Dr. Bandera earned an MD degree from the University of Málaga, Spain and a PhD in Epidemiology and Community Health from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she also completed post-doctoral training in nutritional epidemiology of cancer. She is currently Professor and Chief, Cancer Epidemiology and Health Outcomes and Co-Leader, Cancer Prevention and Control Program, Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey; Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Rutgers School of Public Health.
Major research interests include the impact of obesity and body composition and related comorbidities on breast and ovarian cancer risk, treatment and survival outcomes and survivorship, with a focus on cancer health disparities. She has served as Principal Investigator in several epidemiologic studies, including the New Jersey Ovarian Cancer Study, which is a member of the Ovarian Cancer Association International Consortium, the Jersey Girl Study (a study evaluating factors affecting puberty in girls), the Women’s Circle of Health Study (a study of breast cancer in African American women, which is a member of the AMBER Consortium), the Women’s Circle of Health Follow-up Study (a cohort study of African American breast cancer survivors) and KP-ROCS (a cohort study evaluating the impact of obesity on ovarian cancer treatment and survival in which racial/ethnic disparities in treatment outcomes and survival were also evaluated). Her research has been funded by several grants from the National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Bandera has served in numerous advisory boards and expert panels for several organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) and the World Cancer Research Fund International (WCRF). She is very involved in translating epidemiologic findings to public health action at the national and international levels. She was a member of the American Cancer Society’s 2006 Committee on Nutrition and Physical Activity Guidelines for Cancer Prevention. She also served as a member of the American Cancer Society’s 2012 and 2018 Guidelines on Nutrition and Physical Activity for Cancer Prevention and Survival Committee. Dr. Bandera led the Systematic Literature Review and meta-analysis on endometrial cancer in support of the 2007 WCRF/AICR Second Expert Report on Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer. For more than 10 years she served as a member of the WCRF/AICR International Expert Panel for the Continuous Update Project and the WCRF/AICR Third Expert Report on Diet, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Cancer: A Global Perspective, released in May 2018. She also served as Chair of the Lifestyle Behaviors, Energy Balance and Chemoprevention Special Interest Group of the American Society of Preventive Oncology (ASPO) and as a member of the ASPO Executive Committee (2016-2019). At the state level, Dr. Bandera led the Nutrition and Physical Activity Workgroup of the New Jersey Task Force on Cancer Prevention, Early Detection, and Treatment for more than ten years and served as Vice Chair of the Advisory Group for Cancer Prevention and Control of the New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research.
Grant Review Panels (selected)
Dr. Barrett is an Associate Professor in the Rutgers University School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology. She received an A.B. in Biology and English from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California-Los Angeles. Before coming to Rutgers, she was on the faculty at the University of Rochester, where she remains an Adjunct Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Public Health Sciences.
Research Areas
Dr. Barrett’s primary research focus is on the early origins of health and disease and how exposures early in life shape our subsequent health and developmental trajectories. Because gestation is a particularly sensitive period when body systems are first forming, exposures during this period may have profound downstream effects. Dr. Barrett is particularly interested in how prenatal exposures to environmental chemicals and psychosocial stressors impact pregnancy and children’s development. She leads several ongoing NIH-funded pregnancy cohort studies and is actively involved in the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program, the largest study of the health and well-being of United States children. Through these studies, Dr. Barrett and colleagues are currently investigating the placental, hormonal, immune, epigenetic, and microbial mechanisms by which early life exposures impact downstream health.
Dr. Barrett studies the early origins of health and disease, or how exposures early in life shape our subsequent health and developmental trajectories. Because gestation is a particularly sensitive period when body systems are first forming, insults or exposures during this period may have profound downstream effects. Much of Dr. Barrett’s research focuses on prenatal exposure to endocrine disruptors, agents which interfere with the normal activity of hormones in the body. Phthalates are a class of endocrine disrupting chemicals that are found widely in food and consumer products. Nearly 100% of Americans have measurable levels of phthalate metabolites in their bodies, yet our current understanding of how these chemicals affect our bodies is limited. In The Infant Development and the Environment Study (TIDES), Dr. Barrett and colleagues are studying how prenatal exposure to these chemicals impacts reproductive and neuro-development, and whether the effects may differ in boys and girls.
