ETEP Faculty

 Sara Dubowsky Adar, ScD, MHS.
Dr. Adar uses modern principles of epidemiology, environmental health, exposure science, and biostatistics to characterize the impacts of environmental hazards on human health. Her research primarily focuses on the effects of air pollution and noise on healthy aging, with additional interests in global health, extreme weather events, and intervention strategies to improve health. She currently leads several large cohort studies on the impacts of exposures on cognitive aging and dementia. Dr. Adar is an Associate Editor at Environmental Health Perspectives and a member of the Review Committee for the Health Effects Institute. She also formerly served as the Secretary/Treasurer of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology and was awarded the Sandra A. Daugherty Award for Excellence in Cardiovascular Epidemiology from the American Heart Association and the Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Kelly Marie Bakulski, PhD                                                                                                                    
Dr. Bakulski's research team goal is to understand the environmental and genetic etiologies of neurological disorders, and in the process promote the conduct of rigorous science and the development of scientific expertise. Dr. Bakulski is an environmental health scientist with expertise in life course heavy metals exposure testing with neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration. She is also a molecular epidemiologist with experience conducting analyses across multiple levels of the genome, including the epigenome and the transcriptome. Dr. Bakulski's research incorporates population approaches and laboratory experiments to develop biomarker and cell type tools that inform molecular epidemiology inferences. Dr. Bakulski is passionate about teaching and mentoring.

Stuart Batterman, PhD
Dr. Batterman's research and teaching interests address environmental impact assessment, human exposure and health risk assessment, and environmental management. His research addresses both theoretical work and applied laboratory and field studies. He is particularly interested in improving exposure measures that can be used in risk assessments and epidemiological studies; measuring toxic compounds including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found as pollutants in drinking water, ambient and indoor air, and statistical and modeling methods that can be used to interpret and extend available measurements. His research is applied to contemporary problems including ambient and indoor air quality, environmental epidemiology, policy analysis, environmental engineering, environmental justice, and life cycle analysis. His international projects include training and research programs in the environmental sciences and engineering in Africa (especially South Africa) and Europe (especially Portugal, Russia and Finland). He directs the Hazardous Substances Academic Training Program and the Pilot Project Research Program in the NIOSH-supported Education and Resource Center. Professor, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Coimbra, Portugal.

Simone Charles, PhD, MS                                                                                                                  
Dr. Charles is a Clinical Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health. She also severs as the Associate Chair of the Curriculum Committee. Her research began in exposure science where her work included risk assessment modeling for environmental contaminants in soils, air contaminant exposure assessments in various indoor settings, and tobacco smoke chemical tracer identification and efficacy determination in urban households with asthmatic children. Her work has since transitioned to public health practice and research translation working with academic-community partnerships to address health impacts of environmental hazard exposures on underserved rural and urban communities. Her work has included addressing health disparities around tobacco smoking, lead hazard exposure, migrant farmworker health, minority adolescent health, asthma reduction, and healthy housing. Her practice has informed her contributions to state and local partnerships such as her work with the Georgia Department of Public Health to create a statewide strategic plan to reduce lead exposures through healthy housing and lead exposure prevention strategies. The intersection of curriculum develop, environmental health literacy, and workforce development to address health disparities in underserved communities continues to be a major focus of her work. For example, her practice-based adolescent-focused research will lay the groundwork informing a place-based, culturally appropriate, strategy for youth to engage in advancing environmental health, increasing environmental health literacy, and proposing policy suggestions and decision-making in response to environmental justice. It will also provide opportunities to empower youth to take action to educate themselves, their peers and their community on ways to reduce or eliminate risk factors within their control, while actively working to change modifiable environmental risk factors. She was recently invited to serve as the Associate Editor for Environmental Justice journal. She was a 2013 NIH NIMHD Translational Health Disparities scholar and 2012 Health Equity Leadership Institute fellow.

