology at the University of Havana, Cuba, he worked for seven years at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana on projects related to the effect of cytokines on Human Papillomavirus-associated diseases. Before coming to Yale he provided bioinformatics support at Univ. of Florida -where he worked for four years- teaching several workshops and a credit-bearing course on bioinformatics for health sciences.

Dr. Iris Herz-Kaminski has a long time interest in water. She received her B.Sc in Earth Sciences, M.Sc in Atmospheric Science and PhD in Environmental Science from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. She also holds a MPPM (Master in Public Policy and Management) from the University of Pittsburgh. For her graduate studies she used an atmospheric numeric-model to evaluate evaporation rates and climate trends in Northern Israel. For her PhD she experimented with water and wastewater filtration. Her postdoctoral work included water research and heavy metal analysis for environmental research. She has been the director of the water commission research fund for the government of Israel.

Jill Kelly is a classroom instructor for GIS. Her research focuses on the development and application of GIS and other spatial methods to study environmental phenomena. Jill is a geospatial generalist with interests in morphology, areal aggregation, and raster analysis. Her dissertation research explored the spatial aggregation of lidar measurements in predicting spatially explicit estimates of forest biomass.

Kate is the point of contact for all things library for affiliates of the School of Public Health, including researchers, faculty, students, and staff. She can create a tailored instruction session for your students, your team, or your lab; help you develop a comprehensive search strategy for systematic reviews of the biomedical and social sciences literature; or help you make sense of funder and journal mandates on research data management, open access, and data sharing. Kate also teaches and supports public health data discovery, geographic information systems, and citation management. Contact Kate with suggestions for new purchases or licenses of journals, books, databases, and software -- and to set up library orientations for new YSPH affiliates (and new-to-the-library YSPH affiliates). Email Kate at kate.nyhan@yale.edu or set up a consultation at a time that's convenient for you.

Michael Pascucilla was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer/Director of Health for the East Shore District Health Department (ESDHD) in 2010, which serves the Towns of Branford, East Haven and North Branford, Connecticut.  Prior to ESDHD, he served as the Assistant Director of Health for the City of Hartford, Department of Health & Human Services, and past positions include the University of Connecticut, Department of Environmental Health & Safety, Yale University, Department of Epidemiology & Public Health and several local public health districts.

Michael holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Public Health/Nutrition from Southern Connecticut State University and a Master's Degree in Public Health from the University of Connecticut, Community Medicine & Health Care. Mr. Pascucilla is a Nationally Certified Environmental Health Specialist/Registered Sanitarian and has over 26 years’ experience as a public health official in local, state and federal government. He is very active in the public health field and is a Site Visitor for the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), currently seats as a Board of Director/Past President for the Connecticut Associations of Directors of Health (CADH) and is a Board of Director for the Connecticut Public Health Association. Mr. Pascucilla is also the past President of the Connecticut Environmental Health Association (CEHA) and served within the leadership of this organization for over seven years, where he continues to be an active member. 

Michael holds several National and Connecticut State public health certifications and over the course of his career, he has been very engaged as a public health official in governmental and academic settings. His experience includes hands-on participated in several national/federal grant-funded initiatives, including a practicum at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Yale University. His experience also includes health prevention education and promotion among diverse community populations, staff supervision, administrative/budget/grant management, population health policy, workforce development, code enforcement, volunteer/ committee, food/water safety, indoor air quality and communicable disease prevention/education.

Michael also is an Part-time Professor at Southern Connecticut State University in the Department of Public Health located in New Haven, Connecticut. He has combined his passion for this professional field of public health and higher education, as local health departments strive to hire and find well-qualified, public health college educated employees. He is actively mentoring/working to improve public health training/hands-on courses to assist college students in their career preparation.  To that end, his organization also regularly promotes the public health field at public events/venues, public schools and colleges, and host high school and college students with internships to attract young adults into the next generation of the public health workforce.

Michaels focused areas of public health research are climate change and food allergies. In 2016, he was the recipient of the National Environmental Health Association's Professional Sabbatical Award, where he conducted research in the United Kingdom on food allergies.

With respect to his experience outside his positions as a public health official and an educator, he is committed to this professional field by improving the quality of his local environment and is very engaged his hometown community. Michael resides in the Town of Guilford, Connecticut with his wife and two sons, and their family enjoys boating, fishing/shellfishing, swimming and the many other recreational activities that Long Island Sound offers.

Connie Roser-Renouf is an Associate Research Professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Her research focuses on understanding how diverse publics interpret and respond to information on the issue of climate change. The objective of this research is the identification of effective communication strategies to inform and engage audiences. 

Connie earned her PhD in Communication Research at Stanford University in 1986. Prior to joining the Center at George Mason, she taught and conducted research at the University of California at Santa Barbara; the University of Denver; the University of Pittsburgh; and Humboldt State University.

Mr. Slade's work focuses on the development of analytical models to evaluate the effects of physical, social and environmental factors on the patterns of disease and injury within the workplace setting, including non-traditional settings such as the military and merchant mariners. In recent years, he has been the lead statistician for four clinical trials conducted by the Department of Defense to determine the effect of pharmacological agents on prevention of hearing loss as well as mild traumatic brain injuries.

Kristin Timm is a doctoral student in Science Communication and a research assistant at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Broadly, her research interests include how climate change is represented in the media and the processes of making climate science easier to use for decision making. Prior to attending George Mason University, Kristin spent a decade working in science and environmental communications. She has a MSc in Science Communication and BA in Rural Development, with an emphasis in Natural Resource Management, both from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Lawrence Marks, PhD, studies how humansensory systems transduce and process patterns of stimulus energy, and how the resulting information is encoded and represented in perception and cognition. Current work focuses on developing sensory-cognitive models of multisensory (gustatory and olfactory) perception of flavors and, more generally, on theoretical implications of multisensory processing for perception and cognition.

Stolwijk was an associate fellow and then a fellow of the John B. Pierce Laboratory from 1957 to 1974 and associate director from 1974 to 1989. His research was in occupational health and indoor air pollution. He is the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology and Public Health. He served as Chair of Public Health from 1982-1989.