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NEWS Chair's Greeting Faculty News Student News Alumni News Staff News 2008 The Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering ESE David Leith wins highly prized Greenberg Award The Year in Review Gillings School of Global Public Health University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2 2008 ESE NEWS ESE News is published by the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Gillings School of Global Public Health, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is available on the web at www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ publications. Subscription is free. Department Chair: Michael D. Aitken, Professor and Chair Email: Mike_Aitken@unc.edu Editor: Rebecca Riggsbee Lloyd Email: Rebecca.Lloyd@unc.edu Special Thanks: The editor would like to extend thanks to three colleagues for their editing assistance; Annie Goodwin, Elise Pohl and Robin Whitley. Please send news items, reader comments, and subscription requests to the editor: ESE News, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#7431, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7431 Phone: 919.966.4175 Fax: 919.966.7911 ESE MISSION STATEMENT The scholarly focus of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering is the interplay between humankind, other species and the physical, chemical, and biological processes that regulate the function of both natural and engineered environments. We describe environ-mental processes to understand their effects upon humankind and con-sider the reciprocal effects of human activities on these processes. The overall goal of our inquiry is the development of explanatory and predictive capacities for assessing and mitigating consequences to hu-man health or the environment through alternative societal actions and policies. Send Us Your News! Occasionally there are announcements and alumni event notifications the department would like to send you via email. Please send us your email address, as well as any news, comments, or updates of your contact information by either completing and mailing the reader response card below or by email to Rebecca.Lloyd@unc.edu. ESE Reader Response Card Name________________________________________________ Degree and Year _____________ Advisor _____________ Home Address ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Work Address ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Email / Phone ______________________________________________________ News / Comments (research, books published, career milestones including retirement, forms of professional recognition, appointments to boards, memberships to honorary societies, etc.) ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Send to: Rebecca Riggsbee Lloyd ~ 166 Rosenau Hall, CB#7431 ~ Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7431 ~ Rebecca.Lloyd@unc.edu 3 2008 ESE NEWS chair's greeting Dear Readers, Each year seems to pass more quickly than the one before, but a retrospective view gives us a chance to appreciate how much was accomplished. I can assure you that time does not stand still in ESE! In the comings-and-goings category, two new assistant professors, Rebecca Fry and Jill Stewart, began tenure-track appointments in ESE in July 2008. We hired another two assistant professors, Rose Cory and Carlo De Michele, who will begin with us this spring. And two of our long-time professors retired in 2008. Doug Crawford-Brown retired to pursue a new private-sector opportunity in Cambridge, England. Fred Pfaender retired in December, although he will remain on board part-time to help with several ongoing activities. In the moving-forward category, good news came to faculty members Leena Nylander-French, who was promoted to Professor, and Howard Weinberg, who was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. The biggest news of the year for the whole School was the adoption of its new name, the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. It was fitting that with an increased awareness of global issues in the School, a BSPH student in ESE, Aisha Saad, was one of two Carolina students to receive a Rhodes scholarship in 2008. Former PhD student Joe Brown, and his advisor, Mark Sobsey, received the International Water Association's global Project Innovation Award for Joe's PhD project on the use of ceramic filters for household water treatment in Cambodia. Other student award winners included Sheila Flack and Jen Thomasen (both of whom won American Industrial Hygiene Foundation scholarships), Dan Gatti (U.S. EPA STAR fellowship), and Hee-Suk Lee (National Water Research Institute fellowship). I thank all of you who donated to the Department in 2008 - your generosity and continuing loyalty to ESE is truly impressive. I particularly thank those who responded to the appeal from fellow alumni to contribute in Dan Okun's memory to the Dan Okun Scholarship fund and to help endow the Dan Okun Chapter of Engineers Without Borders at UNC. To all readers, best wishes for a successful 2009. Regards, Mike Aitken ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Pictures from Okun Memorial Symposium Guest Presenter Reds Wolman (left) and ESE Associate Professor Greg Charcklis Tema Okun (right) and Guest Speaker Chris Schulz 4 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news Leith chosen for highly prized Greenberg Award David H. Leith has been selected as the 2008 recipient of the Greenberg Alumni Endowment Award for excellence in teaching, research and service. Dean Barbara K. Rimer presented him this award during the Gillings School of Global Public Health's Foard Lecture held April 14, 2008 at The William and Ida Friday Center for Continu-ing Education. A reception preceding the lecture was held in his honor by the depart-ment and alumni. Leith, professor of environmental sciences and engineering, received a ScD from Harvard University in 1975 and taught there for nine years before joining the UNC faculty in 1984. His research and teaching at UNC have focused on the measurement and control of contami-nants in indoor and outdoor air. Since 1981, Leith has advised 17 doctoral students, 10 of whom have advanced to faculty positions in public health. His students have won six national awards for "best paper of the year" given for excellence in re-search. At Carolina, he has won four other awards for teaching and mentorship, including the University's Distin-guished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction, presented by Chancellor James Moeser in 2005. Singer presents 2008 Snoeyink Distinguished Visiting Lecture Philip C. Singer, Dan Okun Distinguished Professor of environmental engineering, was invited to present the 2008 Vernon L. Snoeyink Distinguished Visiting Lectures at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Professor Singer delivered a public lecture on “Disinfection Byproducts in Tap Water: Exposure Assessment and Misconceptions” on March 25, 2008 and a technical lecture on “Integrated Analysis of the Removal of Natural Organic Matter by Magnetic Ion Exchange” on March 26, 2008. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Leith was nominated for the Greenberg Award by more than 20 former students and professional colleagues at UNC and throughout the country. One supporter observed, "Dave sees every situation as a learning opportunity and a chance for him to make a difference in someone's life -- whether it's a student, a worker, or the greater community as a whole." The seamless integration of research, public service and teaching, which the Greenberg Award was designed to honor, appears to be a hallmark of Leith's career. The Greenberg Award was established by the Gillings School of Global Public Health Alumni Association to honor Dr. Bernard G. Greenberg, founder and chair of the Depart-ment of Biostatistics from 1949 to 1972 and dean of the School from 1972 to1982. The award is given annually to an outstanding full-time faculty member for excellence in the areas of teaching, research and service. Special consideration is given to candidates who have integrated these areas of focus. A major criterion is continuous demonstrated excellence over a number of years in service to the broader public health community. Singer presents keynote address at NEWWA Philip C. Singer, Dan Okun Distinguished Professor of environmental engineering, delivered the keynote address at the 10th Annual Water Quality Symposium of the New England Water Works Association (NEWWA) on May 15, 2008 in Westford, MA. The title of his presentation was “The Practice of Drinking Water Treatment: A Ten-Year Retrospective.” Leith dressed for Halloween 5 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news Okun honored at memorial symposium The Dan Okun Memorial Symposium, held November 7, 2008 at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, assembled experts from around the world to speak on pressing water issues. The symposium was held to honor the late Daniel A. Okun, PhD (1917-2007), Kenan Professor of environmental engineering emeritus. Philip Singer, Dan Okun Distinguished Professor of environmental engineering, who offered opening remarks at the event, has said of the symposium's honoree: "Dan was a pioneer who had a profound influence on scientific, technical, and policy advancements in the field of environmental sciences and engineering. An engineer's engineer, he cast a giant shadow on the broad field of water supply and Okun honored by Engineers Without Borders Engineers Without Borders, USA, officially has changed the name of its UNC chapter to “The Daniel A. Okun Chapter of EWB-USA.” The name change honors the late Dr. Okun, Kenan Distinguished Professor Emeritus, who passed away on Dec. 10, 2007. More information about Engineers Without Borders and the UNC chapter's activities can be found online at: http://studentorgs.unc.edu/ewb/. water resources management. His legacy will live on among all engineers and scientists dealing with issues of water and health." Among the speakers were current and former faculty members in the UNC Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, including Singer; Michael Aitken, professor and chair; Francis DiGiano, professor (retired); and Russell Christman, professor (retired). Other guest speakers included M. Gordon (Reds) Wolman from Johns Hopkins University; Chi-Chung Tang from Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, California; Pete Kolsky from The World Bank; Chris Schulz from CDM; Charles O'Melia from Johns Hopkins University; James Crook, an environmental engineering consultant; and John S. Young, Jr., from American Water. Links to event pictures and program presentations are available online at http://www.sph.unc.edu/ okunsymposium. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Okun Symposium presenters: from left to right: Crook, Schulz, DiGiano, Singer, Young and O'Melia 6 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news Sobsey accepts International Water Association award for innovative use of water filters A team of researchers led by Mark Sobsey, PhD, has received the International Water Association's (IWA) Project Innovation Award for their research endeavor, "Ceramic Water Filters in Cambodia: A Sustainable Solution for Rural Drinking Water Treatment" in 2008. The project is one of the Gillings Innovation Laboratories (GILs) at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Sobsey, Kenan Distinguished University Professor of environmental sciences and en-gineering in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, accepted the honor at the Association's East Asian and Pacific Awards Ceremony on June 26, 2008 in Singapore. Joe Brown (PhD '07, Sobsey Advisor) currently an assistant pro-fessor at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, proposed the original water purification project and worked with Sobsey and others to initiate and field-test it in Cambodian homes. After successful testing, Sobsey, Brown and others established the Carolina Global Water Partnership, a research collaboration between ESE and the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, which is exploring ways to commercialize household water treat-ment technologies in developing countries. The Global Water Partnership is one of seven Gillings Innova-tion Laboratories established thus far at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. GILs are interdisciplinary research groups funded through a major gift to the School from Dennis and Joan Gillings. "We know that biosand and ceramic filters and other household water treatment technologies make an enormous difference in the health of people who don't have access to clean drinking water," Sobsey said. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 2 million children die each year from diarrhea and related illnesses caused by unsafe drinking water and inadequate hygiene and sanita-tion. "We have the technologies, but now it's a matter of finding ways to get these technologies into communities and households, and have people adopt and use them effectively and sustainably," Sobsey said. Sobsey said that he was honored to accept the award on behalf of Joe Brown and himself. "I am pleased that this brings more visibility to our Department and School, especially because the project focuses on global water and on those most in need of safe water," he said. IWA representatives and others had special praise for the project, Sobsey said, because of its target benefi-ciaries, the simplicity and effectiveness of the technology, its low cost and the fact that it was a student's project. "We were pleased to receive recognition for this project," Brown said. "Our research has shown that locally Joe Brown, building water storage tank in Cambodia 7 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news produced ceramic water filters can be an effective long-term solution to contaminated drinking water at the household level." In his application for the award, Brown had noted, "Locally produced ceramic water filters are a new technol-ogy in Cambodia. This project provides the first systematic, field-based assessment of the technology's sustainability as a drinking water treatment intervention." Brown says the filters are now used by an estimated 100,000 Cambodian households for treatment of drink-ing water, resulting in a 98% reduction of E. coli and a 46% decrease in diarrhea. Competing for the IWA innovation awards were a number of large international corporations with significantly more complex projects. Tom Outlaw, (EMBA '08) a recent alumnus from UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and involved with Carolina Global Water Partnership, thinks the research demonstrates that high impact doesn't require high technology or high cost. "The ceramic water purifier represents technology that is appropriate, affordable and attractive - the three essential drivers of consumer demand," Outlaw said. "Now, the next step for UNC is scaling-up access to these filters in Cambodia and beyond." Michael Aitken, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, said he was thrilled that the innovative work being done by Sobsey and his students was being recognized. "We are particularly proud," Aitken said, "that our former PhD student, Joe Brown, led this project and has gone on to continue his work as a faculty member at the University of Alabama. Receiving this international award reflects the high quality of research on drinking water for which UNC is known, a reputation that Professor Sobsey has helped to establish." "We are very proud of Drs. Sobsey and Brown," agreed Dr. Barbara K. Rimer, dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and Alumni Distinguished Professor of health policy and administration. "I am especially pleased," Rimer said, "that the award recognizes the team's use of low-cost, sustainable technologies to address the water problem. Their deceptively simple innovation could have a profound impact on public health." The International Water Association is a global network of water professionals in science, research, technol-ogy and practice. Its members, including 10,000 individuals and 400 corporations in 130 countries, work to develop effective and sustainable approaches to water management. The Association's Project Innovations Award Program was established to recognize excellence and innova-tion in water engineering projects. Among the criteria for the award are the degree of complexity of the problem being addressed, the innovative application of technology, the future value to the water engineering profession and the sustainable design of the project. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Visit ESE's website for News, Events, Seminars and links. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ 8 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news Weinberg promoted to Associate Professor ESE is pleased to announce the promotion of Howard S. Weinberg, D.Sc. to Associate Professor with tenure effective September 1, 2008. Professor Weinberg was appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in ESE in 2002. Prior to that, he had served ESE as a Research Assistant Professor from 1997-2002, a Research Associate from 1992- 1997, and a post-doctoral fellow from 1989-1992. He also held a brief visiting research appointment at L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1993. He was appointed an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2007. Professor Weinberg’s research expertise is in the chemical analysis of environmental contaminants. His work includes method development for detecting and quantifying emerging contaminants in water (i.e., chemicals that are only beginning to be recognized as potential hazards to the environment or human health) as well as using analytical capabilities to study the occurrence, fate, and potential for human exposure of these contaminants in drinking water treatment, wastewater treatment, and aquatic environments. He has focused in particular on potentially harmful chemicals formed during the disinfection of drinking water (disinfection byproducts) and more recently on estrogens and other pharmaceutically active chemicals that have become of significant concern. Several analytical methods developed by Professor Weinberg are used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey in their water quality research and surveillance work. Many of Professor Weinberg’s papers have been published in top-ranked journals in his field, including Analytical Chemistry, Environmental Science & Technology, Journal of Chromatography A, and Water Research. He was awarded the Best Paper Award in the water quality and technology division by the Journal of the American Water Works Association in 2005. In 2006, the Water Environment Federation awarded him the Harrison Prescott Eddy Medal for research published in a water environment research periodical that makes a vital contribution to the existing knowledge of the fundamental principles or processes of water treatment. His publications on disinfection byproducts are highly cited. Collectively, his work has been cited nearly 400 times. In addition to these publication awards, he has won (with his students) two awards for poster presentations at American Water Works Association Water Quality Technology Conferences. In 2006 he was invited to give the opening presentation at the first Gordon Research Conference on Drinking Water Disinfection Byproducts. In 1999, Professors Weinberg and Aitken created an in-house seminar program that soon evolved to a one-credit course (now ENVR 400) required of all students in the department. He has been solely responsible for organizing and administering the course every semester since 2002. The students have rated the course highly, particularly for its ability to expose them to the breadth of research being undertaken in this Department. Sobsey interviewed about the Carolina Global Water Partnership Mark Sobsey, Kenan University Distinguished Professor of environmental sciences and engineering, is “helping to lead a major new effort, centered at UNC and called the Carolina Global Water Partnership, to understand how business principles and household point-of-use (POU) treatment technology can be used to bring safe water to people in the developing world.” Sobsey is interviewed in Water Technology Online (Vol. 31, Issue 3, March 2008). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 9 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news School to help United Arab Emirates assess environmental health risks The United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), one of the fastest developing nations in the world, has signed a two-year contract with researchers from ESE to lead an assessment of health risks due to environmental factors in their country. UNC researchers are partnering with U.A.E. University’s Department of Community Medicine and the RAND Corp., a global public policy research institution. This group will work with the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi and its national partners, the Health Authority-Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. Ministry of Health, U.A.E. Ministry of Environment and Water, Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority and Health Authority- Dubai. The U.A.E. is a Middle Eastern federation of seven states situated on the Arabian Gulf bordering Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman. The country, with a population of about 4.3 million, has a highly industrialized economy and significant oil and natural gas reserves. “The U.A.E. is developing at an unprecedented pace and scale,” says principal investigator Jacqueline A. MacDonald, assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering. “In the past 40 years, it has gone from a small, mostly nomadic and seafaring economy to a major industrial nation. While all the developments have brought some vast improvements in public health, they’ve also brought some concerns about risks due to environmental hazards that come with an industrialized economy.” MacDonald leads a research team that will assess environmental health risks and use the results of these analyses to help United Arab Emirates set priorities and develop policies for mitigating health risks. The work will involve collecting data, working with local stakeholders to prioritize risks from environmental exposures; and developing computer-based models to estimate impact of environmental exposures and the burden of disease caused by the most important risk factors, including both indoor and outdoor air pollution (especially emissions stemming from oil and gas production), water pollution (both coastal and groundwater), and exposures to hazardous substances in the workplace. At the same time, the larger-scale epidemiologic study will be conducted to provide a nationwide assessment of possible links between the environment and the health of people living there. For more information, visit the project website at http://www.sph.unc.edu/uae. MacDonald featured in Bryn Mawr's Science & Technology ESE Assistant Professor Jacqueline A. MacDonald was featured in the February 2008 issue of Science & Technology (S&T). S&T is Bryn Mawr College’s newsletter on research, teaching, management, policy making and leadership in science and technology. The article is available on their website at http://www.brynmawr.edu/ sandt/2008_february/connecting.shtml. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Kamens presents plenary lecture at conference ESE Professor Richard Kamens presented the plenary lecture at the Atmospheric Chemical Mechanisms (ARC) Conference held December 10-12, 2008 at The ARC, University of California Davis. He presented, “SOA Some Old and New Thoughts” on December 11, 2008. 10 2008 ESE NEWS Rusyn receives NIEHS grant to develop better models for testing chemical hazards An interdisciplinary team of researchers at UNC and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) which may yield knowledge about why some people are more likely than others to be affected by exposure to toxic chemicals. Led by Ivan Rusyn, MD, PhD, associate professor of environmental sciences and engineering and principal investigator, the research effort will establish a partnership between environmental health scientists, biologi-cal engineers, cheminformaticians, biostatisticians and geneticists. The funding comes from a National Institutes of Health bioengineering research partnerships program spe-cifically designed to encourage basic, applied and translational bioengineering research that could contribute significantly to better human health. One of the aims of the research is to test the hypothesis that genetic variability among individuals is a major determinant in the toxic effects of chemical hazards. "We are extremely pleased to receive this award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sci-ences," Rusyn said. "Our interdisciplinary team is determined to advance the science and practice of environ-mental health research by building bridges between disciplines." "This work is valuable," Rusyn said, "as it will contribute to prevention of human disease by improving our ability to extrapolate and translate findings from chemical testing to human populations and by informing regulatory decisions that limit exposures to disease-associated environmental agents." The research team will develop a mouse liver tissue bioreactor that can screen chemicals; build, test and validate computational models that use chemical and biological descriptors of molecular structures and take into account genetic diversity; and validate an in vivo / in vitro toxicity screening paradigm for a class of chemicals called allylbenzene derivatives. Other members of the research team include Alex Tropsha, PhD (UNC School of Pharmacy), David Threadgill, PhD (UNC School of Medicine), and Linda Griffith, PhD (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Rusyn selected for Society of Toxicology honor Ivan Rusyn, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, has been selected to receive the Society of Toxicology’s Achievement Award. Rusyn received his doctorate at UNC in 2000 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow for a year before joining the faculty in 2002. The Achievement Award is presented to a member of the Society of Toxicology who has less than 15 years experience since obtaining his/her highest earned degree (in the year of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Toxicology) and who has made significant contributions to toxicology. This award consists of a plaque and a cash stipend. faculty news The award was presented at the Society’s 47th annual meeting held on March 16, 2008 in Seattle, Washington. 11 2008 ESE NEWS ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ��� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ School to strengthen computational toxicology and bioinformatics expertise with major U.S. EPA award The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded our School a $3.4 million grant to help strengthen our research portfolio in computational toxicology and bioinformatics. Computational toxicology is a branch of environmental health sciences that applies mathematical and computer models to predict adverse effects of drugs and environmental chemicals and to better understand the ways they may cause harm to human health and the environment. This relatively young discipline offers the possibility that scientists might be able to develop a much better understanding of risks posed by chemicals released into the environment. The grant, which will be awarded over four years, aids the establishment of The Carolina Center for Computational Toxicology (http://comptox.unc.edu). The Center will advance the field of computational toxicology through development of new methods and computational tools, as well as through interdisciplinary collaborative efforts within UNC and with other environmental health science researchers. ”We are delighted to receive this highly competitive award,” says Dr. Ivan Rusyn, associate professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the School, associate director of the Curriculum in Toxicology at the UNC School of Medicine, and principal investigator for the project. “The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health is a world leader in many areas of science that improves the health of people in North Carolina and around the world, and the new Center will strengthen our capacity for understanding and predicting the inter-individual differences in risk from environmental exposures.” Previously printed in Carolina Public Health. Carolina Public Health is a publication of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. To subscribe to Carolina Public Health or to view the entire Fall 2008 issue in PDF, visit www.sph.unc.edu/cph. Discover magazine seeks opinion from environmental scientist Aitken Mike Aitken, ESE professor and chair, was quoted in a recent issue of Discover magazine in an article about a new water supply project in Orange Co., CA (“Better Water - From Toilet to Tap,” May 2008). The article describes the Groundwater Replenishment System project which began operating in California in January 2008. The system recycles water from sewage and uses it to replenish underground reservoirs. More than 2.1 trillion gallons of water in the U.S. are flushed down toilets every year, and the project hopes to curb the waste. In the article, Aitken predicts that water recycling will become increasingly important around the country. The California project is “the gold standard for how to do it right,” Aitken says. The Discover article is available online: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/may/23-from-toilet-to-tap/ article_view?searchterm=aitken&b_start:int=1. faculty news 12 2008 ESE NEWS ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ faculty news Nylander-French promoted to Full Professor ESE Professor and Chair, Mike Aitken, announced the promotion of Leena Nylander-French to Full Professor effective March 1, 2008. Dr. Nylander-French obtained a PhD in occupational and industrial hygiene from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in 1994. She was appointed to the faculty in ESE as an Assistant Professor in 1997, originally in a joint appointment with Epidemiology. She has had a full-time appointment in ESE since 2000 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in ESE in 2002. She has served as Industrial Hygiene Program Director in the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Educational Resource Center since 2002, and in 2006 became Director of the Exposure and Biomarkers Research Core under the NIEHS-supported Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (CEHS) in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Dr. Nylander-French’s general area of research is in human exposure to toxic substances via the skin (dermal exposure). Paerl featured in Science An article in the December 12, 2008 issue of Science magazine features the research of Hans Paerl, PhD. Paerl is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of marine sciences at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, N.C., and holds a joint appointment at the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health in the department of environmental sciences and engineering. The article, “FerryBoxes Begin to Make Waves,” describes the value of the FerryBox, a metal container, about one cubic yard in size, holding sensors designed to sample Heath Retires from Fifty Years at School of Government Milton S. Heath Jr., professor of public law and government at the School of Government and joint professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, celebrated his retirement from 50 years on the faculty on February 28, 2008. At the February ceremony, Bill Ross, secretary of the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources, presented Heath with a Long Leaf water as a ferry boat moves through regional inlets and sounds. Paerl led the first such data-gathering project in the U.S., FerryMon, which was launched in 2000 in N.C.’s Pamlico Sound. Pine award on behalf of Governor Michael Easley. The Long Leaf Pine is the highest civilian award given by the State of North Carolina. Also at the ceremony, Mike Smith, dean of the School of Government, announced the launch of an endowment fund to create the Milton S. Heath Jr. Environmental Lecture at the School of Government. The endowed lecture, Smith said, “will continue the remarkable tradition of teaching and learning that Milton has embodied for more than five decades.” The lecture series will be free and open to the public. For more information, call 919.966.9780. 13 2008 ESE NEWS Assistant Professor REebSeEcc aw Ce. Flcryomes new faculty ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ESE Faculty profiles are available online at: www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ ESE welcomes new faculty Fry received a BS in Biology from William Smith College in 1995, an MS in Biology and Pharmacology from Tulane University in 1997, and a PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from Tulane in 2000. Although her PhD was from the Biology Department at Tulane, she conducted her dissertation research at Yale University. She then served as a Post-Doctoral Associate under Professor Leona Samson in the Division of Bioengineering and Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After her post-doctoral appointment, Fry remained at MIT as a Research Scientist in Profes-sor Samson's laboratory until 2006. She then served as the Director of the Genomics and Bioinformatics Core in the Center for Environmental Health Sciences at MIT. Fry's general area of research is in using genomic approaches to study exposure to toxic environmental agents and the corresponding susceptibility or resistance to dis-ease. Her work involves both experimental and computational approaches to identi-fying genes that can serve as biomarkers of exposure. Her recent work has focused on prenatal exposure to arsenic. Fry plans to complement genomic studies on effects of arsenic with experiments to elucidate molecu-lar pathways that can protect against arsenic toxicity, and she hopes to couple her molecular work with population studies in the near future. In particular, her goal is to identify genes and their polymorphisms that lead to arsenic-related diseases. Assistant Professor Jill R. Stewart Stewart received a BA in Environmental Sciences (with a concentration in ecology and a minor in chemistry) from the University of Virginia in 1996, an MS in Public Health in 1998 and a PhD in environmental sciences and engineering in 2003 both from this Department. Both her master’s and doctoral research were conducted under the supervision of Professor Mark Sobsey. Since 2002, she worked as a microbiologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research in Charleston, South Carolina and served as the microbiology program lead for the NOAA Hollings Marine Lab Center of Excellence in Oceans and Human Health. Stewart also holds adjunct faculty positions in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, the College of Charleston (both in Environmental Studies and in Marine Biology), and the Medical University of South Carolina. Stewart’s general area of research is in public health microbiology with an emphasis on microbial contamination of coastal and surface water systems. Her research has focused on developing methods to detect microorganisms of public health concern in surface waters and shellfish, and on developing microbial source tracking techniques. Source tracking is of considerable national interest because sources of microbial contamination are rarely apparent, and Stewart has become a recognized leader in this area. Her methods are already being used in field trials and in controlled ecosystem assessments. She plans to extend this work to investigate the human health risks of impaired water quality. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ �� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 14 2008 ESE NEWS Birnbaum appointed NIEHS director Linda S. Birnbaum, PhD, adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, has been appointed as director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), effective January 2009. As director, she will oversee a $730 million budget that funds multidisciplinary biomedical research programs and prevention and intervention efforts that encompass training, education, technology transfer and community outreach. NIEHS, located in Research Triangle Park, N.C., supports more than 1,240 research grants. A native of New Jersey and board-certified toxicologist, Birnbaum received her master's and doctoral degrees in microbiology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has served as a federal scientist for nearly 29 years, most recently as senior advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency, where she was director of the Experimental Toxicology Division for 16 years. NIEHS, part of the National Institutes of Health, supports research to understand the effects of the environment on human health. faculty news Heath honored as News and Observer's Tarheel of the Week in 2008 ESE’s Joint Professor Milton Heath was featured in the March 23, 2008 issue of the News & Observer (Raleigh) as the Tar Heel of the Week. The article details his involvement in shielding North Carolina beaches from intensive development. The full story is available on N&O’s website at: http://www.newsobserver.com/ front/story/1010301.html. West and ESE Students install solar electric systems during summer trip to Mexico In the summer of 2008, two ESE students and members of the UNC Okun Chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), Jill Simmerman and Jessica Lewis, teamed up with ESE Assistant Professor Jason West and Solar Mexico to install solar electric systems in private homes in northern Mexico and to investigate the feasibility of future projects in the State of Hidalgo. Lewis (MSPH, West Advisor) is currently studying climate change and air pollution in ESE and Simmerman earned her BS in 2008 in Environmental Science at UNC. Solar Mexico is a project founded in 2002 by West in collaboration with the Mexican Foundation for Rural Development, a Mexican nonprofit. Their mission is to provide renewable energy resources to poor rural families. Solar technologies being used by the Solar Mexico project include solar panels for electricity in homes, solar ovens for efficient cooking, and solar water distillers for clean drinking water. Solar Mexico has subsidized 17 household solar electric systems and has subsidized the purchase of many ovens for families in need. The project is supported entirely by private donations from residents of the United States, Mexico and elsewhere. Visit Solar Mexico’s website to read field reports and to learn more about the project, http://www.nonprofitpages.com/solarmexico and http://studentorgs.unc.edu/ewb/ to learn more about the Daniel A. Okun Chapter of Engineers Without Borders at UNC-Chapel Hill. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 15 2008 ESE NEWS student news Henderson wins 2008 ESE Achievement Award ESE is proud to announce Barron Henderson (MS ’08, PhD, Vizuete Advisor) as the recipient of the 2008 ESE Achievement Award. The ESE Achievement award recognizes an outstanding Masters graduate in our department based on the student’s academic excellence as evidenced by any or all of the following: outstanding performance in formal courses; quality and depth of the master’s report; creativity and scientific maturity; service to the department, community or state; professional promise; and the opinion of the faculty regarding the professional and academic growth of the student while enrolled in our program. Henderson finished his master's degree in May of 2008 and is currently pursuing his PhD focusing on atmospheric model evaluation. In June of 2008, he received an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) research fellowship at EPA in their Atmospheric Modeling and Analysis Division (AMAD) of the National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL). At NERL, Henderson works with AMAD evaluating the influence of modeled chemistry representation on air quality model results used to inform policy. Henderson was nominated by his advisor, Professor William Vizuete who praised him in his nomination letter, “In my opinion, Barron has already reached the level of independent researcher. He is able to explore new ideas and investigate a problem with little guidance from me. He is always looking for ways to improve our current research capability and his creativity has resulted in a complete revamp of my existing research codes.” “Since joining my group he has been an indispensable mentor to my younger graduate students. His ability to not only create new ideas, but to disseminate those ideas clearly is evidence of his future success in the professional world. His ability and willingness to learn a new field speaks volumes on his flexibility and intellectual potential,” said Professor Vizuete. Vizuete is the voice of “The Ozone Hole” ESE Assistant Professor William Vizuete lent his voice as the narrator of the infographic, The Ozone Hole. This infographic was created by UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communications Senior Wilson Andrews and was awarded second place in the 48th annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program. Visit www.southofhere.org to view the infographic. faculty news Henderson is originally from Dallas, TX and completed his undergraduate degree at Austin College. He now lives in Raleigh with his wife and son Baxter. In his free time, he likes to play soccer, swing dance, play with Baxter, and read sci-fi. 16 2008 ESE NEWS student news Drummey wins 2008 Bunker Award ESE is pleased to announce Patricia N. Drummey (MSEE ’07, Characklis Advisor) as the recipient of the 2008 George C. Bunker Award. Her nomination was led by her advisor Professor Greg Characklis who stated in his letter “Tricia consistently challenged herself in the classroom, despite being engaged in a very time consuming and unpredictable research project that involved a tremendous amount of fieldwork.” He continues, “Tricia’s intellect, work ethic and personality will take her as far as she chooses to go in the professional world, or in academia, should she choose to return. She will be one of the students whose careers our Department will look on with great pride in the future.” Drummey’s research explores the role that microbial partitioning in stormwater plays in assessing detention basin effectiveness for microbial removal. Her thesis entitled “Evaluating Microbial Partitioning Throughout the Stormwater Transport Chain and its Impact on the Effectiveness of Wet Detention Ponds” will be submitted to the Journal of Environmental Engineering for publication. Drummey received her BS degree in civil engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 2003 and her MSEE from UNC in 2007. Drummey came to our department highly recommended by the faculty in Civil & Environmental Engineering at Notre Dame, as well as those who served with her in the Dominican Republic while she worked for the Peace Corps. The Bunker Award was established in honor of Dr. George C. Bunker, a sanitary engineer and benefactor of the University of North Carolina and is given annually by the Department to an MSEE candidate in environmental engineering who shows the most outstanding scholarship and professional promise. O’Lenick receives Fulbright award Cassandra O’Lenick (MS '08, Jeffries Advisor) received a 2008- 2009 U.S. Student Fulbright Program award. O’Lenick, a native of Annandale, Va., traveled to Poland to study environmental law, policy, and scientific procedure. She also studied Poland’s cooperation with the European Union’s environmental policy. As the nation’s largest international exchange program, the Fulbright Program operates in more than 155 countries. The late Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas established the program in 1946 to build mutual understanding among people of the United States and the rest of the world. Students are selected for their academic or professional achievements and leadership potential. The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. At UNC, it is administered by the Center for Global Initiatives. “First and foremost, Fulbright programs promote cultural exchange,” said Beth-Ann Kutchma, UNC program advisor. “Through their documentary projects, dissertation publications and community service, these students link the Carolina campus to the world.” This year, eleven UNC-CH students received Fulbright awards. Nationwide, more than 1,450 students were chosen. For more information about the Fulbright Program for U.S. Students visit their website: http:// us.fulbrightonline.org/home.html. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ESE's student roster and defense schedule is available online at ESE's website. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/. 17 2008 ESE NEWS Birak receives outstanding student paper award Pamela S. Birak (PhD, Miller Advisor) won an outstanding paper award for her presentation at the 2008 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco from AGU's Hydrology Section. The paper, “Rheology of dense non-aqueous phase liquids at former manufactured gas plants” was recognized by the committee as being “among the best of a strong group of student presenters, which sets an example for her fellow students and the entire AGU membership." Outstanding student paper award winners were announced in the publication Eos, the weekly newspaper of AGU, and received a formal certificate of achievement. Lee wins NWRI Fellowship Hee Suk Lee’s (MSPH, Sobsey Advisor) doctoral work on identifying prevalent enteric viruses found in water to develop a rapid detection method that will detect water contamination in less than four hours, a potentially significant improvement from current bacterial indicators that can take up to four days to provide results, awarded her a National Water Research Institute (NWRI) Fellowship Award in 2008. This three year, $10,000 a year award was created to support doctoral graduate research related to water. Visit their website at http://www.nwri-usa.org/ fellowship.htm to learn more about the fellowship. Khan wins environmental scholarship Alia L. Khan (BSPH, Sobsey Advisor), has been awarded a $500 scholarship from the Research Triangle Park, N.C., chapter of the Academy of Certified Hazardous Materials Managers (ACHMM). The funding is provided to a graduate or undergraduate student demonstrating outstanding academic merit and strong interest in pursuing a career re-lated to protecting the environment. The award was presented on August 13, 2008 at the ACHMM-RTP in Raleigh, NC. Teuber wins NCWRA poster contest Leah Teuber (MSEE '08, Singer Advisor) won first place in a poster contest sponsored by the North Carolina Water Resources Association at the Water Resources Research Institute’s (WWRI) annual conference, held October 8-9, 2008 at North Carolina State University. The first place award was $300. Winning posters will be displayed at the new WWRI offices at N.C. State University. More than 20 participants in the contest hailed from universities including UNC-Asheville, UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Charlotte, Appalachian State, N.C. State, Elon, and University of South Carolina. Teuber’s research, “Mineral Deposits Behind Waterless Urinals,” was begun in Sepember 2007 with advisor Dr. Phillip Singer, Okun Distinguished Professor of environmental sciences and engineering. “It has been very interesting work,” Teuber says, “and I’m glad to see that it was so well received at the conference.” ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ student news 18 2008 ESE NEWS Saad inducted into Phi Beta Kappa Aisha Ihab Saad (BSPH '09, Sobsey Advisor) was inducted November 24, 2008 into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest and most honored of all college honorary societies. Phi Beta Kappa membership is open to undergraduates in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences and professional degree programs who meet stringent eligibility requirements. student news A student who has completed 75 hours of course work and has a grade-point average of 3.85 or better (on a 4-point scale) is eligible for membership. Also eligible is any student who has competed 105 hours of course work and has a 3.75 grade-point average. Grades earned at other universities are not considered. Less than one percent of all college students qualify to be members. This fall, 176 students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were inducted.There are 270 Phi Beta Kappa chapters nationwide. UNC's chapter, Alpha of North Carolina, was founded in 1904 and is the oldest of six chapters in the state. Past and present Phi Beta Kappa members from across the country have included 17 American presidents and numerous artistic, intellectual and political leaders. Seven of the nine current U.S. Supreme Court Jus-tices are members. Jarabek receives Life Achievement Award Annie M. Jarabek (PhD, Crawford-Brown Advisor) received a Life Achievement Award by and at the Annual International Conference on Soils, Sediments and Water held in October of 2008. This award is given to individuals in the areas of industry, academia, government and military, who have made significant contributions to the understanding and solution of soil, sediment and groundwater pollution problems. Jarabek is a senior toxicologist and special assistant at the National Center for Environmental Assessment in the Office of Research and Development (ORD) at U.S. EPA and is currently completing a PhD in ESE’s risk assessment program. Read more about Jarabek and this honor on page nine of their conference program available at: http://www.sph.unc.edu/images/stories/ academic_programs/ese/documents/24pro8.5x11_final.pdf. Richardson receives award at SBRP Annual Meeting Stephen Richardson (PhD, Aitken Advisor) was awarded one of two Student Poster Awards for outstanding presentations at the 2008 Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP) Annual Meeting held December 7-9, 2008 in Pacific Grove, California. The poster, entitled “Effects of Biostimulation and Anaerobic Conditions on PAH Biodegradation in Contaminated Soil from a Manufactured Gas Plant Site,” was co-authored by Maiysha Jones (PhD, Aitken Advisor), Dr. David Singleton, and Professor Michael Aitken. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ��� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 19 2008 ESE NEWS Flack and Thomasen receive 2008-2009 AIHF scholarships Two ESE doctoral students have been selected as recipients of 2008-2009 American Industrial Hygiene Foundation (AIHF) scholarships. Jennifer Thomasen (MSPH ’07, PhD, Nylander-French Advisor) is the recipient of the highest honor, the American Industrial Hygiene Foundation Scholarship and Sheila Flack (MSPH ’06, PhD, Nylander-French Advisor) is the recipient of both the Carolinas Local Section Scholarship and the Fred Venable/Deep South Local Section Scholarship. A special presentation of the awards was made at the annual AIHF Recognition Reception at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition (AIHce), held on June 2, 2008 in Minneapolis, MN. The mission of the American Industrial Hygiene Foundation is to advance the profession by awarding scholarships for students in industrial hygiene and related disciplines. Since 1982, AIHF has distributed more than $900,000 to more than 45 different schools and universities and 356 students. These scholarships have enabled talented students to complete their education and have encouraged the most promising scholars to enter or remain in the industrial hygiene profession. For their doctoral research project, Thomasen and Flack, working alongside two other doctoral students, recruited spray painters from North Carolina (15 workers) and in the state of Washington (33 workers) to investigate individual dermal and inhalation exposures to 1,6-hexamethylene diisocyanate (HDI) monomer and oligomers in an occupational environment. During this project, they determined the breathing-zone exposure to HDI by personal filter sampling, dermal exposure to HDI by noninvasive tape-strip sampling of the stratum corneum, and systemic exposure by measuring the major HDI metabolites HDA and acetylate HDA in blood and urine. Thomasen has taken the lead in investigating the factors affecting and errors involved in the measurement techniques of breathing-zone concentrations, while Flack leads the analyzing of blood samples by GC-MS and is currently developing statistical models to investigate the correlation between breathing-zone and dermal exposure levels and the biomarker levels in blood. student news Jennifer Thomasen completed her Master of Science in Public Health in December 2007 under the direction of Professor Leena A. Nylander-French. During her Master’s research, she was responsible for the development and validation of techniques to measure inhalation exposures to polyisocyanates using LC-MS instrumentation. ○ ○ ○ ○ �� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Visit ESE's website for News, Events, Seminars and links. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ Jennifer Thomasen Sheila L. Flack completed her Master of Science in Public Health in December 2006 also under the direction of Professor Leena A. Nylander-French. During her master’s research, she developed a strong understanding of the development Sheila Flack and testing of monitoring methods for both inhalation and dermal exposures and GC-MS instrumentation. Her research is presented in the scientific peer-reviewed article based on her Master’s technical report published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring (Flack, S.; Goktepe, I.; Ball, L.M. and Nylander-French, L.A. (2008). Development and evaluation of quantitative monitoring methods for dermal and inhalation exposure to propiconazole. J Environ Monit, 10, 336-344). Flack and Thomasen have continued their doctoral studies in Professor Nylander-French’s laboratory. 20 2008 ESE NEWS student news Gatti Receives EPA STAR Fellowship Daniel M. Gatti (PhD, Rusyn Advisor) was awarded an EPA Science to Achieve Re-sults (STAR) Fellowship for his proposal entitled "Genome-wide in-silico modeling of liver gene regulatory networks." The EPA STAR Fellowships are highly competitive awards made once every two years to a select group of students nationwide. The purpose of the fellowship program is to encourage promising students to obtain ad-vanced degrees and pursue careers in an environmental field. The fellowship includes funding for tuition, fees, stipend and supplies for up to three years. He joins previous STAR Fellows in ESE (2007): Shannon Starck (MS, Weinberg Advisor), Alison Hege (PhD, Curriculum in Toxicology), and Lanakila McMahan (PhD, Sobsey Advisor). Gatti is a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Dr. Ivan Rusyn. He is also a student in the Bioinformatics and Computation Biology (BCB) Training Program. His research involves the use of sophisticated statistical and computational approaches to analyze data on toxicity measurements, including gene expression and other -omics endpoints, and genetic polymorphisms with a goal of constructing gene regulatory networks which will aid in understanding and predicting toxicity. This type of research is fundamental for improving the linkages in the source-to-outcome continuum because a firm understanding of the molecular events in normal cells and how they are perturbed by environmental agents is the foundation for understanding how toxicants lead to disease. In addition, this work will help to identify sensitive sub-populations — people whose genes harbor polymorphisms that may be associated with adverse responses to otherwise tolerable exposure levels. Prior to enrolling in the Ph.D. program, Gatti received his Masters degree in ESE in 2007, served as the department's computing consultant from 2004 to 2005 and was the lab manager for both Professors Singer and Weinberg performing drinking water analysis from 2002 to 2004. Gatti received his BS in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1992 and his Programming Certificate from NC State in 1999. He worked at the NC Supercomputing Center doing environmental modeling and software development from 1997 to 2002 before coming to UNC. Gatti has been a recipient of a number of awards from the Department and several research societies. Gatti wins a student poster award at the 2008 meeting of the Complex Trait Consortium The Complex Trait Consortium (CTC) is an international network of researchers that studies the genetic basis for human disease and variation. At the 7th annual meeting held in Montreal, Quebec on May 31 to June 3 2008, Daniel Gatti won an award for his poster entitled “FastMap: Fast Association Mapping in Inbred Mouse Populations.” It introduces a fast method for finding regions of the genome that are likely to regulate the expression of specific genes. He shares this honor with his co-authors Andrey Shabalin, Tieu- Chong Lam, Dr. Fred Wright, Dr. Ivan Rusyn, and Dr. Andrew Nobel. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ESE Postdoc Sara Rodriguez-Mozaz wins Best Poster Award at ACE08 While a Postdoc in ESE, Sara Rodriguez-Mozaz won first place in the Water Science & Research Best Poster competition at the 2008 American Water Works Association's (AWWA) Annual Conference & Exposition (ACE) in Atlanta, Georgia on June 8-12, 2008. The poster entitled "Novel Strategies for the Characterization of Mixed-Oxidant Solutions for Drinking Water Disinfection," is also authored by Professor Howard S. Weinberg, Ana M. Saenz de Jubera and Alison C. Sykes. The authors' research focuses on mixed oxidants, the onsite generated disinfectant that demonstrates greater efficacy in Cryptosporidium parvum inactivation, as well as inhibition of biofilm formation and lower DBP levels than traditional chlorine. 21 2008 ESE NEWS student news Rusyn’s laboratory students recognized by the North Carolina Chapter of the Society of Toxicology Alison Hege (PhD, Curriculum in Toxicology) and Pamela Ross (MSPH '08, Rusyn Advisor) received first and third place awards, respectively, in the graduate student poster competition held at the North Carolina chapter of the Society of Toxicology 2008 Spring Meeting. Students from UNC, NC State University and Duke University presented their work at the meeting. Hege presented a poster entitled “Phenotypic anchoring of gene expression data from acetaminophen hepatotoxicity studies in the mouse model of the human population reveals biomarkers of response.” Her work shows that changes in gene expression in liver, when correlated with an observed toxicity in a large panel of inbred mouse strains, reveal biomarkers of effect that may be more reflective of population-wide responses to toxic insults. Ross presented a poster entitled “Time-course comparison of xenobiotic activators of CAR and PPAR-alpha.” This work establishes common fingerprints of exposure to activators of CAR and PPAR-alpha in rodent liver and demonstrates what changes correlate with the presence or absence of a corresponding nuclear receptor. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Environmental sciences students win NOAA scholarships Two rising seniors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have won Ernest F. Hollings Scholarships from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Ben Edwards of Knightdale, N.C., and Ben Bogardus of Cullowhee, N.C., each will receive $8,000 in academic assistance during their junior and senior years. The Hollings scholarship program also provides them with a 10-week paid summer internship at NOAA or a partner facility. The awards are designed to increase undergraduate training in oceanic and atmospheric science, boost public understanding and support for stewardship of the ocean and atmosphere, and improve environmental literacy. Edwards is pursuing a major in environmental science and a minor in marine sciences. He is a Carolina Scholar and a National Marine Science Bowl state champion. He is also a lab technician at the Gillings School of Global Public Health. In 2005, he spent eight weeks at the Dauphin Island, Alabama, Sea Lab Summer Program, where he conducted and presented field-based marine science research. Bogardus is pursuing a major in environmental science and a minor in geology. He was accepted last summer at the Flathead Lake Biological Station, an ecological research and education center located in the Rocky Mountains near Glacier National Park. He serves as a research assistant for the UNC geography department on a dam and stream restoration study in Chapel Hill and the Adirondacks. The Hollings scholarships are named in honor of Ernest F. Hollings, a former U.S. senator from South Carolina. Clark wins NC AWWA-WEA Scholarship Lily P. Clark (BSPH ’09, Ball Advisor) was awarded a $1,000 University Scholarship from North Carolina American Water Works Association-Water Environment Association (NC AWWA-WEA) in 2008. NC AWWA-WEA awards two $1,000 grants annually to outstanding four-year university student applicants. More information is available on their website at www.ncsafewater.org. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 22 2008 ESE NEWS Several members of ESE, including one fast-moving graduate student, modeled healthy behaviors when they participated in the 26-mile Boston Marathon on April 21, 2008. Marc Jeuland (PhD, Whittington Advisor) finished 15th overall and third among American men in a field of more than 22,000 in the event. His time of 2 hours, photograph, Marc Jeuland He enjoys the camaraderie of running with friends, especially those at the Carrboro Athletics Club. “Boston’s a great race, with a long history, a challenging course, and terrific crowd support,” he says, “and I came away from the race feeling very happy to be a marathoner.” photograph, Tricia Drummey 20 minutes, 57 seconds, was only 13 minutes longer than the first place runner, Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya, who completed the course in 2:07.46. “At the finish, someone called out, ‘You’re 15th,’ and I couldn’t believe it,” Jeuland said. Drew Steen, graduate student in the Department of Marine Sciences and Jeuland’s friend, praised Jeuland’s performance in the race, especially given that travel and illness had caused him lost training time. “Marc’s too self-effacing to talk about himself, but he’s had a number of running successes in his time at UNC,” Steen said, “including a strong showing at the U.S. Olympic qualifiers in New York in November 2007. He came to UNC after a three-year stint in the Peace Corps in Mali, where he was sufficiently instrumental in the construction of a new wastewater treatment station that it was named after him.” Jeuland’s graduate research is focused on the impacts of climate change on the economics and planning of dams, with a particular focus on the Blue Nile Basin in Ethiopia. He worked with a local sanitation company near Bamako, Mali, on the wastewater treatment project. Jeuland says he runs “because it keeps me healthy, provides balance in my life and also is a way to unwind from the rigors of academic study and work.” Boston Marathon includes ESE athletes Patricia Drummey, (MSEE '07, Characklis Advisor) finished in 3:30:13. Drummey is new to the marathon experience, having qualified for Boston at an event in Maine last fall. After the race, she described how it felt to see her mom cheering her on at the top of Heartbreak Hill. “I had ‘Patti’ written on my shirt,” she said, “which was great because it got a lot of cheers from the spectators. It was also good because I actually go by ‘Tricia,’ so when my mom, friends and family yelled ‘TRICIA!’, I knew it was somebody who actually knew me. I heard and saw my mom while I was approaching, and ran on by, but had to turn around to give her a quick, sweaty hug. “We decided,” Drummey teased, “that’s where the extra 13 seconds on my 3:30 time came from.” photograph, David Leith Also participing was ESE Professor David Leith whose time was 3:51:34,155th in his age division. Leith was modest about the fine showing he made. “To run in the Boston Marathon has been an ambition of long standing and I’m glad to have done it, finally. I’m also glad it’s over,” he said. student news 23 2008 ESE NEWS 2008 graduates DATE NAME TYPE TITLE ADVISOR 7 Brian Pachkowski Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Functional Studies of Accessory Factors Associated with Base Excision Repair Swenberg 7 Alex Carll MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense A Rat Model of Heart Failure Induced by Isoproterenol and/or High Salt Diet to Examine the Effects of Particulate Matter Inhalation Ball 25 Kenneth W. Fent Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Quantitative Monitoring and Statistical Modeling of Dermal and Inhalation Exposure to Monomeric and Polymeric 1,6-Hexamethylene Diisocyanates During Automotive Spray Painting Nylander- French 28 Treavor H. Boyer Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Removal of Natural Organic Matter by Anion Exchange: Multiscale Experimentation and Mathematical Modeling Singer 1 Matthew Martin Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Classification of Chemicals Based on Structured Toxicity Information Rusyn 2 G. Christopher Wedding Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Understanding Sustainability in Real Estate: A Focus on Measuring and Communicating Success in Brownfield Redevelopment and Green Building Crawford- Brown 16 Adrienne Cizek MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Comparing the Partitioning Behavior of Giardia and Cryptosporidium with that of Indicator Organisms in Stormwater Runoff Characklis 18 Jennifer Cannon Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Capsid properties Contributing to Norovirus Persistence in Humans Vinje 18 Patrick Craig MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Methyl-donor Enrichment Attenuates Alcohol-induced Liver Injury: Mechanisms of Protective Action Rusyn 24 Pamela K. Ross MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Time-course Comparison of Xenobiotic Activators of CAR and PPAR-alpha in Mouse Liver Rusyn 25 Erik Michael Andersen MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Improved Recovery of Multiple Microbial Indictor Organisms from Source and Treated Drinking Waters by Optimized Hydraulic Modification to Hollow-fiber Ultrafilters Simmons 5 Kate Bronstein Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Jordan Lake, We Need to Talk . . . You Might Have a Drug Problem: A Case Study of Antibiotic Occurrence in a Drinking Water Reservoir Impacted by Wastewater Discharge Weinberg 5 Matthew Stiegel MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense A Comparison of Indoor Fungal Spore Concentrations between Naturally Ventilated and Mechanically Ventilated Dormitories at Duke University Flynn 5 Xiangyu Fan Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Simulation Study of Surfactant Phase Behaviors in Brine Base Remediation Technology Miller 6 Daniel Anderson MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Application of a Lung Deposition Model to Fiber Data from Three North Carolina Asbestos Textile Plants Nylander- French 9 Cassandra Ruth O’Lenick Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Effects of in vitro Exposure of Human Respiratory Epithelial Cells to Formaldehyde Jeffries 12 Lisa Casanova Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Survival and Transmission of Coronaviruses in the Healthcare Environment Sobsey JANUARY MARCH APRIL MAY 24 2008 ESE NEWS 2008 graduates DATE NAME TYPE TITLE ADVISOR 12 Susan Hsu MSEE Technical Report Final Oral Defense Effect of Natural Organic Matter on Lime Softening and Removal of Bromide and Dissolved Organic Matter Using Ion Exchange: Two Applications of Magnetic Ion Exchange Singer 12 Rachel Hulkower MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Inactivation of Surrogate Coronaviruses on Hard Surfaces by Healthcare Disinfectants Sobsey 21 Kat Galloway Master's Thesis Final Oral Defense New Particle Formation in a Realistic Daytime Urban Atmosphere: SO2/NOx/O3/Hydrocarbon Air Mixtures Kamens 28 Byron C. Kominek MSEE Technical Report Final Oral Defense A Technical and Economic Feasibility Study of Using a Small-Scale Anaerobic Digester for Energy Production from Cafeteria Food Waste at a Local North Carolina School Aitken 29 Casey Caldwell MSEE Technical Report Final Oral Defense Considerations of Risk Tolerance in Developing Probability-based Inter-utility Transfer Agreements Characklis 11 Benjamin A. Aiken MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Sustainability Assessment of the Biosand Filter in Bonao, Dominican Republic Sobsey 12 Tina S. Lusk MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Comparison of E. coli Methods for Detection in Water: The Effects of Incubation Time and Temperature Sobsey 26 Angela D. Coulliette Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Characterization of Fecal contamination in the Newport River Estuary (North Carolina, USA) Noble 3 Stephanie D. Friedman Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Rapid Molecular Detection of Male-specific Coliphages as a Tool for Determining Sanitary Quality and Source of Fecal Pollution in Recreational Waters Sobsey 16 Rick Johnston Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Chemical Interactions Between Iron and Arsenic in Water Singer 17 Jon Russell Sobus Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Comparing Urinary Biomarkers of Exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Rappaport 30 Juneil Lee Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Modeling Groundwater for the Coastal Plain Region of North Carolina Miller 13 Ben Lebron Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Remediation of Contaminated Soil from a former Manufactured Gas Plant with Heat- Activated Sodium Miller 14 Christopher Gibbons Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Concentration of Adenoviruses and Noroviruses from Seawater with Argonide Nanoceram Cartridge Filters: Method Effectiveness and Occurrence in Southern California Recreational Waters Sobsey 15 Rebecca Wilson MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense A Method for Dilute Mixing of Reactants in an Outdoor Aerosol Chamber and the Application to an á-pinene/Ozone System Kamens 15 Jacopo J. Wiggins MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense An Evaluation of Worker Exposure to Formaldehyde in a Histology/Necropsy lab: An IH investigation Flynn 15 Arne Newman Master's Thesis Final Oral Defense An Investigation of Cosolvent Flushing for the Remediation of PAH's from Former Manufactured Gas Plant Sites Miller 18 Hongbo (Shirley) Zhu Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Improvement of the Bioavailability of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Field- Contaminated Soil Aitken AUGUST JULY JUNE MAY 25 2008 ESE NEWS Alumni updates Treavor Boyer (PhD '08, Singer Advisor) joined the faculty as Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences at the University of Florida in 2008. Boris Brglez’s (MPH ’03, Ball Advisor) 2003 technical report entitled “Disposal of Poultry Carcasses in Catastrophic Avian Influenza Outbreaks” has been published as Chapter 15 of Dr. David Swayne’s new book, Avian Influenza. [Brglez, B., & Hahn, J. (2008). Methods for Disposal of Poultry Carcasses. In D. E. Swayne (Ed.), Avian Influenza (pp 333-352). Wiley-Blackwell.] Shannon Marquez (PhD '98, Crawford-Brown Advisor), associate professor and director of the MPH program at the College of Health Professions at Temple University was recently appointed to the Philadelphia’s Board of Health by Philadelphia’s Mayor Michael A. Nutter in October 2008. Matthew N. Waters (PhD ’07, Piehler and Martens Advisors) has accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia. Jian Zhen Yu (PhD ’96, Jeffries), associate professor in the department of chemistry and the atmospheric, marine, and coastal environmental program of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology participated in the US EPA’s Atmospheric Chemistry Seminar Series in Research Triangle Park, NC in November 2008. Professor Yu presented a seminar entitled “Secondary Aerolsol Formation from Ethylene and Isoprene in the Urban Atmosphere of Hong Kong: A Multi-phase Chemical Modeling Study." DATE NAME TYPE TITLE ADVISOR 22 Keegan Sawyer Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense The Pulmonary Health Effects of Diesel Exhaust and Diesel Exhaust Particles: Evidence from Human and Cellular In Vitro Exposure Research Madden/Ball 9 Susan Casper MS Thesis Final Oral Defense The Global Burden of Anthropogenic Ozone and Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution on Premature Human Mortality West 27 Sandra M Chung MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Development of a Low-cost Absorbent Pad Test for the Detection of Escherichia coli in Contaminated Drinking Water Sobsey 18 Gang Cao Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense SOA Formation from Toluene Oxidation in the Presence of Inorganic Aerosols Jang/Jeffries 19 Rebecca R. Boyles MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Effects of Ambient Particulate Matter on Cytokine Production in Mouse Macrophages and Epithelial Cells Jeffries 24 Jeff Hayes MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Relationships Between the Occurrence and Concentrations of Cryptosporidium, Giardia and Fecal Indicator Microbes in Waters from Tributaries of the Kensico Reservoir Sobsey 9 Eric S. Money Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Modern Space/Time Geostatistics Using River Distances: Theory and Applications for Water Quality Mapping Serre 15 Leah Teuber MSEE Technical Report Final Oral Defense Mineral Deposits Behind Waterless Urinals Singer SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER AUGUST 2008 graduates alumni news ESE's student roster and defense schedule is available online at ESE's website. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/. 26 2008 ESE NEWS Young Receives ESE Distinguished Alumni Award in 2008 The Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering is pleased to announce John S. Young, Jr. (MS ’77, O’Melia Advisor) as the recipient of an ESE Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2008. This award was established in 1995 to recognize deserving graduates or former students for their outstanding professional achievements and contributions to the field of environmental sciences and engineering. Past recipients of this award have been leaders in their fields of expertise. Young is Chief Operating Officer (COO) of American Water and holds a seat on the company’s Board of Directors. Young joined the American Water System in 1977 as the Director of Water Quality for the Eastern Division. He held increasingly responsible positions in engineering and water quality and in 1991 was named Vice President – Engineering. He received his BS in Civil Engineering from Duke University in 1975 and his MS in Environmental Engineering from UNC in 1977. alumni news ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Visit ESE's website for News, Events, Seminars and links. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ Young has held leadership positions in a number of professional and civic organizations Throughout his more than 25 years of experience in the planning, design, construction management and operation of water and wastewater systems. He has also provided expert testimony and lectures in those areas. During 2000 and 2001, Young was the integration lead for the major acquisition of Citizens Water Resources. Young is an active member of several professional organizations, including a Board Member of the Design/Build Institute of America and past New Jersey AWWA Section Chair and Fuller Awardee. He also serves on the US EPA National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC). Young was nominated by ESE Alumni, Terry Rolan and John Ramaley. “John is highly respected and very knowledgeable about the water business. It will probably be a surprise to him that I would submit this nomination since he and I see the utility business from public vs private perspectives. Nonetheless he is a very fine representative of ESE and UNC and he has earned my respect,” said Ramaley in his nomination letter. Young was the featured guest of the Department on April 25, 2008. During his visit, ESE Professor and Chair Mike Aitken presented him this award at the ESE Ice Cream Social, Young presented a seminar entitled “ The Business of Water – Trends Impacting Service Quality and Sustainability “ and was the guest speaker at Learning & Libations (L & L) held at the Carolina Brewery. Terry Rolan (left), Phil Singer and John Young (right) at the 2008 Ice Cream Social 27 2008 ESE NEWS ESE is proud to present the following staff with much deserved Star Heel Awards. This award was created by a staff news (Left to Right): Oksana Kosyk, Nadia Georgieva, Melody Levy, Elise Pohl, Nataliya Vanchosovych Robin Whitley Service Appreciation Awards The University recognizes and expresses appreciation for the long-term service of permanent SPA and EPA Non-Faculty employees, both full-time and part-time. Eligibility for awards is determined by an employee’s Total State Service according to the University’s fiscal year, July 1 through June 30. The program currently recognizes employee service at five-year intervals, beginning with five years and ending with fifty years of service. 2008 awardees: Nadia Georgieva - Five Years Oksana Kosyk - Five Years Jim Wallace- Five Years generous sponsorship from TIAA-CREF and supple-mented by ESE. It allows individual departments to award a gift certificate to deserving employees. 2008 awardees: DJ Fedor Melody Levy Rebecca Lloyd Elise Pohl Nataliya Vanchosovych Robin Whitley Star Heels and Service Award Winners receive their honors during 2008 ESE Holiday Party Young entrepreneur in ESE is illustrator of new book for minority children Melody Levy, 26-year-old assistant for student services in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, is the lead illustrator of the first in a series of children’s books called Mrs. Applebee and the Sunshine Band. Book One, Meet the Class (2007), is authored by André Wesson, a UNC alumnus and founder of Se7enth Swan Publishing Group, LLC, which will publish the Mrs. Applebee series. Se7enth Swan addresses the need for learning material to meet the needs of African American and Hispanic children, aged three to ten, by generating products that help minority children “reclaim their identities and both imagine and create endless possibilities for their lives.” Levy also serves as the company’s director of operations.”We are committed to helping all children view themselves and education in a positive light,” Levy says. “We intend to do this by including positive multicultural images in our products and constantly emphasizing to our audience that learning is fun.” ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 2008 Star Heels 28 2008 ESE NEWS faculty/staff updates for 2008 New hires: 1/1/08, Jacqueline A. MacDonald, Assistant Professor 1/1/08, J. Jason West, Assistant Professor 1/16/08, Karen Yokley, Postdoctoral Trainee (EPA NHEERL) 2/11/08, Peter Sandusky, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Rusyn lab) 4/1/08, Anne Helmer, HR Facilitator 5/1/08, DJ Fedor, Specialty Trades Tech 6/1/08, Ying Li, Postdoctoral Research Associate (UAE/MacDonald) 7/1/08, Lisa Casanova, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Sobsey lab) 7/1/08, Jill R. Stewart, Assistant Professor 7/1/08, Rebecca C. Fry, Assistant Professor 8/1/08, Lisa Smeester, Research Specialist 8/21/08, Eli Rosen, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Kamens) 9/1/08, Tiina Folley, Research Specialist 9/1/08, Alea Morren, Admin Support Specialist 9/1/08, Myroslav Sypa, Applications Analyst 9/1/08, Nataliya Vanchosovych, Admin Support Specialist 9/1/08, Zuber Farooqui, Postdoctoral Research Associate (UAE/West, Vizuete) 9/1/08, Kunhi Thengumthara, Postdoctoral Research Associate (UAE/West, Vizuete) 9/1/08, James Merchant, Gillings Distinguished Professor 9/15/08, Jennifer Platt, Research Associate/Project Manager (UAE) 10/1/08, Chris Davidson, Applications Analyst 11/1/08, Kaida Liang, Social Clinical Research Manager 12/1/08, Zhenfa Zhang, Research Specialist Promotions/Reclassifications: 3/1/08, Leena Nylander-French, Promotion to Professor 9/1/08, Howard S. Weinberg, Promotion to Associate Professor with tenure 11/1/08, Deborah Williams, Business Officer (formerly Faculty Assistant) 12/31/08, Fredric Pfaender, Professor to (fixed term, part-time) Professor (50 %) Departures/Leaves: 1/1/08, Dale Whittington, Pogue Leave (Spring 2008 semester) 2/18/08, Suramya Waidyanatha, Senior Scientist 4/1/08, Robyn Gardner, Human Resources Facilitator 5/31/08, John (Chad) Roper, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Aitken lab) 7/1/08, Donna Simmons (Retired), Administrative Officer 7/1/08, Cass Miller, Kenan Leave (Fall 2008 semester) 7/17/08, Karen Yokley, Postdoctoral Trainee (EPA NHEERL) 7/31/08, Christine Stauber, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Sobsey) 8/1/08, Matt Coy, Processing Assistant 8/31/08, Otto D. (Chip) Simmons, III, Research Assistant Professor 9/1/08, Gunnar Boysen, Research Assistant Professor 11/7/08, Peter Sandusky, Postdoctoral Research Associate 12/19/08, Sara Rodriguez, Postdoctoral Research Associate 29 2008 ESE NEWS ESE honor roll of donors, 2008 Individuals Elizabeth Ann Hayes Adams Oscar Hunter Adams Robert Adamski Michael Demilt Aitken R F Albani Terry P Anderson Eugene Appel Linda Appel William Brian Arbuckle William Moseley Archer III Robert Glenn Arnold Carol S Ashley David Bruce Babcock Patricia Michel Backus Nina J Baird Frank Hauser Barr James Joseph Barry III David Allen Barskey C W Bartholomai Mary Ann Baviello Michael Peter Bell Christine S Berndt Robert Alan Berndt Mark Dean Beuhler David Michael Bolda Elise Johnston Bolda Michael Austin Boyd Kristin A Bradley-Bull Jo Ellen Brandmeyer Philip Postel Braswell David Arnold Broaden Vance Brooks Kenneth S Broun Marjorie Broun Arthur Emil Bruestle Edward Bryan Joel Simpson Bulkley Omisade Billie Burney-Scott Meredith Casteel Talia Chalew Charles Groce Chandler Linda Laughridge Chandler Ching Kuang Chen Cassandra Maurer Childs Kimberley Dene Cizerle Michael A Clarke Terri Ann Colangelo Richard Francis Cole Jean Marie Colthurst Gretchen Anne Cowman Burton Craige Heather Barkley Craige Mara C Cusker Gonzalez William Alexander Darity Jr Frederick Emerson Davis Robert Lloyd Davis Clifford Earl Decker Jr Ruth Deer DeHolton Carrie Anne Delcomyn Keith Allen Demke Brian Andrew Dempsey Patricia M DeRosa Jan Elizabeth DeWaters Guy Thomas DiDonato Francis A DiGiano Wendy Doughtery Leroy Charles Doughty Gloria Dragonette Patricia Nicole Drummey Howard J Dunn James Kenneth Edzwald Dan Elliott George Roy Elmore Jr Michael William Enghauser Jose Antonio Felix-Filho Kevin Michael Fitzpatrick Margaret Mary Fitzsimmons Sheila Lani Flack Robert Harold Forbes Jr Donald L Fox Alexandra Steiner French Wendy Lynn Fuscoe Robert Ernest Gandley Jay Marshall Goldring C Montrose Graham Jr Kathleen Marie Gray David Allan Green Stefan Johannes Grimberg James Robert Grube II Martin Edward Gurtz Elizabeth Alexander Guthrie Kenneth Gutterman Mohammad Taghi Habibian Howard Palmer Haines David Michael Hamby Jane Holman Hardwick Peggy L Harris Robert Lee Harris Jr Kenneth James Hausle Richard John Heggen Tara Lynn Hickey Julia Terrell Hickman John Malvern Higgins Jr Nancy Hochberg Alexander Ryan Hodges Thomas Clemmer Holloway William E Holman Gerald C Hook Omar Snowden Hopkins Claudia B Horowitz Cathy Howell Jeffrey Alan Hughes Marshall L Hyatt Tracy Lynn Jackson Bruce Allan Jacobs Jessica St Aubin Jacobs Joseph Francis Jadlocki Jr Jaret Carl Johnson Monica Jolles Baxter Lee Jones Curtis Jones Richard Miles Kamens Joseph Francis Kanney James Stuart Kantor Christopher Kees Mariah Leigh Keller Judith Kincaid Marcia Klebanow Lisa Pfrogner Knowles Christopher F Knud-Hansen Peter Jonathan Kolsky Bert Petty Krages II N Scott Kukshtel Patricia Weggel Laane Sandra W Lake Debra Lang J Tate Lanning Jr Charles Duane Larson Donald Thomas Lauria Marie M Lauria Paul Thomas Lauria Andrew James Lawler Desmond Frederick Lawler David Ernest Layland Margaret Edith Layne Philip Lehman Kurt Vance Leininger Donald Eric Lentzen Rosemary Budd Lentzen James Robert Leserman Susan D Levin Linda West Little Frank A Loda Jr Sharon Corinne Long Walter R Lynn Khalil Hosny Mancy Patricia Worley Mancy John Clyburn Matheson III Denise Louise Matthews Craig Stephen Maughan Alex Simon Mayer M Timothy McAdams Donald Edward McCall William Sheffield McCoy Scott Miller McCurley Mary Elizabeth McCutchen Leslie Jane McGeorge Douglas Lyndal McKay Margaret C McKinney Ross McKinney Sr David Nicholas McNelis Maria E Meisch James Chamblee Meredith Donna Volney Michaux Margaret S Misch Christine Lorraine Moe Jim Moore Jonathan David Moore Mary Berkley Mueller Timothy James Mukoda Robert Wesley Mullennix Patricia Louise Murphy Katherine Sue Neitzel Raymond Joseph Nierstedt Michael Arthur Noska Ray Thurmond Oglesby William Kevin O'Neil Douglas Martin Owen Cristy Smathers Patten Read Lewis Patten Robert Francis Peoples Howard B Perry Howard August Peters David Edward Pinsky Marcy Leigh Policastro Susan Pollitt Jefferson Boyce Prather Elizabeth Larsen Pullen Jonathan Jay Pullin Alan J Rabideau Norman DePue Radford Jr Brian Lee Ramaley David Alan Reckhow Bobby Riley Redding Thomas Franklin Redick Thomas Andrew Ridgik Alan E Rimer J Thomas Rimer Laurence Rimer Linda Bray Rimer Glenn Donald Rives Charles Eric Rodes Herbert Harold Rogers Anthony Terrell Rolan Scott Edward Rowden S Reid Russell III David Hess Sarr Teresa Marie Savarino Jennie Perey Saxe James K Schaefer Marion Eldredge Schoenbach Victor Julian Schoenbach Christopher Roman Schulz Kellogg Jonathan Schwab Robert E Seymour Jr Andrew J Shapiro Dorothy B Silver William Golden Simpson Jr Philip C Singer Lawrence M Slifkin Miriam Kresses Slifkin Leonard Smock V L Snoeyink James Harold Southerland Gerald Eugene Speitel Jr Lee Spencer Robert Spielman Jeanne Stahl Jane Patricia Staveley Doran Webster Stegura Pearson H Stewart Jeanette Stokes Joel Leslie Storrow Mary H Sugioka Mary Elizabeth Hibbs Sutton Abby Little Swanson John Henry Sweitzer James M Symons Pickens C Talley J Chi-Chung Tang Jeanie Driver Taylor Lois H Terrill Colin G Thomas Jr Kent William Thomas Margaret B Thomas Blossom McGarrity Tindall John Eric Tobiason Christopher R Tompkins Jr Cheryl Mather Toms Kimberly Dawn Simpson Tum Suden Billy G Turner David Marc Turner Margaret Bliss Umphres Gladwin Olin Unrau David Francis Utterback Ralph Gene Wallace Jenny Warburg John R Wells Roland Willis Wentworth J Keith Weston Gary John White Melinda Faye Wiggins Jack Eugene Wilson David Winter Patty Winter Robert Oakley Winters Dana Lynn Woodruff John David Wray Robert Stanley Wright Kuan Mu Yao Antoinette Young Beverly Ann Young John Sterling Young Jr Guo Zhishi Michael Alexander Zustra Corporations/Foundations American Water Works Assoc. Black & Veatch Camp Dresser & McKee Clorox Company Duke Energy Foundation Environmental Group of the Carolinas Exxon Mobil Corporation - HQ HDR Engineering, Inc NC Section AWWA Inc. North Carolina Symphony Orange Water & Sewer Authority Patterson Harkavy LLP Peoples & Quigley Inc Sojourner Group, LLC The Formaldehyde Council Inc Trussell Technologies 30 2008 ESE NEWS 2008 seminars and events JANUARY 1/16/08: ENVR 400; Dr. Marc Serre (Assistant Professor, ESE); Space/Time Statistics and its Environmental and Health Multidisciplinary Applications 1/23/08: ENVR 400; Kenneth Fortino (PhD Student, ESE); Climate Change and Lake Sediments: An Arctic Perspective 1/26/08: Guest Seminar; Rob Pinder (Scientist, Atmospheric Modeling and Science Division, NOAA-EPA Partnership); Can Air Quality Models Capture the Observed Impacts of Emission Reduction Programs? 