Justin Colacino, PhD
Dr. Justin Colacino's research focuses on understanding environmental and dietary factors in the development of chronic diseases like cancer. Specifically, the goal of his research is to characterize the susceptibility of normal stem cell populations to environmental stress, to understand the link between dysregulated development and disease. Of particular interest are understanding the changes that occur at the epigenetic and transcriptional level, changes which affect not only gene expression but also how progenitor cells differentiate and divide. His research group combines wet lab bench work and bioinformatic and statistical analysis of large scale genomic and epidemiologic data sets to translate findings from in vitro models to the population level. Dr. Colacino is an active member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and serves on the Editorial Review Board of Environmental Epigenetics and the Editorial Boards of Toxicological Sciences and Epigenomes.

Dana Dolinoy, PhD
Dr. Dolinoy has a broad background in genomics and toxicology, with specific interest in epigenetic research, including environmental epigenomics and the developmental origins of health and disease. Her research integrates the work of toxicologists, epidemiologists, and bioinformaticians to fully characterize effects of environmental factors on the epigenome while developing precision environmental epigenomics tools for the wider toxicological research and therapeutic communities, with a particular focus on metabolic syndrome, neurodevelopmental disorders and cancer. Additionally she serves as the Director of the University of Michigan NIEHS P30 Core Center, entitled 'Lifestage Environmental Exposures and Diseases' (M-LEEaD) and as Faculty Director of the Michigan Medical Center's Epigenomics Core. Overall, Dr. Dolinoy has a strong commitment to environmental and nutritional epigenomics research, especially as it relates to sensitive subpopulations, including those at risk for very early environmental insults that set the stage for adult disease risk, such as cancer.

J. Tim Dvonch, PhD                                                                                                                   
Dr.Dvonch's research interests and experience broadly reside in the assessment, characterization, source identification, and risk communication of human exposures and inhalation health effects of air pollutants. For exposure assessment, his specific interests are in the laboratory development and 'real-world' field-evaluation and application of methodologies and techniques for improved exposure assessment to air pollutants. These primarily include the mass, number, as well as biological and chemical composition of ambient particles for exposure assessment at the community, micro-environmental, and personal level. His interests in the application of these methods include source identification and apportionment of the pollutants through the use of receptor models, with the ultimate goal of informing policy and decision-making processes to improve human health through the reduction of these exposures. Dr. Dvonch has contributed to numerous community-based human population studies and animal model studies of exposure addressing synergies between quantitatively defined air pollution exposures and other variables in the causation of adverse health effects. His research has addressed differing risks of air pollution exposure and health impacts related to disparities in socio-economic status, disease (or pre- disease)-status, geographic location of residence, chemical and biological composition, and specific emission sources of pollutants. Several of these studies have identified adverse health outcomes in both vulnerable subpopulations as well as healthy people due to exposure to specific chemical components of air pollution, as well as specific emission sources of pollution.

Eva Feldman, MD, PHD                                                                                                                    
 Dr. Feldman is one of the world’s leading authorities on neurodegenerative disease. Currently, she serves as the University of Michigan James W. Albers Distinguished University Professor and the Russell N. DeJong Professor of Neurology at Michigan Medicine. She is also the Director of the NeuroNetwork for Emerging Therapies and ALS Center of Excellence at Michigan Medicine. Feldman has made contributions to biomedical research and clinical care in many critical areas of neurodegenerative disease. Her primary focus has been on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer's disease, cognitive decline, and the neurologic complications of diabetes and obesity, as well as how environmental toxins affect the nervous system. She also has conducted pioneering research on developing stem cell therapies to treat these diseases. Feldman is annually listed in Best Doctors in America, is a member of the Association of American Physicians and the National Academy of Medicine, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Feldman has authored over 530 articles and 74 book chapters (Google Scholar h-index = 117) with >55,000 citations. She has been continuously NIH-funded since 1989 and has received numerous awards and honors throughout her remarkable career.

