Environmental health

The focus of Dr. Marc Verhougstraete's research is on environmental microbiology as it relates to exposure and public health. As a result of his formal education in environmental biology, scientific training in environmental microbiology, professional experiences in environmental health science, and co-director of the Environment, Exposure Science, and Risk Assessment Center (ESRAC), he examines microbial hazards and environmental exposures and quantifies associated adverse health outcomes. Dr. Verhougstraete's research has focused on environmental microbiology and understanding the sources of contamination, assessing microbial exposures, and measuring the transport of pathogens in water, air, and built environments. Using non-pathogen surrogate organisms and pathogen monitoring and cultivation and molecular tools, he aims to better understand how pathogen exposure and dose relate to gastrointestinal illnesses. Using these approaches, his team has measured microorganisms in irrigation canals, beaches, estuaries, rivers and lakes, groundwater wells, household drinking water systems, oysters, fresh produce, filters, airplanes, and healthcare systems. By working with underrepresented individuals in underserved communities, his team has recently quantified microbial and metal exposures in water distribution systems, modeled health risk for these exposures, and defined most appropriate water treatment interventions for the communities most in need. Ultimately, Marc wants to reduce human exposures to pathogens that cause disease by coupling quantitative microbial measurements with risk assessment models that inform intervention practices.

He also serves as the director of the Rural Health Professions Program (RHPP) at the University of Arizona, and routinely engages with health professionals and graduate students across Arizona to increase the number of public health students who practice in rural and underserved communities in the state of Arizona. RHPP is a partnership with the Arizona Area Health Education Center (AHEC) and the five regional AHECs, which Marc also serves in multiple roles including lead faculty mentor for the AHEC Scholars program. This partnership facilitates research and rural community health resilency.

Frank von Hippel, Ph.D., is a professor of environmental health sciences in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and the lead of the college's One Health Research Initiative. He conducts research at the nexus of ecotoxicology, mechanisms of toxicity, and health disparities. He uses locally occurring wildlife and laboratory animals as models for human exposure and disease. He is especially interested in health disparities experienced by vulnerable populations, and he employs a community-engaged approach. Examples of current projects include investigations of endocrine disruption and disease in Yupik people due to exposure to persistent organic pollutants originating from Cold War military installations in the Arctic and health effects associated with pesticide and perchlorate exposure in migrant Mexican farmworkers on the U.S. border. His lab integrates a variety of approaches to establish routes of exposure and mechanisms of developmental disruption ranging from the genome to the whole organism and its environment. From 2015-2018 he served as Associate Editor of the Elsevier journal Environmental Pollution, where he now serves on the editorial board. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Science Communication Network (http://sciencecommunicationnetwork.org/), which brings media attention to environmental health. He is also the creator and host of the Science History Podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/science-history-podcast/id1325288920) and the author of The Chemical Age, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2020.

Walter W. Piegorsch, Ph.D., PStat, is a Professor of Mathematics and the Director of Statistical Research & Education at the University of Arizona’s BIO5 Institute. He is also a Professor of Public Health and a Member (and former Chair) of the University’s Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Statistics. Dr. Piegorsch studies data science for environmental and public health applications, with emphasis on environmental risk assessment and informatics for precision medicine. He has developed new bioinformatic methods for identifying differentially expressed genetic pathways with single-subject data, and he currently leads a team developing statistical methods for estimating benchmark dose markers in environmental risk assessment. This latter research has been funded by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. National Cancer Institute. He also has constructed statistical models for data from transgenic bio-technologies, developed guidelines for the design of bioassays in select transgenic animal systems, and has proposed retrospective designs for analyzing gene-environment and gene-nutrient interactions in human population studies. Dr. Piegorsch’s work has led to over 200 journal articles and book chapters, five books, and he has served as Editor for two scientific encyclopedias. Dr. Piegorsch has held a number of professional positions, including Chairman of the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics & the Environment (2004) and election to the Council of the International Biometric Society (2002-2005). From 2010-2019 he served as Editor-in-Chief of Environmetrics, the oldest scientific journal publishing on the development and application of quantitative methods in the environmental sciences. He also has served as Joint-Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (Theory & Methods Section), and as a member of many journal editorial boards, including Environmental and Ecological Statistics, Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis, Mutation Research, and Biometrics. Dr. Piegorsch has been honored as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, a Member (by Election) of the International Statistical Institute, and has received the Distinguished Achievement Medal of the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics and the Environment. Keywords: "statistics", "data analytics", "environmetrics", "quantitative risk assessment"

