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Columbia
Center for Children’s Environmental Health – Frederica
Perera , Dr. P.H.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Perera is Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University and leads a team of scientists and other experts in studying the effects of exposures to urban air pollutants and pesticides on children's respiratory health, neurocognitive development, and cancer risk. She pioneered the field of molecular epidemiology and is internationally recognized for her research on environmental causes of cancer and developmental disorders including the effects of ambient air pollution, environmental tobacco smoke, pesticides and other environmental pollutants on children's health. Dr. Perera's group has validated and applied biomarkers such as DNA adducts, alterations in genes and chromosomes, and genetic susceptibility factors to study the pathogenesis of disease. Her focus has been on the use of biomarker/molecular epidemiologic data in disease prevention and understanding environment-susceptibility interactions..
Cincinnati
Children’s Environmental Health Center – Bruce
P. Lanphear, M.D., M.P.H.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Lanphear is the Sloan Professor of Children's Environmental Health in the
Departments of Pediatrics and of Environmental Health at The University of Cincinnati. He
has extensive experience as the principal investigator or co-investigator of
numerous community-based trials and epidemiologic research. Dr. Lanphear
is recognized for his work on the effects of low levels of lead exposure on cognition
and behavior. Currently, he is conducting a study to describe the adverse
cognitive and behavioral consequences of prenatal and postnatal exposures to
prevalent environmental neurotoxicants in children, such as the effects of prenatal
exposure to tobacco, lead, mercury and pesticides on ADHD and intellectual function.
Duke University Southern Center on Environmentally-Driven Disparities in
Birth Outcomes(SCEDDBO) – Marie
Lynn Miranda, Ph.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Miranda serves as the Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI) within the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, and is a faculty member in Duke’s Integrated Toxicology Program. With an educational background rooted in economic and mathematical modeling, her professional experiences integrate environmental health sciences with sound social policies. Dr. Miranda has extensive experience managing research projects using geographic information systems (GIS) based analysis focusing on children’s environmental health, with an emphasis on reproductive and developmental toxicants and childhood lead exposure.
Harvard Center for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research – Joseph Brain, S.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Brain is Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Physiology in the Department of Environmental Health in the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Brain's research emphasizes responses to inhaled gases, particulates, and microbes. His studies extend from the deposition of inhaled particles in the respiratory tract to their clearance by respiratory defense mechanisms. Another area of study is drug delivery to and through the lungs and the role of lung macrophages, which keep lung surfaces clean and sterile and are critical regulators of inflammatory and immune responses. The context of these studies on macrophages is the prevention and pathogenesis of environmental lung disease and respiratory infection.
Johns Hopkins Center
for Childhood Asthma in the Urban Environment – Patrick Breysse, Ph.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Breysse is the Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Childhood Asthma in the Urban Environment and Director of the Division of Environmental Health Engineering in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Breysse's research concentrates on exposure assessment and public health problem solving. His laboratory conducts exposure assessments for indoor and outdoor air pollutants (ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, allergens, and mold) including environmental tobacco smoke. Second hand smoke exposure research includes assessing the relationship between environmental measures of exposure (airborne and settled dust nicotine) and biomarkers of exposure (hair, urine, saliva).
Mount
Sinai Center for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention
Research – Mary
Wolff, Ph.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Wolff is Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine and Oncological Sciences at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Her research interests include application of biological markers to determine exposures of humans to environmental chemicals and their relationship to cancer risk, reproductive dysfunction and developmental disorders. She directs two research cohorts of children followed since before birth, to examine environmental risks associated with prenatal exposures and effects on children's neurodevelopment. These include a cohort of mothers exposed while pregnant to chemicals and traumatic events at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Her group is also investigating environmental and genetic risks for early puberty in a group of Black and Latina children and investigating the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals. She has investigated lead poisoning, dermal exposures, and chemicals in breast milk and has been involved in numerous studies of both occupational and environmental exposures to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides and PCBs.
University
of California at Berkeley Center for Children’s Environmental Health
Research – Brenda
Eskenazi, Ph.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Eskenazi is Professor of Maternal and Child Health and Epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Public Health. She has, for nearly three decades, studied the effects of environmental exposures to reproductive, perinatal, and children's health. Her research includes the association of exposure to pesticides, solvents, dioxin, cigarette smoke, and caffeine on fetal and child growth and neurodevelopment. She has studied reproductive health risks to women employed by the semiconductor industry, to female factory workers on the US-Mexico border, and to the female population in Seveso Italy exposed to high levels of dioxin. Dr. Eskenazi has also studied the relationship of exposure to perchlorethylene and benzene on male reproduction. She is a contributor to the Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Women's Health and was a member of the Governor of California's Scientific Advisory Panel: Developmental and Reproductive Committee for Proposition 65, Toxics Initiative. She serves on the National Academy of Sciences Board of Children, Youth and Families and on the editorial boards of Environmental Health Perspectives and American Journal of Epidemiology and is a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology.