Jackie Goodrich, PhD                                                                                                                           
Dr. Goodrich's research interests combine toxicology, epidemiology and epigenomics with the goal of identifying environmental exposures and their mechanisms that contribute to disease susceptibility at various life-stages (in utero, early childhood, and adulthood). Epigenetic modification by environmental factors is one mechanism that can link exposures to toxicity and disease outcomes. Dr. Goodrich is assessing the impact of exposures from the workplace (e.g. firefighting) or the broader environment (e.g., lead, phthalates, PFAS) on epigenetic modifications (DNA methylation) in epidemiological cohorts from around the globe using both candidate gene and epigenome-wide approaches. She integrates data on exposures, DNA methylation, and health outcomes to better understand disease risk from exposures at vulnerable life-stages. Dr. Goodrich is a co-Leader of the DoGoodS-Pi environmental epigenetics laboratory. She is also co-Leader of the Pan Omics and Data Sciences Core of the Michigan Lifestage Environmental Exposures and Disease (M-LEEaD) Center.

Stephen Goutman, MD, MS                                                                                                            
 Dr. Stephen Goutman’s clinical and research expertise is focused on Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive, fatal neurodegenerative disease with limited treatment options. He is currently the Director of the University of Michigan Pranger ALS Clinic, an ALS Association Certified Center of Excellence, where a multidisciplinary team provides comprehensive and compassionate care to persons with ALS and their families. Inspired by these patients, Dr. Goutman’s research focuses on identifying new mechanisms and therapies for ALS. Specifically, he has been seeking to understand the genetic and environmental interactions that alter susceptibility to ALS, especially in the State of Michigan which has some of the highest rates of ALS in the country. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the ALS Association, he is discovering environmental risk factors associated with the onset and progression of ALS by collecting epidemiologic exposure surveys and biofluids from individuals with and without ALS. His research shows a link between ALS and pesticides, and his recent article on this work received widespread attention, as this important finding may help solve the mystery of ALS. Dr. Goutman also collaborates with teams of scientists to identify the immune system’s role in ALS and find new drugs that can address these changes in the immune system. The ultimate goal is to one day make ALS a preventable disease. Dr. Goutman serves as the site principal investigator of several multi-site clinical trials focused on identifying new ALS treatments. He is an active participant with the Northeast ALS Consortium (NEALS) and has close to a decade of experience leading ALS clinical trials at University of Michigan.   

Carina Gronlund, PhD, MPH                                                                                                     
Dr. Gronlund is an environmental epidemiologist with funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Science Foundation. With Detroit community and State of Michigan government partners, she studies how social, economic, health, and built environment characteristics and air quality affect vulnerability to extreme heat, extreme precipitation, and pollen. This research will help cities understand how to adapt to heat, heat waves, higher pollen levels, and heavy rainfall in a changing climate.                                                                                                                              

Alexis J. Handal, PhD, MPH
Dr. Handal’s research interests include environmental and occupational epidemiology, reproductive epidemiology, and child health and development examined within social, political, and economic contexts and in global settings. Her research focuses on marginalized populations who are traditionally underrepresented in research, including Latine and Indigenous populations in the U.S. and Latin America and those who are most exposed to hazardous work conditions and environmental toxins, such as farmworkers, with a particular focus on women and their children. Her community-engaged research approach uses a health equity lens focusing on the interconnection between occupational stress, toxic exposures and difficult social environments, in the context of precarious employment, on maternal health and child development. Dr. Handal’s research interests also include examining the health impact of worker’s rights including an examination of worker protection legislation and the impact on pregnant employees, and the impact of occupational stress and gender discrimination on maternal and child health.

Sean Harris, PhD                                                                                                                               
Dr. Harris's research aims to advance our understanding of how environmental toxicants contribute to adverse pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth and preeclampsia. His research uses a combination of approaches including transcriptomics, metabolomics, primary tissue models and computational/data mining methods to investigate molecular mechanisms of toxicant effects on the placenta and fetal membranes. Dr. Harris also investigates extracellular vesicles as a source for circulating biomarkers of toxicant effects on the placenta.

