Profiles
Student Profiles
Wendy Miklos is not your average graduate. As a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, she already has a world of experience.
PhD graduate Chad Weldy studied the link between diesel exposure and cardiovascular disease for his dissertation. And he has been advocating for a health impact assessment of increased train traffic that could come from the proposed coal export terminal north of Bellingham.
Travis Cook is on a fishing expedition, but a different one from his winters of ice-fishing home in Minnesota. The fourth-year Toxicology PhD student is screening donated plasma from patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and from welders who have a motor coordination disorder called parkinsonism with symptoms similar to Parkinson’s.
Idealism and commitment aren’t just for the young. Vickie Carper—one of our older students—demonstrates that a passion for improving public environmental health is ageless.
Health communication has infiltrated Africa with messages about infectious diseases, but it has largely overlooked environmental health problems, said Toluwalose (Tolu) Okitika, who is from Nigeria and came to the University of Washington as an MPH student in the Environmental and Occupational Health program.
PhD student Vanessa Galaviz received a Community Volunteer Recognition Award at the Martin Luther King Tribute on January 12, 2012.
New PhD student Boris Reiss has lived, studied, and worked all over the world.
Stephanie Chan is investigating whether women who live close to a major roadway are more at risk for high blood pressure, which in turn can lead to heart disease.
Kendra Broadwater, a senior in the Undergraduate Environmental Health program, is an accomplished student.
Every day, we are exposed to a host of pesticides, phthalates, and other semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) that are ubiquitous in the food we eat and in the air and dust that surround us. What remains unclear is the relative importance of various exposure routes in accounting for the total amount of a given chemical found in the body.
"I knew I wanted to major in Environmental Health and spend the rest of my life pursuing a career in it," says undergraduate Sarah Helgeson.
MPH student Jennifer Krenz worked in Cambodia on a project led by Associate Professor William Daniell to evaluate a pesticide-use reduction program.
Faculty Profiles
Professor Gerard Cangelosi was awarded a one-year, $250,000 grant to validate a new technology that will improve the diagnosis of hospital-acquired infections. Cangelosi’s appointment in the department began October 2012.
Evan Gallagher tried a variety jobs after college, including playing guitar for touring rock bands. Then he found a niche in environmental toxicology – studying the effects of environmental chemicals.
The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was still relatively new in 1974 when a young faculty member named Michael Morgan joined our department. Today Morgan is a senior member of our faculty. Although he retired this past summer and was awarded emeritus status, he remains active.
Associate Professor William Daniell is far more likely to discuss his students’ research than his own. His commitment to students is one of the reasons that Daniell was named the recipient of a School of Public Health (SPH) Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award in 2011.
Whether she is seeing patients, teaching students, or meeting with other doctors, June Spector feels connected to a goal she believes in: improving health outcomes for injured workers.
In October 2011, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) announced that Professor David Eaton had been elected a member. One of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine, membership recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.
Professor Daniel Luchtel’s research and recreational life have had a common theme: immersion in air. For nearly 40 years he has worked in respiratory toxicology with a body of research that has broadened from the cellular to policy level. When he wasn’t in the lab, Luchtel was often in the mountains, skiing in the winters or climbing mountains in the summers. He said that nothing compares to the views at high altitudes, “on a very steep ridge with air all around you.”
Sally Liu, an affiliate professor in our department, passed away on June 6. Since 2004, she had been an environmental health scientist and research professor at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), an associated institute of the University of Basel in Switzerland.
The Puget Sound Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (PSHFES) presented Associate Professor Peter Johnson with the Ergonomics Professional of the Year award at the annual PSHFES Ergonomics Symposium in September.
After more than 40 years of investigating toxic metals in the environment, Jim Woods received research professor emeritus status in July, which he says "leaves the door open" to continuing his research.
Jane Koenig was hired by the department 36 years ago to lead human research studies on common air pollutants. In July, she was appointed professor emeritus and lauded for her contributions.
Professor Lucio Costa delivered the UW School of Public Health's (SPH) Winter 2010 Distinguished Faculty Lecture. This story was originally published in the SPH's February E-news.
In September 2009, Lecturer Richard Gleason was awarded the Lifetime Safety and Health Leadership Award from the Puget Sound Safety Summit, an alliance of government, management, and labor to develop methods and solutions to improve workplace safety.
