SRP Progress in Research Webinar Series: Emerging Technologies in Occupational Health and Safety Training and Education - Session I

The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) is sponsoring a Progress in Research webinar series, hosted by CLU-IN, to showcase federally funded researchers developing curricula and educational programs focused on emergent technologies in the sphere of occupational health and safety.

The three-part series will highlight researchers' projects, accomplishments, and demonstrate research products — included in this group of researchers are SRP's seven R25 grant recipients as well as participation from the NIEHS Worker Training Program (WTP) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH).

To learn about and register for the other sessions in this webinar series, please see the SRP website.

City University of New York (CUNY) | New York Training Center for Emerging Technologies in Industrial Hygiene:
Brian Pavilonis, Ph.D., and Homero Harari, Sc.D., will plan to discuss the work their grant has facilitated in support of training and research opportunities for industrial hygiene students in New York City. They will also showcase a sensor technology employed in nail salons to monitor indoor hazardous airborne contaminants and the risks posed to nail technicians.

University of California, Los Angeles | Occupational and Environmental Exposures and Work Practices for Nanomaterials and Electronic Products:
Candace Tsai, Ph.D., will discuss how her grant provides professional training through academic curricula, research experiences, and continuing education courses in industrial hygiene and environmental health sciences to graduate students and industrial hygienists in the Southern California region. This presentation will also include several research results accomplished by graduate student trainees in the topics of electronic waste recycling and assessment, 3D printing evaluation, virtual reality applications to firefighters' workplace and potential biological effects associated with green solvent use as emerging alternatives. Additionally, current progress of UCLA's training program and emerging technology course will be summarized.

Purdue University | Distance Education and Training on Emerging Contaminants and Technologies (DETECT):
Ellen Wells, Ph.D., will introduce and provide the current status of her NIH R25 Distance Education and Training on Emerging Contaminants and Technologies (DETECT) project, which is a collaboration between faculty at Purdue University, the University of Toledo, and the University of South Florida. Goals of the project are to provide educational resources in the areas of Emerging Contaminants, Emerging Technologies, and Safety Management Systems.

NIEHS Superfund Research Program:
Michelle Heacock, Ph.D., and Danielle Carlin, Ph.D., of the NIEHS Superfund Research Program, will provide an overview of the Occupational Health and Safety Training Education Programs on Emerging Technologies (R25) program.

Brian Pavilonis, Ph.D., City University of New York (brian.pavilonis@sph.cuny.edu)
Brian Pavilonis, Ph.D., is a Certified Industrial Hygienist who has been working in occupational health and exposure science since 2012. Dr. Pavilonis joined the CUNY SPH faculty in 2014. His research aims to understand human exposure in the occupational environment and characterize risk due to exposure. 

Homero Harari, Sc.D., Mount Sinai School of Medicine (homero.harari@mssm.edu)
Homero Harari, Ph.D., is an Industrial Hygienist at the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health and Assistant Professor and Head of the Occupational and Environmental Hygiene Laboratory at the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NYC. Dr. Harari is the co-founder and co-director of the "New York Training Center in Emerging Technologies in Industrial Hygiene".

Candace Tsai, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles (candacetsai@ucla.edu)
Candace Tsai, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Certified Industrial Hygienist. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the R25 training program at UCLA and has served as the Deputy/Director of NIOSH ERC Industrial Hygiene Training Program at UCLA. Her research focuses on exposure assessment of nanomaterials and other airborne substances. She authors the textbook entitled "Health and Safety Considerations for Working with Engineered Nanoparticles", by Wiley, and is the associate editor for the Encyclopedia of Nanotechnology and Journal of Nanoparticle Research. She has served as an expert for ISO and WHO for nanotechnology and serves as a TLV committee for ACGIH.

Ellen Wells, Ph.D., Purdue University (wells54@purdue.edu)
Dr. Ellen M. Wells is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Occupational and Environmental Health Science Programs at Purdue University. She is the director of a NIOSH training grant and an NIH R25 Superfund Occupational and Safety Training Education Program on Emerging Technologies. Her research focuses on occupational and environmental epidemiology, primarily on the impact of metal exposure on neurological health. The overall goal of her research lab is to use epidemiological methods to understand the impacts of environmental factors on both environmental and health equity.