Steven Huang, MD

Steven Huang, MD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan. He did his undergraduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston (1994-1997), and went to Medical School at Northwestern University in Chicago (1997-2001). After completing his internship and residency in Internal Medicine also at Northwestern, he came to the University of Michigan for fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine (2004-2007). He stayed on as faculty, first as a Clinical Lecturer, and then as a tenured-track faculty member. Dr. Huang's research focuses on understanding how epigenetic modifications contribute to the development of chronic lung diseases, especially idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). He focuses on studying how fibroblasts contribute to disease pathology and how patients develop variability in disease progression. His work also examines how air pollution contributes to the development of asthma. Dr. Huang is in charge of helping maintain the U of M ILD Lung Biorepository. Dr. Huang is an active member of several pulmonary subspecialty societies, including the American Thoracic Society (ATS), and has received career-development awards from the ATS. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health. He sees a variety of patients in his general pulmonary medicine clinic, and he is the Medical Director of Michigan Medicine's Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program.

Kate Manz, PhD                                                                                                                              
Dr. Manz’s research and teaching interests are in environmental chemistry, including (A) understanding natural chemical transformation in the environment, (B) developing remediation technologies to minimize pollutant exposure, and (C) discovering previously unidentified environmental exposures in humans. Her research team utilizes state-of-the-art analytical chemistry techniques, such as high-resolution mass spectrometry, to monitor chemical transformation in groundwater and soils and to develop new techniques to assess total exposure. In addition to using these techniques to identify new exposures, Dr. Manz is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms, or metabolisms, that are impacted due to chemical exposure in humans and the environment.

John Meeker, ScD, CIH
Dr. John Meeker holds a BS in Industrial Technology from Iowa State University, as well as MS and Doctor of Science (ScD) degrees in Environmental Science and Engineering and Exposure, Epidemiology and Risk, respectively, from Harvard University, where he also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Environmental and Reproductive Epidemiology. He is a Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH). Dr. Meeker's work is wide-ranging, and focuses on defining sources, magnitudes and consequences of human exposure to environmental and occupational contaminants, as well as identifying and evaluating strategies to control harmful exposures. Much of his current research involves human exposure science and reproductive and developmental epidemiology studies of known or suspected endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as phthalates, BPA, pesticides, PFAS, flame retardants, and others. Dr. Meeker is principal investigator on numerous large-scale research studies, and has served on various editorial, expert peer-review and advisory boards/panels for EPA, NIH, CDC, NAS, and others in recent years.

Richard L. Neitzel, PhD
Rick Neitzel is an exposure scientist whose research focuses on the characterization of exposures to noise, heavy metals and other ototoxins, psychosocial stressors, and injury risk factors, as well as a range of adverse health effects associated with these exposures. His work, and the work of his team in the UM Exposure Research lab, takes place in occupational and community settings both domestically and abroad. He is particularly interested in incorporating new methodologies and exposure sensing technologies into research, and also has a strong interest in translating his research findings into occupational and public health practice.  He is the Director of the UM Center for Occupational Health and Safety Engineering and the UM Industrial Hygiene program.

Marie O'Neill, PhD
Marie O'Neill's research interests include health effects of air pollution, temperature extremes and climate change (mortality, asthma, hospital admissions, and cardiovascular endpoints); environmental exposure assessment; and socio-economic influences on health. She has worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Pan American Health Organization, in Mexico at the National Institute of Public Health and the National Center for Environmental Health as a Fulbright Scholar, and as a Research Fellow in Environmental Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. She was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at University of Michigan from 2004 to 2006.

Yoichi Osawa, PhD
Mechanisms of chemical pharmacology and xenobiotic toxicology involving free radicals, oxidative stress, metabolism, and regulation of hemoproteins by Hsp90- and Hsp70-based chaperones.

