Three UW researchers have recently become members of the Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health. Please welcome:
J. Scott Meschke, JD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Dept of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) and Adjunct Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Scott is an environmental and occupational health microbiologist who specializes in the fate, transport, detection and control of pathogens in air, water, food and surfaces. His research interests include developing methods to detect viruses and bacteria, foodborne pathogens, freshwater toxic cyanobacteria blooms, microbiological quality of produce, alternative methods of water and wastewater disinfection, biosafety, poliovirus eradication, and policy implications of infectious agents. He belongs to the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety & Health Center (PNASH) where he works on assessing job-related exposures for diarrheal illness in farmworker families. Scott earned his BS in Biology and his JD from the University of Kansas, an MS in Environmental Science at Indiana University, and PhD in Microbiology from the University of North Carolina.
Gretchen Onstad, PhD, Acting Assistant Professor in the DEOHS. Gretchen belongs to Chris Simpson's lab. Her expertise is analyzing drinking water disinfection byproducts, disinfection chemistry, and markers of human exposure to air pollution from pesticides, woodsmoke and diesel exhaust. She is specifically interested in preventing exposure to groundwater contaminants in rural populations that get their drinking water from household wells. Gretchen earned her BS in Chemistry from the UW and her PhD in Environmental Sciences and Engineering from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
William C. Parks, PhD, Professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Director of the Center for Lung Biology at UW-Medicine, South Lake Union. His lab focuses on 3 enzymes that are secreted in the epithelial matrix - MMP-7, MMP-10 and MMP-28 - and how they function in the innate immune system to defend against microorganisms, repair wounds, and recruit inflammatory cells. The goal of his lab's work is to understand the mechanism of individual MMP enzymes. Bill earned a BA in Biology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, and a PhD in Anatomy at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He did NIEHS Postdoctoral Fellowships at Michigan State in cancer biology and at Washington University in extracellular matrix and lung biology. He chairs the NIH Lung Injury, Repair, and Remodeling (LIRR) Study Section and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Puget Sound Blood Center.