Other exposures, such as psychosocial stress, disrupt early development as well. Numerous studies have examined how stress during pregnancy may alter cortisol activity and “program” neurodevelopmental, metabolic, and immune outcomes. Much less is known about the extent to which prenatal stress (and related constructs, like anxiety) may also act through other pathways and mechanisms to affect the fetus. For example, evidence from animal models and humans suggests that prenatal stress may alter in utero androgen activity, thereby affecting sex-dependent development in the offspring. Dr. Barrett and collaborators are exploring this hypothesis in the Understanding Prenatal Signals and Infant Development (UPSIDE) Study, with an eye towards better understanding the early origins of sex differences. Concurrent work in this cohort will examine how maternal inflammation during pregnancy contributes to infant and child development. One of the major themes of this research is understanding the role of the placenta in communicating messages about stressors from mother to fetus (and vice versa).
In addition to her work on prenatal exposures, Dr. Barrett is also interested in factors that impact fertility in adulthood, particularly in women. She is involved in projects focused on how psychosocial stress and environmental chemical exposures affect reproductive hormone concentrations and pregnancy outcomes. Additional ongoing work examines possible biomarkers of the prenatal hormonal milieu that can be assessed postnatally, and their relationship to measures of adult reproductive health.
Dr. Barrett’s work is funded by the National Institutes of Health (R01HD083369; R01ES016863; UG3OD023349; UG3OD023271; P30ES001247) and the Mae Stone Goode Foundation.
Research Highlights
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Recent Publications
Joan Wennstrom Bennett has been a Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology and Pathology at Rutgers University since 2006. Prior to coming to Rutgers, she was on the faculty at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, for over thirty years. The Bennett laboratory studies the genetics and physiology of filamentous fungi. In addition to mycotoxins and other secondary metabolites, research focuses on the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by fungi. These low molecular weight compounds are responsible for the familiar odors associated with the molds and mushrooms. Some VOCs function as semiochemicals for insects while others serve as developmental signals for fungi. The Bennett lab has tested individual fungal VOCs in model systems and found that 1-octen-3-ol (“mushroom alcohol”) is a neurotoxin in Drosophila melanogaster and causes growth retardation in Arabidopsis thaliana. It also inhibits growth of the fungus that causes “white nose syndrome” in bat populations. In other studies, the Bennett lab has demonstrated that VOCs from living cultures of Trichoderma, a known biocontrol fungus, can enhance plant growth. Investigations on the mechanistic aspects of fungal VOC action are underway using a yeast knock out library. Dr. Bennett also has an active interest in fungal genomics and has been involved in genome projects for Aspergillus flavus, A. fumigatus, A. oryzae and Penicillium expansum.
Dr. Bennett was Associate Vice President for the Office for the Promotion of Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics (“SciWomen”) at Rutgers from 2006-2014 and continues to serve as Senior Faculty Advisor to the group. She is a past Editor-in-Chief of Mycologia; a past Vice President of the British Mycological Society and the International Union of Microbiological Societies; as well as past President of the American Society for Microbiology and the Society for Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.
Title and Address:
Distinguished Professor
Department of Plant Biology
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences,
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Primary Focus Area: Fungal metabolism and fungal genetics
Secondary Focus Area: History of science, women in science and bioethics
Research Areas
Main research interests are behavior and ecology of communities, behavioral eco-toxicology, ecological risk, environmental monitoring and assessment, human health effects of fish consumption, ecological implications of environmental justice, ecological impacts of energy alternatives, and stakeholder involvement in environmental decisions. My research involves understanding the effects and interactions of animals and people with respect to environmental degradation, chemical and radionuclide contamination, habitat destruction, and the disproportionate burden on some populations. One focus is on the levels and effects of pollutants on eco-receptors and on humans, especially from mercury in fish. This involves not only examining levels of contaminants, but assessing consumption patterns, perceptions of the public, and management of those risks.
Another significant research area is working with The Department of Energy on ecological health and risk at their facilities as part of the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation.
Research Highlights
Scholarly Activities
Recent Publications
See complete list of Dr. Burger’s publications
Research Areas
Research Highlights
Scholarly Activities
Recent Publications
Click here for additiional publications by Dr. Fiedler.