Vasantha Padmanabhan, PhD
Vasantha Padmanabhan's research is translational and centers towards understanding the fetal origin of pubertal and adult reproductive and metabolic disorders. Using a precocial large animal model of human translational relevance, her laboratory focuses on studying the impact of maternal exposure to native steroids (testosterone, estradiol) and environmental pollutants such as bisphenol-A in altering the developmental trajectory of fetus and programming adult reproductive and metabolic diseases such as that seen in hyperandrogenic disorders like Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and metabolic syndrome and identifying prevention and treatment strategies. More recently she is investigating the mechanisms by which a mother's exposure to a real-life cocktail of chemicals present in biosolids during pregnancy can affect the long-term reproductive and metabolic health of her offspring and that of subsequent generations. In parallel with these animal studies that address causal mechanisms, she is using the Michigan Mother Infant Pregnancy (MMIP) longitudinal cohort that she developed to understand the impact of maternal and infant exposures on the maternal and infant milieu (metabolome, steroid profile, oxidative stress, inflammasome, epigenome and pregnancy/birth outcomes. She has published over 240 peer-reviewed manuscripts and 66 chapters/reviews, an invited speaker in several national and international meetings, and member of several NIH study sections. She also is professor emerita (in service) of Environmental Health Sciences and Nutritional Sciences. She serves as an Associate Editor or editorial Board member of several top tier journals.

Sung Kyun Park, DSc, MPH
Dr. Park's research interests include the role of environmental exposures in cardiometabolic and reproductive health and age-related diseases with a focus on environmental exposure assessment, epidemiologic causal inference, and the development of analytic approaches for assessing chemical mixtures. He is the PI of the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation Multi-Pollutant Study (SWAN-MPS) where health effects of various sets of chemicals and their mixtures in midlife women are tested. He is also a Co-PI of the Study of the Environment and Alzheimer's Disease and related Dementias (SEAD) where the environment's role in the development of Alzheimer's Disease and related dementias is investigated. His lab also has an interest in gene-environment and nutrition (diet)-environment interactions to elucidate potential biological mechanisms, to identify vulnerable sub-populations to environmental exposure, and to provide intervention strategies.

Karen Peterson, DSc
Dr. Peterson is Professor and Chair of the Nutritional Sciences Department at the School of Public Health, Research Professor for the Center for Human Growth and Development, and Director of the Momentum Center, all at the University of Michigan. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the influence of biosocial and environmental influences on child growth and maturation during sensitive developmental periods, as well as the design and evaluation of population-based interventions addressing dietary and physical activity behaviors related to obesity and chronic disease in diverse populations, including children and youth. She is Contact PI for the U-M Children's Environmental Health and Disease Protection Center on the theme: "Lifecourse exposures and diet: Epigenetics, maturation, and metabolic syndrome," and serves as Associate Director of the Michigan Nutrition and Obesity Research Center (MNORC). She earned her ScD in Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

James Rae, PhD
Pharmacogenetics/genomics and drug metabolism of Breast Cancer Therapies.

Stephen W. Ragsdale                                                                                        
 Stephen W. Ragsdale is interested in the chemistry and biology of metabolic pathways that regulate the global carbon cycle. His research focuses on microbes that produce methane, fix carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, and the enzymes responsible for these processes. Using kinetic, structural, and spectroscopic methods, his work has characterized the mechanisms of these enzymes, leading to the discovery of an organometallic reaction sequence that converts CO and CO2 into acetyl-CoA, a key precursor for many cellular metabolites.Ragsdale is also deeply interested in the regulation of human metabolic pathways by metal ions, with a major focus on iron and heme. This includes studying key proteins involved in iron uptake, heme synthesis, and heme degradation. His research has uncovered a regulatory network interlinking redox and heme, enabling crosstalk between metal homeostasis and cellular redox states. Outside the laboratory, Ragsdale practices yoga, plays jazz guitar, and enjoys reading and spending time with family and friends.