University
of California at Davis Center for Children’s Environmental Health – Issac
Pessah, Ph.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Pessah is Professor of Toxicology in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at the University of California at Davis, chairs the Department of Molecular Biosciences and is a member of the Center for Neuroscience and the M.I.N.D. Institute. Dr. Pessah’s research interests include studying molecular and cellular mechanisms regulating calcium signaling in excitable cells and the structure, function, and pharmacology of ryanodine-sensitive calcium channels (RyRs) found in sarcoplasmic and endoplasmic reticulum of muscle cells and neurons. Dr. Pessah has developed a collaborative and interdisciplinary research program at UC Davis with colleagues in the Schools of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, and Agriculture and Life Sciences. He is a senior member of the NIEHS Center of Excellence in Toxicology (Neurotoxicology Research Core) and the Superfund Basic Research Program and is Associate Editor of NeuroToxicology and on the Editorial board of the Journal of Neurotoxicology and Teratology, and Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology.
University
of Illinois FRIENDS Children’s Environmental Health Center – Susan
Schantz, Ph.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Schantz is Professor of Environmental Toxicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has been designated a University Scholar. She is an internationally recognized expert on environmental contaminants and neurodevelopment. Dr. Schantz directs her work toward the understanding of the neurobehavioral effects of hormonally active environmental contaminants such as PCBs, as well as the effects of methyl mercury, dioxins and related compounds on the nervous system and brain function, and effects of exposure to these agents during development of the fetus and during aging. She is conducting studies assessing the effects of estrogenic components of soy-based dietary supplements (isoflavones) on various aspects of cognitive functioning.
University
of Iowa Children’s Environmental Airway Disease Center (1998-2003) – Gary
Hunninghake, M.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr, Hunninghake is Sterba Professor of Internal Medicine in the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine and the college’s Associate Dean for Clinical and Translational Sciences. He also Director of the Graduate Program in Translational Biomedical Research and the Director of the Training Program in Molecular and Cellular Biology of the Lung (NHLBI). Dr. Hunninghake’s clinical and research interests include asthma, acute lung injury, sarcoidosis and occupational lung disease. He directs the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Occupational Medicine in the UI Department of Internal Medicine. He also is a staff physician and researcher at the Veterans Affairs Iowa City Health Care System.
University
of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Center for Childhood Neurotoxicology
and Exposure Assessment – George
Lambert, M.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Lambert is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Pediatric Clinical Research Center at the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Rutgers University. His research focuses on the effects of environmental chemicals on human organ maturation, reproductive function, growth and development, neurobehavioral function and autism. Dr. Lambert has received many awards and honors for his work in pediatric clinical medicine and research and has conducted research in ten different countries, including work with aboriginal peoples. He has served as a consulting expert to a number of professional and governmental organizations including the U.S. Congress, the FDA, TSCA Interagency Testing Committee, Department of Energy, NICHD’s National Neonatal Collaborative Project, the World Health Organization and the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Lambert has been a member of the Committee on Drugs of the American Academy of Pediatrics and chaired the Human Health Effects Committee of the Joint (U.S. and Canadian) Commission on the Great Lakes. He serves on the executive committee of the EPA Science Advisory Board, has served on a number of SAB panels including the dioxin reassessment panel and is a liaison to the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors.
University
of Michigan Center for the Environment and Children's Health (1998-2005) – Barbara
Israel, Dr.P.H., M.P.H.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Israel is a Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health. Dr. Israel has published widely in the areas of community-based participatory research (CBPR), community empowerment, evaluation, stress and health, and social networks. Many of her research investigations have examined the relationship among psychosocial and environmental stressors, social support, perceived control and physical and mental health status. Dr. Israel has extensive experience conducting CBPR in collaboration with partners in diverse ethnic communities aimed at understanding and addressing health disparities. She is Principal Investigator of the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center, originally funded through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in which she is involved in a number of CBPR efforts in Detroit, aimed at, for example, examining and addressing the social determinants of health, diabetes management and prevention, and increasing access to nutritious, affordable foods and safe places to exercise. She has also been the Principal Investigator of the Michigan Center for the Environment and Children's Health, with the overall goal to conduct collaborative community-based basic and intervention research that increases knowledge of the determinants of and strategies for reducing environmental factors associated with childhood asthma.
University
of Washington Center for Child Environmental Health Risks Research – Elaine
Faustman, Ph.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Faustman is Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine and Director of the Institute for Risk Analysis and Risk Communication. She is Co-PI of the NIEHS and NSF funded Pacific Northwest Center for Human Health and Ocean Studies at UW and Director of the Reproductive and Developmental Research Core of the UW Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health. Her research interests include understanding mechanisms of developmental and reproductive toxicants, characterizing in vitro techniques for developmental toxicology assessment, and development of biologically based dose-response models for noncancer risk assessment. Her research expertise includes development of tools for incorporating new scientific findings into risk assessment decisions. She is an elected fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Risk Analysis. She is the current president of the Teratology Society and serves on the executive boards of the Society of Toxicology and NIEHS Council.
USC/UCLA Children's Center - Frank
Gilliland, M.D., Ph.D.
Center Director and Principal Investigator
Dr. Gilliland is Professor of Preventive Medicine in the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Dr. Gilliland is a leading investigator in air pollution research, respiratory health and cancer epidemiology, and gene-environment interactions, and he has been the principal investigator for numerous epidemiological projects. Dr. Gilliland’s research contributions have largely focused on investigating the genetic, dietary, and other susceptibility factors in environmental and occupational lung diseases and breast cancer. These efforts have provided new insights into the effects of radon progeny exposure and on susceptibility to adverse respiratory effects of air pollution.
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