Alumni Profiles
As public health director and health officer, McCullough is responsible for educating the public and stakeholders on public health concerns. Read more...
Worker safety resonates for Breyan (Brie) Paske, in part because members of her family are employed in the manufacturing industry. Paske is a safety administrator with The Boeing Company in Everett.
From her office overlooking Central Park in New York City, Sylvie Adam is responsible for the health and safety of nearly 200 employees of the Central Park Conservatory, a nonprofit whose mission is to restore, manage, and enhance the park. Adam graduated in 1995 with an MS in Industrial Hygiene and Safety, which is now Exposure Science.
As an undergraduate student in Arizona, Yolanda Sanchez saw residents of a South Phoenix neighborhood rallying. They were demanding decontamination of their properties and appropriate medical assessments from a toxic industrial fire six years earlier. Witnessing residents in a low-income, minority community demand their right to a clean, healthy environment spurred Sanchez’s interest in environmental justice.
Rafael Ponce is scientific director at Amgen. He ensures safe clinical trials of drugs designed to treat various types of late-stage cancer, such as ovarian, lung, and breast cancer.
Heather Klintworth can't see her subject without the help of high-powered equipment. As a postdoctoral research associate at Benaroya Research Institute, she examines how iron may influence the normal mechanics of human liver cells. But the aim of her research is clear: one day the findings from the team she works with may affect millions of lives by improving our understanding of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
It's no secret that war changes people in radical ways—their bodies, their brains, the social fabric of their lives. Hunt witnesses these shifts as a leading physician for soldiers returning from deployments.
Scott Bartell's research centers on environmental health issues, an interest he says started at the UW while he was a student in our department. He teaches courses in epidemiology, epidemiological methods, data analysis, and risk assessment at the University of California (UC), Irvine.
Lynnda Reid works for the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), America's watchdog when it comes to ensuring food and drugs are safe.
Almost every week, David Bonauto drives more than 120 miles round trip to treat injured workers at the Harborview Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) Clinic in Seattle. He considers his clinical work important to his full-time job in Olympia as associate medical director in the Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention (SHARP) Program.
Karen VanDusen explains her successful 43-year career in environmental health with the lines from the Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken:"
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
"The business of safety and the environment is personal." It could sum up Douglas Briggs' work at The Boeing Company.
In 2009, alumnus Jude Van Buren returns to the UW as director of Environmental Health & Safety, a department that supports and monitors workplace safety and health practices at the university.
Staff Profiles
Fred Farin and Theo Bammler have been helping researchers in the department and around the university answer research questions about how environmental and occupational exposures can cause injury and disease.
Susan Inman describes her role as “facilitating student access and success.” But it was her own success in the job that earned her the 2012 DEOHS Distinguished Staff Award.
Charitable giving is part of the workplace culture in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, and Phillip Buff is a key contributor. Phillip was honored recently with a 2011 Spirit of Service Award from the King County Combined Fund Drive (CFD).
Marilyn Hair’s work as the Community Outreach and Ethics Core Manager for the Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health (CEEH) is right up her alley. Her interest in sharing how genetics research can improve public health is not just part of her job, it’s personal.
Eric Vigoren, research manager for the Pacific Northwest Center for the National Children's Study (PNWNCS) and the Institute for Risk Analysis and Risk Communication (IRARC), recently received the department's 2011 Distinguished Staff Award, a testament to his strong work ethic, keen organizational skills, and upbeat attitude under pressure.
To make great science happen, you sometimes have to change your views from the Seven Hills of Rome to the seven hills of Seattle. Gennaro Giordano, originally from Rome, has been a leading researcher at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health since August of 2004.
It couldn't have been easy for Cynnie Curl, who held down a full time job as program manager for a multi-million-dollar-grant-funded UW research center while taking graduate classes at the same time. Curl, who started taking one class a quarter in 2008, has already finished her doctoral preliminary exam.
Rosie Schaffer knows a lot about responding to crises from her responsibilities as a manager for the Environmental Health Lab and the Trace Organics Analytical Center in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences.
Jeff Shirai, a research scientist and laboratory supervisor in Professor John Kissel's lab, recently won the department's 2010 Distinguished Staff Award, and a statement written by graduate students in the Kissel Lab sums up one of the reasons why.