Dr. Georgopoulos is Professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Rutgers University – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He is also a member of the Graduate Faculties of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, and a member of the Rutgers Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI). Dr. Georgopoulos received his M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and his Dipl. Ing. Degree from the National Technical University of Athens. At EOHSI he established and directs the Computational Chemodynamics Laboratory (CCL), a state-of-the-art facility for informatics and modeling of complex environmental and biological systems. Furthermore, he directs the State-funded Ozone Research Center and co-directs the Center for Exposure and Risk Modeling (CERM) at EOHSI. He is Co-Director of the Environmental Bioinformatics and Computational Toxicology Center (ebCTC), a research consortium of Rutgers University, Princeton University, and USFDA’s Center for Toxicoinformatics (funded by USEPA 2005-2010). He is also Director of the Informatics and Computational Toxicology Core for the NIEHS Center for Environmental Exposures and Disease (CEED) at EOHSI. He served as Director of the USDOE-funded Center of Expertise in Exposure Assessment of the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP). [read more…]
Research Interests
Multiscale Simulation of Environmental and Biological Systems and Interactions
Enviroinformatics and the Exposome
Risk Analysis for Environmental and Occupational Health
Recent Publications
Research Areas
Research Highlights
Recent Publications
Recent Publications
Research Areas
Research Highlights
Scholarly Activities
Recent Publications
Dr. Mainelis’s Publications – Google Scholar
Recent Publications
Research Areas
Dr. Ohman Strickland conducts research into statistical methods to evaluate environmental-health associations. This includes evaluations of such associations when the response is ordinal, non-normal and/or is measured repeated following exposures. She has collaborated extensively as a biostatistician/co-investigator on projects looking at symptom and physiological effects of acute ambient exposures using the controlled environmental facility and other controlled exposure studies as well as studies of health effects of chronic occupational exposures (such as lead). Recent studies and statistical methodology
Scholarly Activities
Reviewer for the following journals:
Recent Publications
Research Areas
Recent Publications
Website: https://sph.rutgers.edu/directory/wendy-purcell
Dr. Purcell joined Rutgers University as a full Professor in 2022 in the Rutgers School of Public Health, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Justice. She has a PhD in Immunopharmacology (University College London CNAA) and a BSc (Honors) in Biological Sciences (Plymouth University CNAA). After her NAB-funded postdoctoral research and a fellowship with The Wellcome Trust and BBC Science Unit, Dr. Purcell was promoted to full professor and Head of Divion of Physiology, Pharmacology and Toxicology (1993-1997), Head of Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (1997-2000), Dean of Applied Sciences (2000-2004), Vice-President Research (2003-2005), Provost (2005-2007), and University President (2007-2015). She joined Harvard University (2016-2022) as an Academic Research Scholar in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and remains an Affiliated Scientist with the School. Dr. Purcell is a Visiting Professor with University College London in the Global Business School for Health.
Biography
Biography
Dr. Rivera-Núñez holds a BS in Microbiology and a MS in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of Puerto Rico. Her doctoral degree is from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. She completed a National Academies post-doctoral fellowship at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Center for Environmental Assessment in Cincinnati, OH. Dr. Rivera-Núñez joined the Rutgers School of Public Health in 2019. She is a resident faculty member at the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute.
Research Areas
Current exposure assessment tools such as biomarkers potentially allow for increasingly sensitive measures of exposure-related impending adverse health effects. However, developing biomarkers that correlate with specific time windows that are more susceptible to environmental insult is an ongoing challenge. We need to improve epidemiological study design and increase our knowledge on the biological mechanisms behind a chemical’s toxicity. Dr. Rivera-Núñez research focuses on: (1) the utility of biomarkers identifying windows of exposure and susceptibility, particularly for emergent chemicals, (2) the impact of these chemicals in fetal and child growth, and (3) the endocrine and placental mechanisms behind these associations.
Areas of Study
Dr. Rivera-Núñez is currently funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to study zearalenone exposure during pregnancy and early infant growth (R01ESO2275-02S1, R21ES032047). She also receives funding from the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program to study how placental transporters influence the associations between maternal exposures and child outcomes.