Natalie Sampson, PhD, MPH                                                                                                
Natalie Sampson, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Public Health at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Dr. Sampson works across sectors and disciplines to understand and address the environmental justice implications of land use planning and infrastructure with community, academic, and agency partners. She values diverse ways of knowing through qualitative and quantitative methods, including photovoice and health impact assessment. Through her action-oriented research, Dr. Sampson aims to remove structural inequities in environmental decision-making, build capacity for community and youth-led research, and increase the use of plain language in the field of environmental health. She teaches courses on environmental health and community organizing.

Maureen Sartor, PhD
Maureen A. Sartor is a Professor in the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, with a joint appointment in Biostatistics. She received her PhD in Biostatistics in 2007 from the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests are in developing bioinformatics methods, mainly for analysis and interpretation of high throughput regulatory and epigenomics data. Her research focuses on cancer epigenomics and biomarker discovery, particularly oral squamous cell carcinomas. She also has projects studying ALS and methods to predict chemical exposure-gene target interactions and prioritize disease-specific variant-gene target pairs.

Devon Payne-Sturges, PhD                                                                                                              
Devon Payne-Sturges is trained in environmental health sciences and has extensive experience in the policy realm. Before joining the faculty at the University of Maryland, she worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for twelve years. During her tenure at the EPA, she focused on science policy issues, emphasizing the protection of vulnerable populations, safeguarding children’s health, addressing environmental justice issues, and tackling environmental health disparities.

Laurie Kathleen Svoboda, PhD                                                                                   
Dr. Svoboda's research program is focused on understanding the sex-specific effects of developmental chemical exposures on cardiac differentiation and cardiovascular health across the life course. She and her team utilize mice, as well as human induced pluripotent stem cells to investigate how lead, perfluoroalkyl substances, arsenic, and phthalate plasticizers disrupt the sex-specific epigenetic and metabolic processes that underlie normal cardiovascular development and differentiation. She is further interested in understanding how age, lifestyle habits, and genetic predispositions to cardiovascular disease interact with developmental exposures to impact long-term cardiovascular health. Dr. Svoboda and her team focus on several mechanisms of chemical-induced disease, including metabolic perturbations, as well as epigenetic processes - alterations in DNA methylation, histone marks, and non-coding RNA - that impact expression of genes relevant to cardiovascular development and disease. The overall goal of her research is to identify sex-specific molecular targets of chemical exposures, and highlight potential opportunities for pharmacologic, nutritional and lifestyle interventions aimed at minimizing environment-induced harm.

Hao Wang, MS, PhD, DABT                                                                                                              
Dr. Wang has a broad background in biochemistry and toxicology, with a specific interest in neurotoxicology research, including (1) studying the neurotoxicity of environmental pollutants, (2) investigating the underlying mechanisms of environmental neurotoxicants, (3) understanding how environmental toxicants contribute to the risk of neurological diseases, and (4) developing prevention and intervention strategies to mitigate the neurotoxicity of toxicants. His will primarily use the rodents as a vertebrate model, combined with several cutting-edge technologies, including metagenomic shotgun sequencing, single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis, and transgenic animals, to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurotoxicity for environmental pollutants, such as heavy metals, air pollution, pesticide, or multiple exposures.

Deb Watkins, PhD                                                                                                                                                              Dr. Watkins is investigating how environmental exposures during critical life stages, including pregnancy, early development, puberty, and menopause, can impact long-term maternal and child health. Her work includes both identification of important sources of exposure to phthalates, phenols, flame retardants, pesticides, and other contaminants, and determination of subsequent exposure-related health effects within vulnerable populations. She is particularly interested in the molecular mechanisms by which environmental exposures - both chemical and non-chemical - interact to affect growth, neurodevelopment, and aging. Dr. Watkins is currently pursuing this research in the context of large, NIEHS-funded birth cohort studies in Mexico City and Puerto Rico.