Dawn H. Gouge, PhD, is a Specialist and Professor at the University of Arizona, College of Agriculture and Life Science, Department of Entomology. Dr. Gouge is well established in the U.S. as a community Integrated Pest Management expert and works with international partners in several countries. Dawn has published 38 original research papers and more than 80 extension publications, many in collaboration with investigators from around the world, authored 4 book chapters and co-edited a definitive Pest Management Strategic Plan. Dr. Gouge is a frequent presenter at national and international meetings, and serves as a steering committee organizer of the International IPM Symposium conference. Dawn has received11 awards for outstanding achievement and provides service on both National and Federal advisory committees. Dr. Gouge has led the charge in establishing higher pest management standards in children’s environments, reducing risks associated with pest and pesticide exposure. Keywords: arthropod vectors, bed bugs, Integrated pest managment

Jefferey L. Burgess, MD, MS, MPH is a Professor and Division Director of Community, Environment and Policy within the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Dr. Burgess’ research focuses on improving occupational health and safety, with a special focus on firefighters, other public safety personnel and miners. Areas of current and past research include: reduction of occupational exposures, illnesses and injuries; respiratory toxicology; environmental arsenic exposure; and hazardous materials exposures including methamphetamine laboratories. In addition to multiple research grants, Dr. Burgess is the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Mountain West Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center and a joint PI for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health-funded Western Mining Safety and Health Resource Center. Dr. Burgess is internationally recognized for his research evaluating the health effects of firefighting and methods for reducing firefighter exposures and other hazards, including but not limited to improved respiratory protection and injury prevention. He is also internationally known for his work on mining health and safety, and is a co-PI on a large Science Foundation Arizona grant supporting mining risk management, exposure assessment and control and economic analysis of health and safety systems. A separate ongoing grant is focused on comparing exposures and health effects associated with the use of diesel and biodiesel blend fuels in underground mining. He also has carried out multiple research projects on the adverse effects of low-level arsenic exposure in drinking water and more recently has begun to evaluate exposures from dietary arsenic sources.

Paloma I. Beamer, Ph.D., joined the College of Public Health in 2007 as an assistant professor in Environmental Health Sciences. The central motivation behind her research is in the development of tools that can help provide more robust exposure and dose estimates and improve the demonstration of a relationship between measured environmental concentrations and resulting health effects, particularly amongst children and underserved populations. Currently Dr. Beamer is using both computer modeling and laboratory techniques in her research. She is currently using GIS techniques to assess the risk of wheezing from exposure to traffic pollutants in early childhood. As an expert in micro-activity patterns she is examining the activity patterns of older children and utilizing them to estimate dust ingestion. Dr. Beamer has built a laboratory to characterize exposure and risk of water-borne contaminants. Currently she is using this laboratory to measure the concentration of tricholoethylene in breastmilk and water contaminants in Nogales. Dr. Beamer is also involved field sampling and exposure modeling projects aimed at understanding children's exposures to pesticides in agricultural communities and metals near hazardous waste sites. Dr. Beamer has served as Academic Councilor on the Board of the International Society of Exposure Science. She has been a long time member of the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science. She has received the "Scientific Technological Achievement Award" from US EPA, "Mentored Quantitative Research Development Award" from NIH, and the "40 under 40" Award from the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.