2007 - Roxanne Karimi, Dartmouth College

Superfund Basic Research Program

The Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP) is pleased to announce Roxanne Karimi, Ph.D. of Dartmouth College, as the recipient of the 10th Annual Karen Wetterhahn Memorial Award. Dr. Karimi received this award on December 4th, 2007 at the 20th SBRP Annual Meeting in Durham, North Carolina, as a result of her outstanding contributions to metals research, specifically the accumulation and cycling of heavy metals within freshwater organisms, food webs, and ecosystems.

Dr. Karimi earned her Ph.D. in May 2007 from Dartmouth College, and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. Dr. Karimi was a trainee of the Dartmouth SBRP Training Core, and participated in the interdisciplinary activities of the program, including science, education, outreach, and mentoring. In her repertoire of accomplishments, she has mentored several undergraduate women, through Dr. Wetterhahn's Women in Science Program (WISP), in her laboratory with regard to their individual independent research projects.

Dr. Karimi's graduate research encompasses the broad differences in the eco-physiological processing of diverse elements as they directly apply to the management of ecosystems toward contaminant reduction. In the future, Dr. Karimi hopes to continue her research on the biological function of different metals, and their importance to environmental quality and human health, in addition to extending her research to marine organisms, such as copepods and bacteria. She also intends to examine the dietary sources of metals to humans.

Currently, Dr. Karimi is working as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Nicholas Fisher at SUNY Stony Brook (New York). She will continue her doctorate research, as well as examine the pairwise interactions between metals and between metals and nutrients (N, P) and their effects on metal accumulation and efflux in marine organisms. With her diverse interests, Dr. Karimi also hopes to study human exposure to environmental contaminants and the role of nutrition and other health-related factors in influencing exposure risk, and also become involved in other environmental health research projects through the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Sciences.