Scholarly Activities
Early Career Reviewer Program National Institute of Health
Society of Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology Research
International Society of Exposure Science
International Society of Environmental Epidemiology
Select Publications
Rivera-Núñez Z, Ashrap P, Barrett ES, Llanos A, Watkins DJ, Cathey AL, Vélez-Vega, CM, Rosario Z, Cordero JF, Alshawabkeh A, Meeker JD. 2022. Personal Care Products: Demographic Characteristics and Maternal Hormones in Pregnant Women from Puerto Rico, Environmental Research PMID: 34798118
Kinkade CW, Rivera-Núñez Z, Gorczyca L, Aleksunes LA, Barrett ES. 2021. Impact of Fusarium-Derived Mycoestrogens on Female Reproduction: A Systematic Review. Toxins PMID: 34073731
Rivera-Núñez Z, Ashrap P, Barrett ES, Watkins DJ, Cathey AL, Vélez-Vega, CM, Rosario Z, Cordero JF, Alshawabkeh A, Meeker JD. 2021. Association of Biomarkers of Exposure to metals and metalloids with maternal hormones in pregnant women from Puerto Rico. Environment International. PMID: 33321388
Rivera-Núñez, Z., Barrett, E., Szamreta, E., Shapses, S., Qin, B., Lin, Y., Zarbl, H., Buckley, B., Bandera, E. 2019. “Urinary mycoestrogens and age and height at menarche in New Jersey girls.” Environmental Health PMID: 30902092
Rivera-Núñez Z and Wright JM. 2018. The effect of trihalomethane and haloacetic acid exposures on stillbirth in Massachusetts. Occupational and Environmental Medicine PMID: 30061312
Wright, J.M., Evans, A., Kaufman, J.A., Rivera-Núñez, Z., Narotzky, M.G. (2017) “The association between disinfectant by-product exposures and risk of cardiac birth defects in Massachusetts.” Environmental Health Perspectives PMID: 27518881
Rivera-Núñez, Z., Wright, J., Blount, B., Silva, L., Jones, E., Chan, R., Pegram, R., Singer, P., Savitz, D. (2012) “Comparison of trihalomethanes in tap water and blood: a case study in the United States.”, Environmental Health Perspectives PMID: 22281753
Parvez S, Rivera-Núñez Z, Meyer A, Wright JM. (2011). Temporal variability in trihalomethane and haloacetic acid concentrations in Massachusetts public drinking water systems. Environmental Research PMID: 21316653
Rivera-Núñez Z, Meliker JR, Meeker JD, Slotnick MJ, Nriagu JO. 2012. Urinary arsenic species, toenail arsenic, and estimates of arsenic intake in a southeastern Michigan population with low-to-moderate exposure to arsenic in drinking water. Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology PMID: 21878987
Full Library: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/zorimar.rivera-nunez.1/bibliography/public/
WEB: https://plantbiology.rutgers.edu/faculty/robson/mark_robson.html
Research Areas
I am an applied exposure scientist and toxicologist. In my work I focus on the reduction and elimination of pesticide exposure to farmers and farm families particularly in rural areas in developing countries. My focus has been to measure and assess exposure and train farmers and farm workers. My interest in agriculture comes from growing up on a family fruit and vegetable farm in Burlington County New Jersey, my first degree was in agricultural science and this has been the platform for my research, teaching and service work. I have worked in Eastern Europe, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. In Southeast Asia, my research and training projects were supported with funds from the Asian Development Bank as well as NIH Fogarty D43 TW007849. For a period of 20 years I have taught more than 700 students in the Environmental Risk Assessment course taught at Chulalongkorn University. I have also established the Rutgers Thai Fogarty ITREOH Center at the College of Public Health Sciences at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. There I have mentored 50 MPH and PhD students and have directly supported 26 students from seven countries with NIH Fogarty funds for their thesis research. Also as a result of teaching risk assessment classes at Rutgers and in developing countries I developed a textbook with Dr. William Toscano (University of Minnesota) titled: Environmental Health Risk Assessment for Public Health (2007) the second edition of the textbook in currently in revision and due out at the end of 2020.
Research Highlights
My research focus is on pesticide exposure to farmers and farm families in developing countries, the major platform for this is the NIH FIC Thai International Training and Research in Environmental and Occupational Health grant.
Scholarly Activities
NJAES Hatch and Multi-State Projects
Recent Publications
Click here for additional publications by Dr. Robson.
Education
Research Areas
Dr. Shendell works to “bridge” science, education and policy in a multidisciplinary fashion to reduce and/or prevent environmental exposures and health effects. He focuses on community/schools-based research with local participation in planning and execution; educational trainings and materials, service and technical assistance; and informed/evidence-based policy advocacy.
Furthermore, he is Director of the NJ Safe Schools Program and co-facilitates the NJ OSHA Alliance, which are within the Center for School and Community Based Research and Education. The program includes injury surveillance (including only school-based system, online and in-print, for working minors and young adults), science-to-policy, regular statewide e-communications, and training for teachers and administrative professionals in secondary education (public and private) concerning safety and health.
Among many research and practice-oriented service activities outside NJ, he is Student Involvement co-Chair (Faculty Chair) of the American Public Health Association (APHA) – Environment (ENV) (and a member of both ENV and Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) sections), and an annual meeting abstract reviewer for APHA ENV and OHS as well as other international societies he is a member of. Inside NJ, he is an approved appointee by the State of NJ Governor’s office (multiple administrations) to the Commission on Environmental Education/Interagency Working Group and the Child Labor Advisory Board to advise the NJ Department of Environmental Protection and NJ Department of Labor and Workforce Development, respectively, using various data to inform decisions.
Research Highlights
Recent Publications
Click here for additional publications by Dr. Shendell.
Research Areas
My research involves the mathematical modeling of contaminants in aquatic ecosystems. This involves not only computer modeling but also laboratory and field studies to develop submodels that allow of parameter estimations use in the models.