Michelle L. Heacock, Ph.D., NIEHS Superfund Research Program (heacockm@niehs.nih.gov)
Michelle Heacock, Ph.D., is currently serving as the acting branch chief of the Hazardous Substances Research Branch, and is a health science administrator where she oversees Superfund Research Program (SRP) grants that span basic molecular mechanisms of biological responses from exposures to hazardous substances, movement of hazardous substances through environmental media, detection technologies, and remediation approaches. Dr. Heacock received her doctorate from Texas A&M University for her work on the interplay between DNA repair proteins and telomeres. Her postdoctoral work was conducted at NIEHS where she studied the DNA repair pathway, base excision repair. She has been with the NIEHS since 2007.

Moderators:

Danielle J. Carlin, Ph.D., D.A.B.T., NIEHS Superfund Research Program (danielle.carlin@nih.gov)
Danielle Carlin, Ph.D., D.A.B.T., is a health scientist administrator with the NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP). Her position consists of providing guidance and advice to grantees applying for SRP Center grants and serving as the lead liaison between SRP trainees and the various training opportunities offered by SRP. Her current research interests include chemical mixtures, combined exposures, metals, asbestos, and xenobiotic metabolism. Dr. Carlin conducted her postdoctoral training at the University of North Carolina, where she first studied aerosolized drugs/vaccines for treatment and prevention of tuberculosis for two years and then focused on the toxicological effects of exposure to Libby amphibole asbestos in the rat model. She received her Ph.D. in 2005 from Kansas State University, College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Anatomy and Physiology. She also has a B.S. and M.S. in animal science from New Mexico State University.

Jean Balent, U.S. EPA Technology Innovation and Field Services Division (balent.jean@epa.gov or 202-566-0832)
Ms Balent is on the staff of the EPA's Technology Innovation and Field Services Division where she has worked to collect and disseminate hazardous waste remediation and characterization information since 2003. Ms Balent manages the Clean Up Information Network website and actively supports online communication and collaboration resources available to EPA. She formerly worked with the US Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Engineering Division in the Buffalo District. Ms Balent was also a member of the SUNY-Buffalo Groundwater Research Group where she constructed and tested large scale models of groundwater flow. Ms Balent has also conducted research relating to the Great Lakes, environmental remediation, and brownfields re-development. She holds a Bachelor's degree in environmental engineering from SUNY-Buffalo and a Master's degree in Information Technology from AIU.

• Slide Presentation, SRP Overview (1.91MB/PDF)
• Slide Presentation for Pavilonis Harari, CUNY (1.86MB/PDF)
• Slide Presentation for Tsai, UCLA (5.78MB/PDF)
• Slide Presentation for Wells, Purdue (418KB/PDF)

Webinar Slides and References:

• Slide Presentation, SRP Overview (1.91MB/PDF)
• Slide Presentation for Pavilonis Harari, CUNY (1.86MB/PDF)
• Slide Presentation for Tsai, UCLA (5.78MB/PDF)
• Slide Presentation for Wells, Purdue (418KB/PDF)

Additional Resources:

• These materials will be available by Friday, April 26, 2024

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Rehabilitation Act Notice for Reasonable Accommodation

It is EPA's policy to make reasonable accommodation to persons with disabilities wishing to participate in the agency's programs and activities, pursuant to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. 791. Any request for accommodation should be made to Dylan Williams at 202-982-5717 or dylan.williams@nih.gov, preferably one week or more in advance of the webinar, so that EPA will have sufficient time to process the request. EPA would welcome specific recommendations from requestors specifying the nature or type of accommodation needed. EPA welcomes specific recommendations from requestors specifying the nature or type of accommodation needed. Please note that CLU-IN provides both alternate phone call-in options and closed captioning for all webinars, and requests for these specific accommodations are not necessary.

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