Department of Environmental Health Sciences - 2024 Newsletter
Note from Department Chair
It has been an exciting year within the Department of Environmental Health Sciences! Between mentoring our students, teaching courses, conducting research, presenting at conferences, and engaging with our larger scientific and general communities – we’ve accomplished a lot since our last newsletter and have many achievements to celebrate.
As experts in environmental health, we’ve been called on by the media, the National Institute of Aging, APHA, NYSDEC, NYSERDA, American Industrial Hygiene Association, NYSDOH, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and many other agencies and non-profits to provide critical and timely guidance and information. We’ve collaborated with partners in Germany, China, Romania, and even just around the corner in Buffalo, New York, as we work to expand scientific knowledge. I want to thank you all for your continued efforts in our field-- and thank you to our faculty for your commitment to teaching of the next generation of environmental health scientists.
Coming up this summer, a team of our researchers will present at the Diabetes and Endocrinology conference in Zurich, Switzerland from August 14-16, and we will also have research teams presenting at the Annual APHA Meeting in October. If you are attending these conferences—as an alum, a colleague, or just a friend—we invite you to stop by and connect with us.
And regardless of your ability to connect with us in person, we invite you to read this newsletter to stay informed of some of our work. It is truly an exciting time to be a part of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at UAlbany!
Shao Lin, MD, PhD, MPH
Department Chair
Professor
Faculty News & Awards
Erin Bell, interim dean of the School of Public Health, has accepted a three-year appointment to serve as dean of the new college, effective July 1, 2024.
Beth Feingold and Mariana Torres (PhD Student – Beth Feingold) presented at the NYS food summit on “Unlocking Insights: Lessons from Community Partnerships in Research.”
Xiaobo Xue Romeiko received a Sustainability Award for her teaching and research, which includes a range of state and federally funded projects focusing on advanced computational methods for assessing environmental sustainability coupled with health risk and social behavior analysis.
Shao Lin was invited to participate in the NIEHS Study Section to review grants for Center Grant P30 and Training Grant T32 in October and November 2024 respectively as a Standing Member.
Mary O’Reilly participated in Keys to Our Future at AIHA Connect 2024, the American Industrial Hygiene Association's annual international conference. She also presented on the intersectionality of worker injury, groundwater depletion, sustainability and the Tragedy of the Commons revisited.
Research Spotlight
Environmental Health Sciences Researchers Received Patent for Novel PFAS Removal System
John Paccione and David Dziewulski have patented the design of a new system to treat water for PFAS — synthetic chemicals known to contaminate ground and surface waters. PFAS (short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), are difficult to decompose, linger in the environment and pose a threat to both environmental and human health. The novel system is designed to be efficient, scalable and adaptable, with potential to treat water and wastewater from manufacturing facilities that use PFAS, aide in the disposal of foams used to extinguish liquid fires, and remove harmful chemicals from drinking water. The system can be scaled from bench trials up to municipal drinking water facilities.
Read more about the novel PFAS removal system
Featured Research Projects
If you haven't already, make sure to take a look at our Multi-Site PFAS and Health project happening in Hoosick Falls and Newburgh, NY. And, several researchers in our department are a part of RECIPES, the first national academic research network on wasted food in the United States.
Remembering our Dear Colleague Lei Zhu
It is with a heavy heart that we share that our dear friend, colleague, and mentor Lei Zhu passed away in May 2024. We were so very fortunate to have Lei as a part of our Environmental Health Sciences family. She contributed significantly to our School of Public Health and to our field of study, and will be missed by all of us.
Student/Post-Doc News & Awards
- Congratulations to our Spring graduates!
- Donghong Gao, a PhD student working with Shao Lin, obtained her PhD degree in Epidemiology. She has published two papers from her dissertation and is currently submitting her 3rd and 4th papers this summer.
- Lixia Liang, a PhD student from Sun Yat-Sen University in China has recently joined Shao Lin’s team on a research exchange. She will work under Lin at UAlbany for a year.
- Quan Qi, a PhD student from the Department of Economics who has been under Shao Lin’s advisement for two years, served as the first author for two papers recently published in top environmental health journals (Journal of Hazardous Materials and Environmental Health Perspectives). Both journals have impact factors over 10.
- Shao Lin has been training three high school students (Sean Li, Eva He and Erin Li) on the literature review process and research paper writing.
