Faculty Awards and News
Dr. David Carpenter received the Hudson Hero Award from Riverkeeper, along with the DEC Commissioner. His accomplishments as a public health physician were shared at their annual event on June 8.
Ursula Lauper’s EPA proposal titled “Winning the Race Against Competing Risks: Optimizing Drinking Water Disinfection to Minimize Opportunistic Pathogen & DBP Risks” has been recommended for funding. The grant led by Michigan State University with partners from The Ohio State University, Drexel University, NYSDOH, and others.
Dr. Shao Lin was invited as a national expert to speak at “Adapting Health Systems to Protect Children from the Impact of Climate Change” sponsored by UNICEF in February, at a United Nations Water Conference Expert Panel in March, and as a panelist for the UAlbany Center for Environmental Health/Maternal Child Health in March. She was also invited to participate in the study section to review grants for “NIH Center for Oceans & Human Health: Impacts of Climate Change on Oceans and Great Lakes” in May. This June, “The Long-Term Effect of Ultrafine Particles on Mortality” (Quan Qi, Fangqun Yu, Gan Luo, Arshad A. Nair, Han Liu, and Shao Lin) was presented orally at the 12th Annual conference of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon). Dr. Lin’s team also submitted three abstracts to the APHA Annual Meeting this November:
- Nair A. A., Shao L., Luo G., Ryan I., Qi Q., Deng X., and Yu F., Exposure disparities of aerosol pollutants (ultrafine particles and PM2.5) by socioeconomic status in New York State
- Qi Q., Yu F., Luo G., Nair A. A., and Lin S., The long-term effect of ultrafine particles on mortality and its sociodemographic disparities
- Gao D., Friedman S., Hosler A., Sheridan S., Zhang W., Yu F., Qi Q., and Lin S. Modification effects of ultrafine particles on the association between ambient extreme cold exposure and diabetes-related hospital admissions in winter and transitional months
Lastly, Dr. Lin trained also two high school students on the literature review process.
Dr. Mary O’Reilly attended the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and taught a professional development course on risk and decision-making. She also chaired the Stewardship and Sustainability Committee meeting and promoted the Circular Economy series of infographics.
Dr. Kai Zhang accepted an invitation to serve as the Associate Editor of Science of The Total Environment (Impact Factor: 10.75), which is one of the top environmental journals. In addition, his paper “Air Pollution, Built Environment, and Early Cardiovascular Disease” was accepted by Circulation Research (Impact Factor: 23.22), one of the top journals in cardiology.
Student/Post-Doc Awards and News
Congratulations to our EHS graduates: Amanda Andreas, Najm Alsadat Madani, Fatim Sannoh, Gabrielle Roosevelt, and Taina Suarez.
Amanda Andreas (PhD graduate mentored by Sam Bowser/Lei Zhu) successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled, “Lead and cadmium exposure alters respiration and shell bioadhesive matrix in a single-chambered, agglutinated foraminiferan protist: implications for marine biomonitoring” in April. Amanda is currently living in Montana, working as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Montana. She was also recently awarded the Johanna M. Resig Foraminiferal Research Fellowship from the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research for the research she conducted in Antarctica.
Roxann Brna (MS student) is interning with the NYSDOH Bureau of Water Supply Protection where she is analyzing data on Legionella in healthcare facilities and working on her thesis. Ursula Lauper, Pauline Wanjugi and Xiaobo Xue Romeiko serve on Roxann’s thesis committee.
Han Liu, a research assistant in Dr. Lin’s lab, received a post-doc fellowship from Brown University, starting in July.
Najm Alsadat Madani (PhD graduate mentored by David Carpenter) successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled, “Environmental Toxicants such as a Herbicide and Air Pollutants and Their Impact On Human Health” in April. She was offered a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at the University at Buffalo. She declined this offer and chose to accept an offer of employment as a Research Scientist for the Center for Environmental Health, Bureau of Toxic Substance Assessment, NYSDOH.
Fatim Sannoh (PhD graduate mentored by Haider Khwaja) successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled, “State of Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5) and its Chemical Constituents with Morbidity due to Pulmonary Diseases in an Urban City of Southern Asia” in April.
Mariana Torres (PhD candidate mentored by Beth Feingold):
- Participated in the panel "Promoting Economic Security on the Local Level" at the Rockefeller Institute of Government 2023 Local Government Lab.
- Helped facilitate a system mapping workshop: "A Systems Approach to Pandemic Communications" at the NYC Pandemic Response Institute in NYC in May.
- Participated in a roundtable discussion on food system resilience at the "Knowing Food" conference in Boston in June.
- Participated in the first in-person Multi-scale RECIPES Network meeting in June. She will present results on a model to test the effectiveness of Nourish New York and the New York State waste ban on mitigating the impact of shocks on the recovery of fruits and vegetables at the International System Dynamics Conference in Chicago in July.
- Was awarded the Initiatives for Women (IFW) award from UAlbany.
- Will be a teaching assistant for the system dynamics intermediate course at the System Dynamics Society's Summer School in July.
Annual Poster Day
Excellence in Scholarship Award:
Najm Alsadat Madani (Mentor – David Carpenter) “Patterns of Emergency Room Visits for Respiratory Diseases in New York State in Relation to Air Pollution, Poverty and Smoking”
Honorable Mention:
Cindy Arthur (Mentor – Erin Bell) “Community Engagement for the Multi-Site PFAS Health Study in the City of Newburgh and Hoosick Falls Area”
Honorable Mention:
Kimberly Mergen (Mentor - Susan Madison-Antenucci) “Cryptosporidium hominis and Cryptosporidium parvum Subtypes in New York State: A Partial Survey of Specimens from 2022”
Alumni News
Ahlam Abuawad (MPH, mentored by Dr. Beth Feingold) defended her dissertation in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health last July. Ahlam’s dissertation was entitled, “Arsenic, Nutrition, and Metabolic Outcomes.” She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She is continuing her work with arsenic, metabolomics and diabetes-related outcomes under the mentorship of Dr. Margaret Karagas. Last month, one of her final projects from Columbia was published in EHP.
The School of Public Health Research Committee recognized Xinlei Deng (PhD, mentored by Dr. Shao Lin) from the Department of Environmental Health Sciences as this year’s recipient for his dissertation titled Developing High-Resolution Meteorological Datasets to Assess the Short-Term Association Between Meteorological Factors and Green Space and Mental Disorders.