Research Highlights
My research group has been involved in the development of a novel apparatus to measure Sediment Oxygen Demand (SOD) in rivers and lakes on a timely and cost effective manner. We have applied for a patent for the apparatus.
Recent Publications
Research Areas
Dr. Welsh’s laboratory specializes in the development and application of computational tools for pharmaceutical drug discovery, predictive toxicology, and multi-dimensional pattern recognition. His laboratory’s interests extend to the molecular design and modeling of synthetic polymers, protein-material interactions, and protein-ligand interactions. In recent years, his laboratory has participated in the discovery of potential drug candidates for the treatment cancer, severe and chronic pain, and infectious diseases.
Research Highlights
Implemented the Shape Signatures tool for applications relevant to computational toxicology; major accomplishments achieved include:
Employed molecular modeling approaches to delineate and visualize how human ADA3 regulates the transcriptional activity of RAR(alpha) through direct interaction between LxxLL motifs and the receptor coactivator pocket.
Developed shape-based prioritization and classification approaches to predict human pregnane x receptor activators.
Identified and characterized a binding site for small-molecule PXR antagonists that interact on the outer surface of PXR at the AF-2 domain; major accomplishments achieved include:
Using microarray techniques to characterize gene expression profiles predictive of monomethylarsonous acid (MMA(III)) exposure and mode of action of carcinogenesis, we observed increases in transcript abundance of Fosl1, Myc, and Rac1 oncogenes in mouse skin. The results support previous findings of the inducibility of these oncogenes in response to arsenic and support the relevance of these genomic changes in skin tumor induction in the K6/ODC mouse model.
Scholarly Activities
Recent Publication
After completing his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Chicago, Dr. Weschler did postdoctoral studies with Prof. Fred Basolo at Northwestern University. In 1975 he joined Bell Laboratories as a research scientist in the Physical Chemistry Division. He conducted research at Bell Labs and its successor institutions until 2001 being named a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff (1986). In 2001 he retired from Bellcore/Telcordia and accepted positions at the Environmental & Occupational Health Science Institute and the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy, Technical University of Denmark. He has continued in those positions through the present. In 2010 he joined the faculty of the Building Science department at Tsinghua University (Beijing) as an ongoing Visiting Professor. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Rutgers School of Public Health. He was a Member of the Committee on Air Quality in Passenger Cabins in Commercial Aircraft, National Academy of Sciences, 2000-2001; Advisor on Strategies to Protect the Health of Deployed US Forces, National Academy of Sciences, 1998-2000; Member of the Committee to Review the Structure and Performance of the Health Effects Institute, National Academy of Sciences, 1991-1993; and Member of the Committee on Advances in Assessing Human Exposure to Airborne Pollutants, National Academy of Sciences, 1987-1990. From 1999-2005 he served on the US EPA’s Science Advisory Board. He was elected to the International Academy of Indoor Air Sciences in 1999 and received the Pettenkofer Award, its highest honor, in 2014. He has been conferred the 2017 Haagen-Smit Prize from Atmospheric Environment; “Distinguished Visiting Professor” at Tsinghua University (2018); an “Honorary Doctorate” from the Technical University of Denmark (2018); and elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 2020). He has an h-index of 79 with over 20,300 citations (Web of Science) and 89 with over 28,300 citations (Google Scholar).
Chemical reactions among indoor pollutants; their products, including free radicals and secondary organic aerosols. Gas/particle and gas/surface partitioning in indoor environments. Factors that influence the concentrations, transport and surface accumulations of indoor pollutants. Indoor pollutant exposures; their contributions to total pollutant exposures and consequent health effects. Uptake of organic pollutants via dermal absorption
Research Highlights
Scholarly Activities
Publications
Click here for a full list of Dr. Weschler’s Publications
Dr. Young is a Professor and Chair in Rutgers Department of Environmental Sciences and Biotechnology Center for Agriculture and the Environment. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program. She also serves on the EC-US Task Force on Environmental Biotechnology.
Research Areas
Examining the instrinsic ability of anaerobic communities from NY-NJ Harbor sediments todegrade alkanes and PAHs, and environmental factors which affect the activity Determining the novel microbial chemistry of the anaerobic pathways of naphthalene, methylnapthalene and phenanthrene by active consortia, and that of the alkanes by newly isolated pure cultures; Investigating methods to improve or enhance natural rates of biodegradation; Developing biochemical markers for assessing intrinsic biodegradation; Isolating novel anaerobes able to degrade additional petroleum constituents and other aromatic compounds; Characterizing the anaerobic toluene pathway in a denitrifying strain with a molecular genetic approach.
Scholarly Activities
Recent Publications
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