1/30/08: Bagel Breakfast 1/30/08: ENVR 400; Pamela S. Birak (PhD Student, ESE); Subsurface Wastes at Former Manufactured Gas Plants: What Are They and How Can We Clean Them Up? FEBRUARY 2/6/08: ENVR 400; William B. Allshouse (PhD Student, ESE); Space/Time Modeling of Hydrogen Sulfide from Hog CAFOs in Eastern North Carolina 2/13/08: ENVR 400; Kim de Bruijne (PhD Student, ESE); Comparing the Toxicity of Fresh and Aged Diesel Exhaust Using a Newly Developed /In Vitro/ Exposure System 2/15/08: Guest Seminar; Michael C. Kavanaugh (Vice President and National Science and Technology Leader, Malcolm Pirnie, Inc); Environmental Engineering in the 21st Century: Balancing Economic Growth Risk Reduction and Sustainability 2/27/08: Bagel Breakfast 2/27/08: ENVR 400; John R. Ridpath (PhD Student, ESE); Identification of a Possible Human Population Hyper- Susceptible to Formaldehyde MARCH 3/1/08: Open House 3/5/08: ENVR 400; William E. Funk (PhD Student, ESE); New Techniques Using Protein Adducts as Exposure Biomarkers 3/19/08: Bagel Breakfast 3/19/08: ENVR 400; Dr. Steven B. Wing (Associate Professor, Epidemiology, UNC); Integrating Epidemiology with Community Action for Environmental Justice 3/26/08: ENVR 400; Leigh-Anne Krometis (PhD Student, ESE); Are All Microbes Created Equal?: Indicator Organism and Pathogen Partitioning in Urban Stormwater APRIL 4/2/08: ENVR 400; Dr. Xin Yang (Postdoctoral Research Associate, ESE); What is in our Drinking Water?: Disinfection Byproducts Generated During Chloramination 4/11/08: Spring Picnic; UNC Farm 4/16/08: Bagel Breakfast 4/22/08: Guest Seminar; Rose M. Cory (Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory); Deconstructing Dissolved Organic Matter: Linking Chemical Composition with Reactivity 4/24/08: Guest Seminar; Dev Niyogi (Assistant Professor, EAS & Agronomy & Indiana State Climatologist, Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Perdue); Impacts of Anthropogenic Land Cover Changes on Regional Rainfall 4/25/08: Ice Cream Social & Awards Presentation 4/25/08: ESE Distinguished Alumni Seminar; John S. Young (COO, American Water); The Business of Water -Trends Impacting Service Quality and Sustainability 4/28/08: Guest Seminar; Carlo De Michele (Assistant Professor of Hydrology &Water Resources, Dept. of Environmental, Hydraulic, Infrastructure & Surveying Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy); Modeling Hydrologic Extremes in Stationary and Non- Stationary Environments via Copulas and SDEs 4/29/08: Guest Seminar; Jamie Bartram (Coordinator of WHO’s Managing Environmental Risks to Health Program); Developments in Water and Health at the World Health Organization MAY 5/2/08: Guest Seminar; Vera I. Slaveykova (Swiss National Science Foundation Professor, Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland); Dissolved organic matter as a key player in metal bioavailability 5/9/08: Donna Simmons Retirement Reception AUGUST 8/27/08: ENVR 400; Rebecca Fry (Assistant Professor, ESE); Revealing the Genome-wide impact of Arsenic Exposure SEPTEMBER 9/3/08: ENVR 400; Grace Wallenborn (PhD Student, ESE); Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease: The Role of Zinc 9/5/08: Guest Seminar; Joe Rudek (Scientist, NC Office of Environmental Defense); Atmospheric and Aquatic Impacts of Hog Farms 9/10/08: Bagel Breakfast 9/10/08: ENVR 400; Dan Gatti (PhD Student, ESE); Understanding the role of genetic background on liver gene expression 9/17/08: ENVR 400; Seth Ebersviller (PhD Student, ESE); Rapid Shift in Toxicity Due to Gas-Particle Interactions in the Atmosphere 9/24/08: ENVR 400; Joachim Pleil (Research Physical Scientist, Methods Development and Applications Branch, Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division, EPA and Visiting Scholar, ESE); Evidentiary breath analysis for alcohol: chemical interferences and toxicokinetics related to environmental co-exposures 31 2008 ESE NEWS 2008 seminars and events OCTOBER 10/1/08: ENVR 400; Gina Panasik (PhD Student, ESE); Taking Empirical Data to Model Nitrogen in an Agroecosytem Best Management Practice 10/3/08: Guest Seminar; Walid Elshorbagy (Associate Professor, Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, United Arab Emirates University); Water Issues in the United Arab Emirates and UAE University 10/6/08: Guest Seminar; Walid Elshorbagy (Associate Professor, Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, United Arab Emirates University); Coastal Water Quality in the United Arab Emirates 10/8/08: Bagel Breakfast 10/8/08: ENVR 400; Lisa Casanova (PhD Student, ESE); This will only hurt for an hour: environmental health, vaccination, and polio control. 10/10/08: Picnic at Anderson Park 10/13/08: Guest Seminar; David Rosenberg (Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State University); Multi-scale water management and modeling for Jordan 10/22/08: ENVR 400; Julianne Tajuba and Jessica Lewis (MSPH Students, ESE); Where in the world is Engineers without Borders 10/29/08: ENVR 400; Rebecca Clewell (PhD Student, ESE); Rubber ducky, you’re no longer the one: phthalates and children NOVEMBER 11/1/08: Open House 11/5/08: ENVR 400; Fred Pfaender (Professor, ESE); 37 years in DESE: Time flies when you’re having fun 11/7/08: Dan Okun Memorial Symposium 11/12/08: Bagel Breakfast 11/12/08: Guest Seminar; Tony Fane (University of New South Wales, Australia); The Energy Challenge for Membrane Technology 11/17/08: Guest Seminar; David W. Schnare (Director, Center for Environmental Stewardship at the Thomas Jefferson Institute); 30 years at the public trough and musings on the future of environmentalism DECEMBER 12/4/08: Holiday Party ESE News Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering CB #7431 Rosenau Hall Gillings School of Global Public Health University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7431 Nonprofit Org. U. S. Postage Paid Permit No. 177 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1110
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Title | ESE news |
Date | 2008 |
Description | 2008 - The year in review |
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Digital Format | application/pdf |
Full Text | NEWS Chair's Greeting Faculty News Student News Alumni News Staff News 2008 The Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering ESE David Leith wins highly prized Greenberg Award The Year in Review Gillings School of Global Public Health University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2 2008 ESE NEWS ESE News is published by the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Gillings School of Global Public Health, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is available on the web at www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ publications. Subscription is free. Department Chair: Michael D. Aitken, Professor and Chair Email: Mike_Aitken@unc.edu Editor: Rebecca Riggsbee Lloyd Email: Rebecca.Lloyd@unc.edu Special Thanks: The editor would like to extend thanks to three colleagues for their editing assistance; Annie Goodwin, Elise Pohl and Robin Whitley. Please send news items, reader comments, and subscription requests to the editor: ESE News, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#7431, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7431 Phone: 919.966.4175 Fax: 919.966.7911 ESE MISSION STATEMENT The scholarly focus of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering is the interplay between humankind, other species and the physical, chemical, and biological processes that regulate the function of both natural and engineered environments. We describe environ-mental processes to understand their effects upon humankind and con-sider the reciprocal effects of human activities on these processes. The overall goal of our inquiry is the development of explanatory and predictive capacities for assessing and mitigating consequences to hu-man health or the environment through alternative societal actions and policies. Send Us Your News! Occasionally there are announcements and alumni event notifications the department would like to send you via email. Please send us your email address, as well as any news, comments, or updates of your contact information by either completing and mailing the reader response card below or by email to Rebecca.Lloyd@unc.edu. ESE Reader Response Card Name________________________________________________ Degree and Year _____________ Advisor _____________ Home Address ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Work Address ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Email / Phone ______________________________________________________ News / Comments (research, books published, career milestones including retirement, forms of professional recognition, appointments to boards, memberships to honorary societies, etc.) ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Send to: Rebecca Riggsbee Lloyd ~ 166 Rosenau Hall, CB#7431 ~ Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7431 ~ Rebecca.Lloyd@unc.edu 3 2008 ESE NEWS chair's greeting Dear Readers, Each year seems to pass more quickly than the one before, but a retrospective view gives us a chance to appreciate how much was accomplished. I can assure you that time does not stand still in ESE! In the comings-and-goings category, two new assistant professors, Rebecca Fry and Jill Stewart, began tenure-track appointments in ESE in July 2008. We hired another two assistant professors, Rose Cory and Carlo De Michele, who will begin with us this spring. And two of our long-time professors retired in 2008. Doug Crawford-Brown retired to pursue a new private-sector opportunity in Cambridge, England. Fred Pfaender retired in December, although he will remain on board part-time to help with several ongoing activities. In the moving-forward category, good news came to faculty members Leena Nylander-French, who was promoted to Professor, and Howard Weinberg, who was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. The biggest news of the year for the whole School was the adoption of its new name, the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. It was fitting that with an increased awareness of global issues in the School, a BSPH student in ESE, Aisha Saad, was one of two Carolina students to receive a Rhodes scholarship in 2008. Former PhD student Joe Brown, and his advisor, Mark Sobsey, received the International Water Association's global Project Innovation Award for Joe's PhD project on the use of ceramic filters for household water treatment in Cambodia. Other student award winners included Sheila Flack and Jen Thomasen (both of whom won American Industrial Hygiene Foundation scholarships), Dan Gatti (U.S. EPA STAR fellowship), and Hee-Suk Lee (National Water Research Institute fellowship). I thank all of you who donated to the Department in 2008 - your generosity and continuing loyalty to ESE is truly impressive. I particularly thank those who responded to the appeal from fellow alumni to contribute in Dan Okun's memory to the Dan Okun Scholarship fund and to help endow the Dan Okun Chapter of Engineers Without Borders at UNC. To all readers, best wishes for a successful 2009. Regards, Mike Aitken ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Pictures from Okun Memorial Symposium Guest Presenter Reds Wolman (left) and ESE Associate Professor Greg Charcklis Tema Okun (right) and Guest Speaker Chris Schulz 4 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news Leith chosen for highly prized Greenberg Award David H. Leith has been selected as the 2008 recipient of the Greenberg Alumni Endowment Award for excellence in teaching, research and service. Dean Barbara K. Rimer presented him this award during the Gillings School of Global Public Health's Foard Lecture held April 14, 2008 at The William and Ida Friday Center for Continu-ing Education. A reception preceding the lecture was held in his honor by the depart-ment and alumni. Leith, professor of environmental sciences and engineering, received a ScD from Harvard University in 1975 and taught there for nine years before joining the UNC faculty in 1984. His research and teaching at UNC have focused on the measurement and control of contami-nants in indoor and outdoor air. Since 1981, Leith has advised 17 doctoral students, 10 of whom have advanced to faculty positions in public health. His students have won six national awards for "best paper of the year" given for excellence in re-search. At Carolina, he has won four other awards for teaching and mentorship, including the University's Distin-guished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction, presented by Chancellor James Moeser in 2005. Singer presents 2008 Snoeyink Distinguished Visiting Lecture Philip C. Singer, Dan Okun Distinguished Professor of environmental engineering, was invited to present the 2008 Vernon L. Snoeyink Distinguished Visiting Lectures at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Professor Singer delivered a public lecture on “Disinfection Byproducts in Tap Water: Exposure Assessment and Misconceptions” on March 25, 2008 and a technical lecture on “Integrated Analysis of the Removal of Natural Organic Matter by Magnetic Ion Exchange” on March 26, 2008. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Leith was nominated for the Greenberg Award by more than 20 former students and professional colleagues at UNC and throughout the country. One supporter observed, "Dave sees every situation as a learning opportunity and a chance for him to make a difference in someone's life -- whether it's a student, a worker, or the greater community as a whole." The seamless integration of research, public service and teaching, which the Greenberg Award was designed to honor, appears to be a hallmark of Leith's career. The Greenberg Award was established by the Gillings School of Global Public Health Alumni Association to honor Dr. Bernard G. Greenberg, founder and chair of the Depart-ment of Biostatistics from 1949 to 1972 and dean of the School from 1972 to1982. The award is given annually to an outstanding full-time faculty member for excellence in the areas of teaching, research and service. Special consideration is given to candidates who have integrated these areas of focus. A major criterion is continuous demonstrated excellence over a number of years in service to the broader public health community. Singer presents keynote address at NEWWA Philip C. Singer, Dan Okun Distinguished Professor of environmental engineering, delivered the keynote address at the 10th Annual Water Quality Symposium of the New England Water Works Association (NEWWA) on May 15, 2008 in Westford, MA. The title of his presentation was “The Practice of Drinking Water Treatment: A Ten-Year Retrospective.” Leith dressed for Halloween 5 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news Okun honored at memorial symposium The Dan Okun Memorial Symposium, held November 7, 2008 at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, assembled experts from around the world to speak on pressing water issues. The symposium was held to honor the late Daniel A. Okun, PhD (1917-2007), Kenan Professor of environmental engineering emeritus. Philip Singer, Dan Okun Distinguished Professor of environmental engineering, who offered opening remarks at the event, has said of the symposium's honoree: "Dan was a pioneer who had a profound influence on scientific, technical, and policy advancements in the field of environmental sciences and engineering. An engineer's engineer, he cast a giant shadow on the broad field of water supply and Okun honored by Engineers Without Borders Engineers Without Borders, USA, officially has changed the name of its UNC chapter to “The Daniel A. Okun Chapter of EWB-USA.” The name change honors the late Dr. Okun, Kenan Distinguished Professor Emeritus, who passed away on Dec. 10, 2007. More information about Engineers Without Borders and the UNC chapter's activities can be found online at: http://studentorgs.unc.edu/ewb/. water resources management. His legacy will live on among all engineers and scientists dealing with issues of water and health." Among the speakers were current and former faculty members in the UNC Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, including Singer; Michael Aitken, professor and chair; Francis DiGiano, professor (retired); and Russell Christman, professor (retired). Other guest speakers included M. Gordon (Reds) Wolman from Johns Hopkins University; Chi-Chung Tang from Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, California; Pete Kolsky from The World Bank; Chris Schulz from CDM; Charles O'Melia from Johns Hopkins University; James Crook, an environmental engineering consultant; and John S. Young, Jr., from American Water. Links to event pictures and program presentations are available online at http://www.sph.unc.edu/ okunsymposium. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Okun Symposium presenters: from left to right: Crook, Schulz, DiGiano, Singer, Young and O'Melia 6 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news Sobsey accepts International Water Association award for innovative use of water filters A team of researchers led by Mark Sobsey, PhD, has received the International Water Association's (IWA) Project Innovation Award for their research endeavor, "Ceramic Water Filters in Cambodia: A Sustainable Solution for Rural Drinking Water Treatment" in 2008. The project is one of the Gillings Innovation Laboratories (GILs) at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Sobsey, Kenan Distinguished University Professor of environmental sciences and en-gineering in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, accepted the honor at the Association's East Asian and Pacific Awards Ceremony on June 26, 2008 in Singapore. Joe Brown (PhD '07, Sobsey Advisor) currently an assistant pro-fessor at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, proposed the original water purification project and worked with Sobsey and others to initiate and field-test it in Cambodian homes. After successful testing, Sobsey, Brown and others established the Carolina Global Water Partnership, a research collaboration between ESE and the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, which is exploring ways to commercialize household water treat-ment technologies in developing countries. The Global Water Partnership is one of seven Gillings Innova-tion Laboratories established thus far at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. GILs are interdisciplinary research groups funded through a major gift to the School from Dennis and Joan Gillings. "We know that biosand and ceramic filters and other household water treatment technologies make an enormous difference in the health of people who don't have access to clean drinking water," Sobsey said. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 2 million children die each year from diarrhea and related illnesses caused by unsafe drinking water and inadequate hygiene and sanita-tion. "We have the technologies, but now it's a matter of finding ways to get these technologies into communities and households, and have people adopt and use them effectively and sustainably," Sobsey said. Sobsey said that he was honored to accept the award on behalf of Joe Brown and himself. "I am pleased that this brings more visibility to our Department and School, especially because the project focuses on global water and on those most in need of safe water," he said. IWA representatives and others had special praise for the project, Sobsey said, because of its target benefi-ciaries, the simplicity and effectiveness of the technology, its low cost and the fact that it was a student's project. "We were pleased to receive recognition for this project," Brown said. "Our research has shown that locally Joe Brown, building water storage tank in Cambodia 7 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news produced ceramic water filters can be an effective long-term solution to contaminated drinking water at the household level." In his application for the award, Brown had noted, "Locally produced ceramic water filters are a new technol-ogy in Cambodia. This project provides the first systematic, field-based assessment of the technology's sustainability as a drinking water treatment intervention." Brown says the filters are now used by an estimated 100,000 Cambodian households for treatment of drink-ing water, resulting in a 98% reduction of E. coli and a 46% decrease in diarrhea. Competing for the IWA innovation awards were a number of large international corporations with significantly more complex projects. Tom Outlaw, (EMBA '08) a recent alumnus from UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and involved with Carolina Global Water Partnership, thinks the research demonstrates that high impact doesn't require high technology or high cost. "The ceramic water purifier represents technology that is appropriate, affordable and attractive - the three essential drivers of consumer demand," Outlaw said. "Now, the next step for UNC is scaling-up access to these filters in Cambodia and beyond." Michael Aitken, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, said he was thrilled that the innovative work being done by Sobsey and his students was being recognized. "We are particularly proud," Aitken said, "that our former PhD student, Joe Brown, led this project and has gone on to continue his work as a faculty member at the University of Alabama. Receiving this international award reflects the high quality of research on drinking water for which UNC is known, a reputation that Professor Sobsey has helped to establish." "We are very proud of Drs. Sobsey and Brown," agreed Dr. Barbara K. Rimer, dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and Alumni Distinguished Professor of health policy and administration. "I am especially pleased," Rimer said, "that the award recognizes the team's use of low-cost, sustainable technologies to address the water problem. Their deceptively simple innovation could have a profound impact on public health." The International Water Association is a global network of water professionals in science, research, technol-ogy and practice. Its members, including 10,000 individuals and 400 corporations in 130 countries, work to develop effective and sustainable approaches to water management. The Association's Project Innovations Award Program was established to recognize excellence and innova-tion in water engineering projects. Among the criteria for the award are the degree of complexity of the problem being addressed, the innovative application of technology, the future value to the water engineering profession and the sustainable design of the project. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Visit ESE's website for News, Events, Seminars and links. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ 8 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news Weinberg promoted to Associate Professor ESE is pleased to announce the promotion of Howard S. Weinberg, D.Sc. to Associate Professor with tenure effective September 1, 2008. Professor Weinberg was appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in ESE in 2002. Prior to that, he had served ESE as a Research Assistant Professor from 1997-2002, a Research Associate from 1992- 1997, and a post-doctoral fellow from 1989-1992. He also held a brief visiting research appointment at L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1993. He was appointed an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2007. Professor Weinberg’s research expertise is in the chemical analysis of environmental contaminants. His work includes method development for detecting and quantifying emerging contaminants in water (i.e., chemicals that are only beginning to be recognized as potential hazards to the environment or human health) as well as using analytical capabilities to study the occurrence, fate, and potential for human exposure of these contaminants in drinking water treatment, wastewater treatment, and aquatic environments. He has focused in particular on potentially harmful chemicals formed during the disinfection of drinking water (disinfection byproducts) and more recently on estrogens and other pharmaceutically active chemicals that have become of significant concern. Several analytical methods developed by Professor Weinberg are used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey in their water quality research and surveillance work. Many of Professor Weinberg’s papers have been published in top-ranked journals in his field, including Analytical Chemistry, Environmental Science & Technology, Journal of Chromatography A, and Water Research. He was awarded the Best Paper Award in the water quality and technology division by the Journal of the American Water Works Association in 2005. In 2006, the Water Environment Federation awarded him the Harrison Prescott Eddy Medal for research published in a water environment research periodical that makes a vital contribution to the existing knowledge of the fundamental principles or processes of water treatment. His publications on disinfection byproducts are highly cited. Collectively, his work has been cited nearly 400 times. In addition to these publication awards, he has won (with his students) two awards for poster presentations at American Water Works Association Water Quality Technology Conferences. In 2006 he was invited to give the opening presentation at the first Gordon Research Conference on Drinking Water Disinfection Byproducts. In 1999, Professors Weinberg and Aitken created an in-house seminar program that soon evolved to a one-credit course (now ENVR 400) required of all students in the department. He has been solely responsible for organizing and administering the course every semester since 2002. The students have rated the course highly, particularly for its ability to expose them to the breadth of research being undertaken in this Department. Sobsey interviewed about the Carolina Global Water Partnership Mark Sobsey, Kenan University Distinguished Professor of environmental sciences and engineering, is “helping to lead a major new effort, centered at UNC and called the Carolina Global Water Partnership, to understand how business principles and household point-of-use (POU) treatment technology can be used to bring safe water to people in the developing world.” Sobsey is interviewed in Water Technology Online (Vol. 31, Issue 3, March 2008). ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 9 2008 ESE NEWS faculty news School to help United Arab Emirates assess environmental health risks The United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), one of the fastest developing nations in the world, has signed a two-year contract with researchers from ESE to lead an assessment of health risks due to environmental factors in their country. UNC researchers are partnering with U.A.E. University’s Department of Community Medicine and the RAND Corp., a global public policy research institution. This group will work with the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi and its national partners, the Health Authority-Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. Ministry of Health, U.A.E. Ministry of Environment and Water, Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority and Health Authority- Dubai. The U.A.E. is a Middle Eastern federation of seven states situated on the Arabian Gulf bordering Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman. The country, with a population of about 4.3 million, has a highly industrialized economy and significant oil and natural gas reserves. “The U.A.E. is developing at an unprecedented pace and scale,” says principal investigator Jacqueline A. MacDonald, assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering. “In the past 40 years, it has gone from a small, mostly nomadic and seafaring economy to a major industrial nation. While all the developments have brought some vast improvements in public health, they’ve also brought some concerns about risks due to environmental hazards that come with an industrialized economy.” MacDonald leads a research team that will assess environmental health risks and use the results of these analyses to help United Arab Emirates set priorities and develop policies for mitigating health risks. The work will involve collecting data, working with local stakeholders to prioritize risks from environmental exposures; and developing computer-based models to estimate impact of environmental exposures and the burden of disease caused by the most important risk factors, including both indoor and outdoor air pollution (especially emissions stemming from oil and gas production), water pollution (both coastal and groundwater), and exposures to hazardous substances in the workplace. At the same time, the larger-scale epidemiologic study will be conducted to provide a nationwide assessment of possible links between the environment and the health of people living there. For more information, visit the project website at http://www.sph.unc.edu/uae. MacDonald featured in Bryn Mawr's Science & Technology ESE Assistant Professor Jacqueline A. MacDonald was featured in the February 2008 issue of Science & Technology (S&T). S&T is Bryn Mawr College’s newsletter on research, teaching, management, policy making and leadership in science and technology. The article is available on their website at http://www.brynmawr.edu/ sandt/2008_february/connecting.shtml. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Kamens presents plenary lecture at conference ESE Professor Richard Kamens presented the plenary lecture at the Atmospheric Chemical Mechanisms (ARC) Conference held December 10-12, 2008 at The ARC, University of California Davis. He presented, “SOA Some Old and New Thoughts” on December 11, 2008. 10 2008 ESE NEWS Rusyn receives NIEHS grant to develop better models for testing chemical hazards An interdisciplinary team of researchers at UNC and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has received a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) which may yield knowledge about why some people are more likely than others to be affected by exposure to toxic chemicals. Led by Ivan Rusyn, MD, PhD, associate professor of environmental sciences and engineering and principal investigator, the research effort will establish a partnership between environmental health scientists, biologi-cal engineers, cheminformaticians, biostatisticians and geneticists. The funding comes from a National Institutes of Health bioengineering research partnerships program spe-cifically designed to encourage basic, applied and translational bioengineering research that could contribute significantly to better human health. One of the aims of the research is to test the hypothesis that genetic variability among individuals is a major determinant in the toxic effects of chemical hazards. "We are extremely pleased to receive this award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sci-ences," Rusyn said. "Our interdisciplinary team is determined to advance the science and practice of environ-mental health research by building bridges between disciplines." "This work is valuable," Rusyn said, "as it will contribute to prevention of human disease by improving our ability to extrapolate and translate findings from chemical testing to human populations and by informing regulatory decisions that limit exposures to disease-associated environmental agents." The research team will develop a mouse liver tissue bioreactor that can screen chemicals; build, test and validate computational models that use chemical and biological descriptors of molecular structures and take into account genetic diversity; and validate an in vivo / in vitro toxicity screening paradigm for a class of chemicals called allylbenzene derivatives. Other members of the research team include Alex Tropsha, PhD (UNC School of Pharmacy), David Threadgill, PhD (UNC School of Medicine), and Linda Griffith, PhD (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Rusyn selected for Society of Toxicology honor Ivan Rusyn, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, has been selected to receive the Society of Toxicology’s Achievement Award. Rusyn received his doctorate at UNC in 2000 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow for a year before joining the faculty in 2002. The Achievement Award is presented to a member of the Society of Toxicology who has less than 15 years experience since obtaining his/her highest earned degree (in the year of the Annual Meeting of the Society of Toxicology) and who has made significant contributions to toxicology. This award consists of a plaque and a cash stipend. faculty news The award was presented at the Society’s 47th annual meeting held on March 16, 2008 in Seattle, Washington. 11 2008 ESE NEWS ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ��� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ School to strengthen computational toxicology and bioinformatics expertise with major U.S. EPA award The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded our School a $3.4 million grant to help strengthen our research portfolio in computational toxicology and bioinformatics. Computational toxicology is a branch of environmental health sciences that applies mathematical and computer models to predict adverse effects of drugs and environmental chemicals and to better understand the ways they may cause harm to human health and the environment. This relatively young discipline offers the possibility that scientists might be able to develop a much better understanding of risks posed by chemicals released into the environment. The grant, which will be awarded over four years, aids the establishment of The Carolina Center for Computational Toxicology (http://comptox.unc.edu). The Center will advance the field of computational toxicology through development of new methods and computational tools, as well as through interdisciplinary collaborative efforts within UNC and with other environmental health science researchers. ”We are delighted to receive this highly competitive award,” says Dr. Ivan Rusyn, associate professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the School, associate director of the Curriculum in Toxicology at the UNC School of Medicine, and principal investigator for the project. “The UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health is a world leader in many areas of science that improves the health of people in North Carolina and around the world, and the new Center will strengthen our capacity for understanding and predicting the inter-individual differences in risk from environmental exposures.” Previously printed in Carolina Public Health. Carolina Public Health is a publication of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. To subscribe to Carolina Public Health or to view the entire Fall 2008 issue in PDF, visit www.sph.unc.edu/cph. Discover magazine seeks opinion from environmental scientist Aitken Mike Aitken, ESE professor and chair, was quoted in a recent issue of Discover magazine in an article about a new water supply project in Orange Co., CA (“Better Water - From Toilet to Tap,” May 2008). The article describes the Groundwater Replenishment System project which began operating in California in January 2008. The system recycles water from sewage and uses it to replenish underground reservoirs. More than 2.1 trillion gallons of water in the U.S. are flushed down toilets every year, and the project hopes to curb the waste. In the article, Aitken predicts that water recycling will become increasingly important around the country. The California project is “the gold standard for how to do it right,” Aitken says. The Discover article is available online: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/may/23-from-toilet-to-tap/ article_view?searchterm=aitken&b_start:int=1. faculty news 12 2008 ESE NEWS ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ faculty news Nylander-French promoted to Full Professor ESE Professor and Chair, Mike Aitken, announced the promotion of Leena Nylander-French to Full Professor effective March 1, 2008. Dr. Nylander-French obtained a PhD in occupational and industrial hygiene from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in 1994. She was appointed to the faculty in ESE as an Assistant Professor in 1997, originally in a joint appointment with Epidemiology. She has had a full-time appointment in ESE since 2000 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in ESE in 2002. She has served as Industrial Hygiene Program Director in the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Educational Resource Center since 2002, and in 2006 became Director of the Exposure and Biomarkers Research Core under the NIEHS-supported Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (CEHS) in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Dr. Nylander-French’s general area of research is in human exposure to toxic substances via the skin (dermal exposure). Paerl featured in Science An article in the December 12, 2008 issue of Science magazine features the research of Hans Paerl, PhD. Paerl is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of marine sciences at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, N.C., and holds a joint appointment at the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health in the department of environmental sciences and engineering. The article, “FerryBoxes Begin to Make Waves,” describes the value of the FerryBox, a metal container, about one cubic yard in size, holding sensors designed to sample Heath Retires from Fifty Years at School of Government Milton S. Heath Jr., professor of public law and government at the School of Government and joint professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, celebrated his retirement from 50 years on the faculty on February 28, 2008. At the February ceremony, Bill Ross, secretary of the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources, presented Heath with a Long Leaf water as a ferry boat moves through regional inlets and sounds. Paerl led the first such data-gathering project in the U.S., FerryMon, which was launched in 2000 in N.C.’s Pamlico Sound. Pine award on behalf of Governor Michael Easley. The Long Leaf Pine is the highest civilian award given by the State of North Carolina. Also at the ceremony, Mike Smith, dean of the School of Government, announced the launch of an endowment fund to create the Milton S. Heath Jr. Environmental Lecture at the School of Government. The endowed lecture, Smith said, “will continue the remarkable tradition of teaching and learning that Milton has embodied for more than five decades.” The lecture series will be free and open to the public. For more information, call 919.966.9780. 