- Undergraduate students recently visited the New York State Capitol to try their hand at field research and discover what it would be like to work as a scientist at the NYSDOH Center for Environmental Health and at the Wadsworth Center laboratories. The experience was arranged by Ursula Lauper, who is working to create new pathways for students to gain hands-on research experience as undergraduates.
On Thursday, April 30, 2024, many of our students presented on their internship and research experiences at Poster Day, a part of the UAlbany Showcase Day. High school students, community members, colleagues, and friends stopped by to view our students' posters. Faculty judges evaluated the posters in environmental health sciences to present awards to students (sponsored by HRI). The following students received awards:
Excellence in Scholarship Award: Sarah Otaru (Mentor – David Carpenter) “Associations between urine glyphosate levels and metabolic health risks: insights from a large cross-sectional population-based study”
Honorable Mention: Joseph Teson (Mentor – Patrick Parsons) “Evaluating a research protocol for collecting infant urine on cotton pads for trace element analysis by ICP-MS/MS: Pre-analytical concerns with contamination and/or adsorption of multiple analytes”
Honorable Mention: Kimberly Mergen (Mentor - Susan Madison-Antenucci) “Emerging Cryptosporidium hominis subtypes in New York State: a 2022-2023 Survey”
All of our students did an incredible job sharing their research and internship experiences in a way that was easy to understand.
Alumni News
- Celeste Butts (PhD Mentor – Michael Bloom) is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor in the Population Health Management and Policy Department in the College of Health and Human Sciences at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
- Najm Alsadat Madani (PhD Mentor – David Carpenter) works as a research scientist 2 in the Division of Nutrition at the NYSDOH. She engages in tasks such as developing the annual pregnancy nutrition surveillance system reports, analyzing WIC nutrition surveillance data by person, place, and time, and generating quantitative statistical analyses, reports, briefs, manuscripts, abstracts, presentations using NYWIC nutrition surveillance data, and publish original public health research in peer-reviewed journals. View Najm Alsadat Madani’s recent publication.
- Stacy Pettigrew (PhD Mentor – Beth Feingold) was promoted to Associate Professor and named the Director of the Collaboratory at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
Publications
View all research publications
Publication spotlight:
Mary O’Reilly: Published a chapter in Industrial Hygiene Performance Metrics at the end of last year: Mansdorf, Z., P.Logan and M.O’Reilly. 2023. “Safety and Health Reporting for Sustainability,” in Industrial Hygiene Performance Metrics, 2nd edition, R,Scott Lawson and Celia A.Booth (eds). AIHA Press, pp. 149-157.
Ursula Lauper, Pauline Wanjugi and David Dziewulski: Morse, M., B. Savage, U. Lauper, D. Dziewulski, L. Mingle, P. Wanjugi, S. Bluerman, M. Zartarian and D. Wroblewski. 2024. Incorporating Novel Methods Into a Standard Legionnaires’ Disease Investigation and Identifying the Exposure Source of an Outbreak in New York, JEH, 86(9):16-23.
David Lawrence: Lawrence, D.A.; Jadhav, A.; Mondal, T.K.; Carson, K.; Lee, W.T.; Hogan, A.H.; Herbst, K.W.; Michelow, I.C.; Brimacombe, M.; Salazar, J.C.; et al. Inflammatory and Autoimmune Aspects of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C): A Prospective Cohort Study. Viruses 2024, 16, 950. https://doi.org/10.3390/v16060950
Shao Lin: 1. Lin S, Qi Q, Liu H, Deng X, Trees I, Yuan X, and Gallant M (2024). The joint effects of thunderstorms and power outages on respiratory-related emergency visits and modifying and mediating factors. Environmental Health Perspectives 132 (6), 067002. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP13237
2. Qi, Qi Q, Yu F, Nair AA, Lau SS, Luo G, Mithu I, Zhang W, Li S, Lin S (2024). Hidden danger: the long-term effect of ultrafine particles on mortality and its sociodemographic disparities in New York State. Journal of Hazardous Materials Volume 471, 5 June 2024, 134317.
3. Trees I, Yu F, Deng X, Luo G, Zhang W, Lin S (2024). Ultrafine Particles and Hospital Visits for Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases in New York State. Annals of the American Thoracic Society ( March, ja). https://doi.org/10.1513/AnnalsATS.202303-267OC