R. Julian Preston, PhD

R. Julian Preston, PhD, currently serves as acting associate director for health for the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He served as director of the Environmental Carcinogenesis Division at the EPA from 1999 until August 2005. Prior to this appointment, he served as the senior science advisor at the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, from 1991 to 1999. He was employed at the Biology Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee from 1970 to 1991, where he was appointed Section Head, Human Genetics in 1987. He also served as associate director for the Oak Ridge–University of Tennessee Graduate School for Biomedical Sciences. He is currently an adjunct professor at Duke University and North Carolina State University. Dr. Preston received his BA and MA from Peterhouse, Cambridge University, England, in genetics and his PhD from Reading University, England, in radiation genetics.

Currently, Dr. Preston is chair of Committee 1 (Basic Biology and Epidemiology) of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, a member of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and a member of ILSIÕs Global Threshold Project and HESIÕs DNA Adducts and Risk Assessment Project. He has served on several National Academies committees including serving as chair on the committee to review the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program.

Dr Preston is an editorial board member of Mutation Research, Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis, Chemico-Biological Interactions, and Health Physics. His research and current activities have focused on the mechanisms of radiation and chemical carcinogenesis and the approaches for incorporating these types of data into cancer risk assessments. In particular, he is developing approaches for addressing how key events for tumorigensis can be used to select informative bioindicators of response.