13 2008 ESE NEWS Assistant Professor REebSeEcc aw Ce. Flcryomes new faculty ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ESE Faculty profiles are available online at: www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ ESE welcomes new faculty Fry received a BS in Biology from William Smith College in 1995, an MS in Biology and Pharmacology from Tulane University in 1997, and a PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from Tulane in 2000. Although her PhD was from the Biology Department at Tulane, she conducted her dissertation research at Yale University. She then served as a Post-Doctoral Associate under Professor Leona Samson in the Division of Bioengineering and Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After her post-doctoral appointment, Fry remained at MIT as a Research Scientist in Profes-sor Samson's laboratory until 2006. She then served as the Director of the Genomics and Bioinformatics Core in the Center for Environmental Health Sciences at MIT. Fry's general area of research is in using genomic approaches to study exposure to toxic environmental agents and the corresponding susceptibility or resistance to dis-ease. Her work involves both experimental and computational approaches to identi-fying genes that can serve as biomarkers of exposure. Her recent work has focused on prenatal exposure to arsenic. Fry plans to complement genomic studies on effects of arsenic with experiments to elucidate molecu-lar pathways that can protect against arsenic toxicity, and she hopes to couple her molecular work with population studies in the near future. In particular, her goal is to identify genes and their polymorphisms that lead to arsenic-related diseases. Assistant Professor Jill R. Stewart Stewart received a BA in Environmental Sciences (with a concentration in ecology and a minor in chemistry) from the University of Virginia in 1996, an MS in Public Health in 1998 and a PhD in environmental sciences and engineering in 2003 both from this Department. Both her master’s and doctoral research were conducted under the supervision of Professor Mark Sobsey. Since 2002, she worked as a microbiologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research in Charleston, South Carolina and served as the microbiology program lead for the NOAA Hollings Marine Lab Center of Excellence in Oceans and Human Health. Stewart also holds adjunct faculty positions in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, the College of Charleston (both in Environmental Studies and in Marine Biology), and the Medical University of South Carolina. Stewart’s general area of research is in public health microbiology with an emphasis on microbial contamination of coastal and surface water systems. Her research has focused on developing methods to detect microorganisms of public health concern in surface waters and shellfish, and on developing microbial source tracking techniques. Source tracking is of considerable national interest because sources of microbial contamination are rarely apparent, and Stewart has become a recognized leader in this area. Her methods are already being used in field trials and in controlled ecosystem assessments. She plans to extend this work to investigate the human health risks of impaired water quality. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ �� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 14 2008 ESE NEWS Birnbaum appointed NIEHS director Linda S. Birnbaum, PhD, adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, has been appointed as director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), effective January 2009. As director, she will oversee a $730 million budget that funds multidisciplinary biomedical research programs and prevention and intervention efforts that encompass training, education, technology transfer and community outreach. NIEHS, located in Research Triangle Park, N.C., supports more than 1,240 research grants. A native of New Jersey and board-certified toxicologist, Birnbaum received her master's and doctoral degrees in microbiology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has served as a federal scientist for nearly 29 years, most recently as senior advisor at the Environmental Protection Agency, where she was director of the Experimental Toxicology Division for 16 years. NIEHS, part of the National Institutes of Health, supports research to understand the effects of the environment on human health. faculty news Heath honored as News and Observer's Tarheel of the Week in 2008 ESE’s Joint Professor Milton Heath was featured in the March 23, 2008 issue of the News & Observer (Raleigh) as the Tar Heel of the Week. The article details his involvement in shielding North Carolina beaches from intensive development. The full story is available on N&O’s website at: http://www.newsobserver.com/ front/story/1010301.html. West and ESE Students install solar electric systems during summer trip to Mexico In the summer of 2008, two ESE students and members of the UNC Okun Chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), Jill Simmerman and Jessica Lewis, teamed up with ESE Assistant Professor Jason West and Solar Mexico to install solar electric systems in private homes in northern Mexico and to investigate the feasibility of future projects in the State of Hidalgo. Lewis (MSPH, West Advisor) is currently studying climate change and air pollution in ESE and Simmerman earned her BS in 2008 in Environmental Science at UNC. Solar Mexico is a project founded in 2002 by West in collaboration with the Mexican Foundation for Rural Development, a Mexican nonprofit. Their mission is to provide renewable energy resources to poor rural families. Solar technologies being used by the Solar Mexico project include solar panels for electricity in homes, solar ovens for efficient cooking, and solar water distillers for clean drinking water. Solar Mexico has subsidized 17 household solar electric systems and has subsidized the purchase of many ovens for families in need. The project is supported entirely by private donations from residents of the United States, Mexico and elsewhere. Visit Solar Mexico’s website to read field reports and to learn more about the project, http://www.nonprofitpages.com/solarmexico and http://studentorgs.unc.edu/ewb/ to learn more about the Daniel A. Okun Chapter of Engineers Without Borders at UNC-Chapel Hill. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 15 2008 ESE NEWS student news Henderson wins 2008 ESE Achievement Award ESE is proud to announce Barron Henderson (MS ’08, PhD, Vizuete Advisor) as the recipient of the 2008 ESE Achievement Award. The ESE Achievement award recognizes an outstanding Masters graduate in our department based on the student’s academic excellence as evidenced by any or all of the following: outstanding performance in formal courses; quality and depth of the master’s report; creativity and scientific maturity; service to the department, community or state; professional promise; and the opinion of the faculty regarding the professional and academic growth of the student while enrolled in our program. Henderson finished his master's degree in May of 2008 and is currently pursuing his PhD focusing on atmospheric model evaluation. In June of 2008, he received an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) research fellowship at EPA in their Atmospheric Modeling and Analysis Division (AMAD) of the National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL). At NERL, Henderson works with AMAD evaluating the influence of modeled chemistry representation on air quality model results used to inform policy. Henderson was nominated by his advisor, Professor William Vizuete who praised him in his nomination letter, “In my opinion, Barron has already reached the level of independent researcher. He is able to explore new ideas and investigate a problem with little guidance from me. He is always looking for ways to improve our current research capability and his creativity has resulted in a complete revamp of my existing research codes.” “Since joining my group he has been an indispensable mentor to my younger graduate students. His ability to not only create new ideas, but to disseminate those ideas clearly is evidence of his future success in the professional world. His ability and willingness to learn a new field speaks volumes on his flexibility and intellectual potential,” said Professor Vizuete. Vizuete is the voice of “The Ozone Hole” ESE Assistant Professor William Vizuete lent his voice as the narrator of the infographic, The Ozone Hole. This infographic was created by UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communications Senior Wilson Andrews and was awarded second place in the 48th annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program. Visit www.southofhere.org to view the infographic. faculty news Henderson is originally from Dallas, TX and completed his undergraduate degree at Austin College. He now lives in Raleigh with his wife and son Baxter. In his free time, he likes to play soccer, swing dance, play with Baxter, and read sci-fi. 16 2008 ESE NEWS student news Drummey wins 2008 Bunker Award ESE is pleased to announce Patricia N. Drummey (MSEE ’07, Characklis Advisor) as the recipient of the 2008 George C. Bunker Award. Her nomination was led by her advisor Professor Greg Characklis who stated in his letter “Tricia consistently challenged herself in the classroom, despite being engaged in a very time consuming and unpredictable research project that involved a tremendous amount of fieldwork.” He continues, “Tricia’s intellect, work ethic and personality will take her as far as she chooses to go in the professional world, or in academia, should she choose to return. She will be one of the students whose careers our Department will look on with great pride in the future.” Drummey’s research explores the role that microbial partitioning in stormwater plays in assessing detention basin effectiveness for microbial removal. Her thesis entitled “Evaluating Microbial Partitioning Throughout the Stormwater Transport Chain and its Impact on the Effectiveness of Wet Detention Ponds” will be submitted to the Journal of Environmental Engineering for publication. Drummey received her BS degree in civil engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 2003 and her MSEE from UNC in 2007. Drummey came to our department highly recommended by the faculty in Civil & Environmental Engineering at Notre Dame, as well as those who served with her in the Dominican Republic while she worked for the Peace Corps. The Bunker Award was established in honor of Dr. George C. Bunker, a sanitary engineer and benefactor of the University of North Carolina and is given annually by the Department to an MSEE candidate in environmental engineering who shows the most outstanding scholarship and professional promise. O’Lenick receives Fulbright award Cassandra O’Lenick (MS '08, Jeffries Advisor) received a 2008- 2009 U.S. Student Fulbright Program award. O’Lenick, a native of Annandale, Va., traveled to Poland to study environmental law, policy, and scientific procedure. She also studied Poland’s cooperation with the European Union’s environmental policy. As the nation’s largest international exchange program, the Fulbright Program operates in more than 155 countries. The late Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas established the program in 1946 to build mutual understanding among people of the United States and the rest of the world. Students are selected for their academic or professional achievements and leadership potential. The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. At UNC, it is administered by the Center for Global Initiatives. “First and foremost, Fulbright programs promote cultural exchange,” said Beth-Ann Kutchma, UNC program advisor. “Through their documentary projects, dissertation publications and community service, these students link the Carolina campus to the world.” This year, eleven UNC-CH students received Fulbright awards. Nationwide, more than 1,450 students were chosen. For more information about the Fulbright Program for U.S. Students visit their website: http:// us.fulbrightonline.org/home.html. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ESE's student roster and defense schedule is available online at ESE's website. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/. 17 2008 ESE NEWS Birak receives outstanding student paper award Pamela S. Birak (PhD, Miller Advisor) won an outstanding paper award for her presentation at the 2008 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco from AGU's Hydrology Section. The paper, “Rheology of dense non-aqueous phase liquids at former manufactured gas plants” was recognized by the committee as being “among the best of a strong group of student presenters, which sets an example for her fellow students and the entire AGU membership." Outstanding student paper award winners were announced in the publication Eos, the weekly newspaper of AGU, and received a formal certificate of achievement. Lee wins NWRI Fellowship Hee Suk Lee’s (MSPH, Sobsey Advisor) doctoral work on identifying prevalent enteric viruses found in water to develop a rapid detection method that will detect water contamination in less than four hours, a potentially significant improvement from current bacterial indicators that can take up to four days to provide results, awarded her a National Water Research Institute (NWRI) Fellowship Award in 2008. This three year, $10,000 a year award was created to support doctoral graduate research related to water. Visit their website at http://www.nwri-usa.org/ fellowship.htm to learn more about the fellowship. Khan wins environmental scholarship Alia L. Khan (BSPH, Sobsey Advisor), has been awarded a $500 scholarship from the Research Triangle Park, N.C., chapter of the Academy of Certified Hazardous Materials Managers (ACHMM). The funding is provided to a graduate or undergraduate student demonstrating outstanding academic merit and strong interest in pursuing a career re-lated to protecting the environment. The award was presented on August 13, 2008 at the ACHMM-RTP in Raleigh, NC. Teuber wins NCWRA poster contest Leah Teuber (MSEE '08, Singer Advisor) won first place in a poster contest sponsored by the North Carolina Water Resources Association at the Water Resources Research Institute’s (WWRI) annual conference, held October 8-9, 2008 at North Carolina State University. The first place award was $300. Winning posters will be displayed at the new WWRI offices at N.C. State University. More than 20 participants in the contest hailed from universities including UNC-Asheville, UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Charlotte, Appalachian State, N.C. State, Elon, and University of South Carolina. Teuber’s research, “Mineral Deposits Behind Waterless Urinals,” was begun in Sepember 2007 with advisor Dr. Phillip Singer, Okun Distinguished Professor of environmental sciences and engineering. “It has been very interesting work,” Teuber says, “and I’m glad to see that it was so well received at the conference.” ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ student news 18 2008 ESE NEWS Saad inducted into Phi Beta Kappa Aisha Ihab Saad (BSPH '09, Sobsey Advisor) was inducted November 24, 2008 into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest and most honored of all college honorary societies. Phi Beta Kappa membership is open to undergraduates in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences and professional degree programs who meet stringent eligibility requirements. student news A student who has completed 75 hours of course work and has a grade-point average of 3.85 or better (on a 4-point scale) is eligible for membership. Also eligible is any student who has competed 105 hours of course work and has a 3.75 grade-point average. Grades earned at other universities are not considered. Less than one percent of all college students qualify to be members. This fall, 176 students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were inducted.There are 270 Phi Beta Kappa chapters nationwide. UNC's chapter, Alpha of North Carolina, was founded in 1904 and is the oldest of six chapters in the state. Past and present Phi Beta Kappa members from across the country have included 17 American presidents and numerous artistic, intellectual and political leaders. Seven of the nine current U.S. Supreme Court Jus-tices are members. Jarabek receives Life Achievement Award Annie M. Jarabek (PhD, Crawford-Brown Advisor) received a Life Achievement Award by and at the Annual International Conference on Soils, Sediments and Water held in October of 2008. This award is given to individuals in the areas of industry, academia, government and military, who have made significant contributions to the understanding and solution of soil, sediment and groundwater pollution problems. Jarabek is a senior toxicologist and special assistant at the National Center for Environmental Assessment in the Office of Research and Development (ORD) at U.S. EPA and is currently completing a PhD in ESE’s risk assessment program. Read more about Jarabek and this honor on page nine of their conference program available at: http://www.sph.unc.edu/images/stories/ academic_programs/ese/documents/24pro8.5x11_final.pdf. Richardson receives award at SBRP Annual Meeting Stephen Richardson (PhD, Aitken Advisor) was awarded one of two Student Poster Awards for outstanding presentations at the 2008 Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP) Annual Meeting held December 7-9, 2008 in Pacific Grove, California. The poster, entitled “Effects of Biostimulation and Anaerobic Conditions on PAH Biodegradation in Contaminated Soil from a Manufactured Gas Plant Site,” was co-authored by Maiysha Jones (PhD, Aitken Advisor), Dr. David Singleton, and Professor Michael Aitken. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ��� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 19 2008 ESE NEWS Flack and Thomasen receive 2008-2009 AIHF scholarships Two ESE doctoral students have been selected as recipients of 2008-2009 American Industrial Hygiene Foundation (AIHF) scholarships. Jennifer Thomasen (MSPH ’07, PhD, Nylander-French Advisor) is the recipient of the highest honor, the American Industrial Hygiene Foundation Scholarship and Sheila Flack (MSPH ’06, PhD, Nylander-French Advisor) is the recipient of both the Carolinas Local Section Scholarship and the Fred Venable/Deep South Local Section Scholarship. A special presentation of the awards was made at the annual AIHF Recognition Reception at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition (AIHce), held on June 2, 2008 in Minneapolis, MN. The mission of the American Industrial Hygiene Foundation is to advance the profession by awarding scholarships for students in industrial hygiene and related disciplines. Since 1982, AIHF has distributed more than $900,000 to more than 45 different schools and universities and 356 students. These scholarships have enabled talented students to complete their education and have encouraged the most promising scholars to enter or remain in the industrial hygiene profession. For their doctoral research project, Thomasen and Flack, working alongside two other doctoral students, recruited spray painters from North Carolina (15 workers) and in the state of Washington (33 workers) to investigate individual dermal and inhalation exposures to 1,6-hexamethylene diisocyanate (HDI) monomer and oligomers in an occupational environment. During this project, they determined the breathing-zone exposure to HDI by personal filter sampling, dermal exposure to HDI by noninvasive tape-strip sampling of the stratum corneum, and systemic exposure by measuring the major HDI metabolites HDA and acetylate HDA in blood and urine. Thomasen has taken the lead in investigating the factors affecting and errors involved in the measurement techniques of breathing-zone concentrations, while Flack leads the analyzing of blood samples by GC-MS and is currently developing statistical models to investigate the correlation between breathing-zone and dermal exposure levels and the biomarker levels in blood. student news Jennifer Thomasen completed her Master of Science in Public Health in December 2007 under the direction of Professor Leena A. Nylander-French. During her Master’s research, she was responsible for the development and validation of techniques to measure inhalation exposures to polyisocyanates using LC-MS instrumentation. ○ ○ ○ ○ �� ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Visit ESE's website for News, Events, Seminars and links. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ Jennifer Thomasen Sheila L. Flack completed her Master of Science in Public Health in December 2006 also under the direction of Professor Leena A. Nylander-French. During her master’s research, she developed a strong understanding of the development Sheila Flack and testing of monitoring methods for both inhalation and dermal exposures and GC-MS instrumentation. Her research is presented in the scientific peer-reviewed article based on her Master’s technical report published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring (Flack, S.; Goktepe, I.; Ball, L.M. and Nylander-French, L.A. (2008). Development and evaluation of quantitative monitoring methods for dermal and inhalation exposure to propiconazole. J Environ Monit, 10, 336-344). Flack and Thomasen have continued their doctoral studies in Professor Nylander-French’s laboratory. 20 2008 ESE NEWS student news Gatti Receives EPA STAR Fellowship Daniel M. Gatti (PhD, Rusyn Advisor) was awarded an EPA Science to Achieve Re-sults (STAR) Fellowship for his proposal entitled "Genome-wide in-silico modeling of liver gene regulatory networks." The EPA STAR Fellowships are highly competitive awards made once every two years to a select group of students nationwide. The purpose of the fellowship program is to encourage promising students to obtain ad-vanced degrees and pursue careers in an environmental field. The fellowship includes funding for tuition, fees, stipend and supplies for up to three years. He joins previous STAR Fellows in ESE (2007): Shannon Starck (MS, Weinberg Advisor), Alison Hege (PhD, Curriculum in Toxicology), and Lanakila McMahan (PhD, Sobsey Advisor). Gatti is a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Dr. Ivan Rusyn. He is also a student in the Bioinformatics and Computation Biology (BCB) Training Program. His research involves the use of sophisticated statistical and computational approaches to analyze data on toxicity measurements, including gene expression and other -omics endpoints, and genetic polymorphisms with a goal of constructing gene regulatory networks which will aid in understanding and predicting toxicity. This type of research is fundamental for improving the linkages in the source-to-outcome continuum because a firm understanding of the molecular events in normal cells and how they are perturbed by environmental agents is the foundation for understanding how toxicants lead to disease. In addition, this work will help to identify sensitive sub-populations — people whose genes harbor polymorphisms that may be associated with adverse responses to otherwise tolerable exposure levels. Prior to enrolling in the Ph.D. program, Gatti received his Masters degree in ESE in 2007, served as the department's computing consultant from 2004 to 2005 and was the lab manager for both Professors Singer and Weinberg performing drinking water analysis from 2002 to 2004. Gatti received his BS in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1992 and his Programming Certificate from NC State in 1999. He worked at the NC Supercomputing Center doing environmental modeling and software development from 1997 to 2002 before coming to UNC. Gatti has been a recipient of a number of awards from the Department and several research societies. Gatti wins a student poster award at the 2008 meeting of the Complex Trait Consortium The Complex Trait Consortium (CTC) is an international network of researchers that studies the genetic basis for human disease and variation. At the 7th annual meeting held in Montreal, Quebec on May 31 to June 3 2008, Daniel Gatti won an award for his poster entitled “FastMap: Fast Association Mapping in Inbred Mouse Populations.” It introduces a fast method for finding regions of the genome that are likely to regulate the expression of specific genes. He shares this honor with his co-authors Andrey Shabalin, Tieu- Chong Lam, Dr. Fred Wright, Dr. Ivan Rusyn, and Dr. Andrew Nobel. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ESE Postdoc Sara Rodriguez-Mozaz wins Best Poster Award at ACE08 While a Postdoc in ESE, Sara Rodriguez-Mozaz won first place in the Water Science & Research Best Poster competition at the 2008 American Water Works Association's (AWWA) Annual Conference & Exposition (ACE) in Atlanta, Georgia on June 8-12, 2008. The poster entitled "Novel Strategies for the Characterization of Mixed-Oxidant Solutions for Drinking Water Disinfection," is also authored by Professor Howard S. Weinberg, Ana M. Saenz de Jubera and Alison C. Sykes. The authors' research focuses on mixed oxidants, the onsite generated disinfectant that demonstrates greater efficacy in Cryptosporidium parvum inactivation, as well as inhibition of biofilm formation and lower DBP levels than traditional chlorine. 21 2008 ESE NEWS student news Rusyn’s laboratory students recognized by the North Carolina Chapter of the Society of Toxicology Alison Hege (PhD, Curriculum in Toxicology) and Pamela Ross (MSPH '08, Rusyn Advisor) received first and third place awards, respectively, in the graduate student poster competition held at the North Carolina chapter of the Society of Toxicology 2008 Spring Meeting. Students from UNC, NC State University and Duke University presented their work at the meeting. Hege presented a poster entitled “Phenotypic anchoring of gene expression data from acetaminophen hepatotoxicity studies in the mouse model of the human population reveals biomarkers of response.” Her work shows that changes in gene expression in liver, when correlated with an observed toxicity in a large panel of inbred mouse strains, reveal biomarkers of effect that may be more reflective of population-wide responses to toxic insults. Ross presented a poster entitled “Time-course comparison of xenobiotic activators of CAR and PPAR-alpha.” This work establishes common fingerprints of exposure to activators of CAR and PPAR-alpha in rodent liver and demonstrates what changes correlate with the presence or absence of a corresponding nuclear receptor. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Environmental sciences students win NOAA scholarships Two rising seniors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have won Ernest F. Hollings Scholarships from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Ben Edwards of Knightdale, N.C., and Ben Bogardus of Cullowhee, N.C., each will receive $8,000 in academic assistance during their junior and senior years. The Hollings scholarship program also provides them with a 10-week paid summer internship at NOAA or a partner facility. The awards are designed to increase undergraduate training in oceanic and atmospheric science, boost public understanding and support for stewardship of the ocean and atmosphere, and improve environmental literacy. Edwards is pursuing a major in environmental science and a minor in marine sciences. He is a Carolina Scholar and a National Marine Science Bowl state champion. He is also a lab technician at the Gillings School of Global Public Health. In 2005, he spent eight weeks at the Dauphin Island, Alabama, Sea Lab Summer Program, where he conducted and presented field-based marine science research. Bogardus is pursuing a major in environmental science and a minor in geology. He was accepted last summer at the Flathead Lake Biological Station, an ecological research and education center located in the Rocky Mountains near Glacier National Park. He serves as a research assistant for the UNC geography department on a dam and stream restoration study in Chapel Hill and the Adirondacks. The Hollings scholarships are named in honor of Ernest F. Hollings, a former U.S. senator from South Carolina. Clark wins NC AWWA-WEA Scholarship Lily P. Clark (BSPH ’09, Ball Advisor) was awarded a $1,000 University Scholarship from North Carolina American Water Works Association-Water Environment Association (NC AWWA-WEA) in 2008. NC AWWA-WEA awards two $1,000 grants annually to outstanding four-year university student applicants. More information is available on their website at www.ncsafewater.org. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 22 2008 ESE NEWS Several members of ESE, including one fast-moving graduate student, modeled healthy behaviors when they participated in the 26-mile Boston Marathon on April 21, 2008. Marc Jeuland (PhD, Whittington Advisor) finished 15th overall and third among American men in a field of more than 22,000 in the event. His time of 2 hours, photograph, Marc Jeuland He enjoys the camaraderie of running with friends, especially those at the Carrboro Athletics Club. “Boston’s a great race, with a long history, a challenging course, and terrific crowd support,” he says, “and I came away from the race feeling very happy to be a marathoner.” photograph, Tricia Drummey 20 minutes, 57 seconds, was only 13 minutes longer than the first place runner, Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya, who completed the course in 2:07.46. “At the finish, someone called out, ‘You’re 15th,’ and I couldn’t believe it,” Jeuland said. Drew Steen, graduate student in the Department of Marine Sciences and Jeuland’s friend, praised Jeuland’s performance in the race, especially given that travel and illness had caused him lost training time. “Marc’s too self-effacing to talk about himself, but he’s had a number of running successes in his time at UNC,” Steen said, “including a strong showing at the U.S. Olympic qualifiers in New York in November 2007. He came to UNC after a three-year stint in the Peace Corps in Mali, where he was sufficiently instrumental in the construction of a new wastewater treatment station that it was named after him.” Jeuland’s graduate research is focused on the impacts of climate change on the economics and planning of dams, with a particular focus on the Blue Nile Basin in Ethiopia. He worked with a local sanitation company near Bamako, Mali, on the wastewater treatment project. Jeuland says he runs “because it keeps me healthy, provides balance in my life and also is a way to unwind from the rigors of academic study and work.” Boston Marathon includes ESE athletes Patricia Drummey, (MSEE '07, Characklis Advisor) finished in 3:30:13. Drummey is new to the marathon experience, having qualified for Boston at an event in Maine last fall. After the race, she described how it felt to see her mom cheering her on at the top of Heartbreak Hill. “I had ‘Patti’ written on my shirt,” she said, “which was great because it got a lot of cheers from the spectators. It was also good because I actually go by ‘Tricia,’ so when my mom, friends and family yelled ‘TRICIA!’, I knew it was somebody who actually knew me. I heard and saw my mom while I was approaching, and ran on by, but had to turn around to give her a quick, sweaty hug. “We decided,” Drummey teased, “that’s where the extra 13 seconds on my 3:30 time came from.” photograph, David Leith Also participing was ESE Professor David Leith whose time was 3:51:34,155th in his age division. Leith was modest about the fine showing he made. “To run in the Boston Marathon has been an ambition of long standing and I’m glad to have done it, finally. I’m also glad it’s over,” he said. student news 23 2008 ESE NEWS 2008 graduates DATE NAME TYPE TITLE ADVISOR 7 Brian Pachkowski Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Functional Studies of Accessory Factors Associated with Base Excision Repair Swenberg 7 Alex Carll MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense A Rat Model of Heart Failure Induced by Isoproterenol and/or High Salt Diet to Examine the Effects of Particulate Matter Inhalation Ball 25 Kenneth W. Fent Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Quantitative Monitoring and Statistical Modeling of Dermal and Inhalation Exposure to Monomeric and Polymeric 1,6-Hexamethylene Diisocyanates During Automotive Spray Painting Nylander- French 28 Treavor H. Boyer Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Removal of Natural Organic Matter by Anion Exchange: Multiscale Experimentation and Mathematical Modeling Singer 1 Matthew Martin Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Classification of Chemicals Based on Structured Toxicity Information Rusyn 2 G. Christopher Wedding Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Understanding Sustainability in Real Estate: A Focus on Measuring and Communicating Success in Brownfield Redevelopment and Green Building Crawford- Brown 16 Adrienne Cizek MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Comparing the Partitioning Behavior of Giardia and Cryptosporidium with that of Indicator Organisms in Stormwater Runoff Characklis 18 Jennifer Cannon Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Capsid properties Contributing to Norovirus Persistence in Humans Vinje 18 Patrick Craig MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Methyl-donor Enrichment Attenuates Alcohol-induced Liver Injury: Mechanisms of Protective Action Rusyn 24 Pamela K. Ross MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Time-course Comparison of Xenobiotic Activators of CAR and PPAR-alpha in Mouse Liver Rusyn 25 Erik Michael Andersen MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Improved Recovery of Multiple Microbial Indictor Organisms from Source and Treated Drinking Waters by Optimized Hydraulic Modification to Hollow-fiber Ultrafilters Simmons 5 Kate Bronstein Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Jordan Lake, We Need to Talk . . . You Might Have a Drug Problem: A Case Study of Antibiotic Occurrence in a Drinking Water Reservoir Impacted by Wastewater Discharge Weinberg 5 Matthew Stiegel MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense A Comparison of Indoor Fungal Spore Concentrations between Naturally Ventilated and Mechanically Ventilated Dormitories at Duke University Flynn 5 Xiangyu Fan Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Simulation Study of Surfactant Phase Behaviors in Brine Base Remediation Technology Miller 6 Daniel Anderson MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Application of a Lung Deposition Model to Fiber Data from Three North Carolina Asbestos Textile Plants Nylander- French 9 Cassandra Ruth O’Lenick Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Effects of in vitro Exposure of Human Respiratory Epithelial Cells to Formaldehyde Jeffries 12 Lisa Casanova Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Survival and Transmission of Coronaviruses in the Healthcare Environment Sobsey JANUARY MARCH APRIL MAY 24 2008 ESE NEWS 2008 graduates DATE NAME TYPE TITLE ADVISOR 12 Susan Hsu MSEE Technical Report Final Oral Defense Effect of Natural Organic Matter on Lime Softening and Removal of Bromide and Dissolved Organic Matter Using Ion Exchange: Two Applications of Magnetic Ion Exchange Singer 12 Rachel Hulkower MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Inactivation of Surrogate Coronaviruses on Hard Surfaces by Healthcare Disinfectants Sobsey 21 Kat Galloway Master's Thesis Final Oral Defense New Particle Formation in a Realistic Daytime Urban Atmosphere: SO2/NOx/O3/Hydrocarbon Air Mixtures Kamens 28 Byron C. Kominek MSEE Technical Report Final Oral Defense A Technical and Economic Feasibility Study of Using a Small-Scale Anaerobic Digester for Energy Production from Cafeteria Food Waste at a Local North Carolina School Aitken 29 Casey Caldwell MSEE Technical Report Final Oral Defense Considerations of Risk Tolerance in Developing Probability-based Inter-utility Transfer Agreements Characklis 11 Benjamin A. Aiken MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Sustainability Assessment of the Biosand Filter in Bonao, Dominican Republic Sobsey 12 Tina S. Lusk MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Comparison of E. coli Methods for Detection in Water: The Effects of Incubation Time and Temperature Sobsey 26 Angela D. Coulliette Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Characterization of Fecal contamination in the Newport River Estuary (North Carolina, USA) Noble 3 Stephanie D. Friedman Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Rapid Molecular Detection of Male-specific Coliphages as a Tool for Determining Sanitary Quality and Source of Fecal Pollution in Recreational Waters Sobsey 16 Rick Johnston Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Chemical Interactions Between Iron and Arsenic in Water Singer 17 Jon Russell Sobus Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Comparing Urinary Biomarkers of Exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Rappaport 30 Juneil Lee Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Modeling Groundwater for the Coastal Plain Region of North Carolina Miller 13 Ben Lebron Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Remediation of Contaminated Soil from a former Manufactured Gas Plant with Heat- Activated Sodium Miller 14 Christopher Gibbons Master’s Thesis Final Oral Defense Concentration of Adenoviruses and Noroviruses from Seawater with Argonide Nanoceram Cartridge Filters: Method Effectiveness and Occurrence in Southern California Recreational Waters Sobsey 15 Rebecca Wilson MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense A Method for Dilute Mixing of Reactants in an Outdoor Aerosol Chamber and the Application to an á-pinene/Ozone System Kamens 15 Jacopo J. Wiggins MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense An Evaluation of Worker Exposure to Formaldehyde in a Histology/Necropsy lab: An IH investigation Flynn 15 Arne Newman Master's Thesis Final Oral Defense An Investigation of Cosolvent Flushing for the Remediation of PAH's from Former Manufactured Gas Plant Sites Miller 18 Hongbo (Shirley) Zhu Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Improvement of the Bioavailability of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Field- Contaminated Soil Aitken AUGUST JULY JUNE MAY 25 2008 ESE NEWS Alumni updates Treavor Boyer (PhD '08, Singer Advisor) joined the faculty as Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences at the University of Florida in 2008. Boris Brglez’s (MPH ’03, Ball Advisor) 2003 technical report entitled “Disposal of Poultry Carcasses in Catastrophic Avian Influenza Outbreaks” has been published as Chapter 15 of Dr. David Swayne’s new book, Avian Influenza. [Brglez, B., & Hahn, J. (2008). Methods for Disposal of Poultry Carcasses. In D. E. Swayne (Ed.), Avian Influenza (pp 333-352). Wiley-Blackwell.] Shannon Marquez (PhD '98, Crawford-Brown Advisor), associate professor and director of the MPH program at the College of Health Professions at Temple University was recently appointed to the Philadelphia’s Board of Health by Philadelphia’s Mayor Michael A. Nutter in October 2008. Matthew N. Waters (PhD ’07, Piehler and Martens Advisors) has accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia. Jian Zhen Yu (PhD ’96, Jeffries), associate professor in the department of chemistry and the atmospheric, marine, and coastal environmental program of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology participated in the US EPA’s Atmospheric Chemistry Seminar Series in Research Triangle Park, NC in November 2008. Professor Yu presented a seminar entitled “Secondary Aerolsol Formation from Ethylene and Isoprene in the Urban Atmosphere of Hong Kong: A Multi-phase Chemical Modeling Study." DATE NAME TYPE TITLE ADVISOR 22 Keegan Sawyer Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense The Pulmonary Health Effects of Diesel Exhaust and Diesel Exhaust Particles: Evidence from Human and Cellular In Vitro Exposure Research Madden/Ball 9 Susan Casper MS Thesis Final Oral Defense The Global Burden of Anthropogenic Ozone and Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution on Premature Human Mortality West 27 Sandra M Chung MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Development of a Low-cost Absorbent Pad Test for the Detection of Escherichia coli in Contaminated Drinking Water Sobsey 18 Gang Cao Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense SOA Formation from Toluene Oxidation in the Presence of Inorganic Aerosols Jang/Jeffries 19 Rebecca R. Boyles MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Effects of Ambient Particulate Matter on Cytokine Production in Mouse Macrophages and Epithelial Cells Jeffries 24 Jeff Hayes MSPH Technical Report Final Oral Defense Relationships Between the Occurrence and Concentrations of Cryptosporidium, Giardia and Fecal Indicator Microbes in Waters from Tributaries of the Kensico Reservoir Sobsey 9 Eric S. Money Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Defense Modern Space/Time Geostatistics Using River Distances: Theory and Applications for Water Quality Mapping Serre 15 Leah Teuber MSEE Technical Report Final Oral Defense Mineral Deposits Behind Waterless Urinals Singer SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER AUGUST 2008 graduates alumni news ESE's student roster and defense schedule is available online at ESE's website. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/. 26 2008 ESE NEWS Young Receives ESE Distinguished Alumni Award in 2008 The Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering is pleased to announce John S. Young, Jr. (MS ’77, O’Melia Advisor) as the recipient of an ESE Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2008. This award was established in 1995 to recognize deserving graduates or former students for their outstanding professional achievements and contributions to the field of environmental sciences and engineering. Past recipients of this award have been leaders in their fields of expertise. Young is Chief Operating Officer (COO) of American Water and holds a seat on the company’s Board of Directors. Young joined the American Water System in 1977 as the Director of Water Quality for the Eastern Division. He held increasingly responsible positions in engineering and water quality and in 1991 was named Vice President – Engineering. He received his BS in Civil Engineering from Duke University in 1975 and his MS in Environmental Engineering from UNC in 1977. alumni news ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Visit ESE's website for News, Events, Seminars and links. www.sph.unc.edu/envr/ Young has held leadership positions in a number of professional and civic organizations Throughout his more than 25 years of experience in the planning, design, construction management and operation of water and wastewater systems. He has also provided expert testimony and lectures in those areas. During 2000 and 2001, Young was the integration lead for the major acquisition of Citizens Water Resources. Young is an active member of several professional organizations, including a Board Member of the Design/Build Institute of America and past New Jersey AWWA Section Chair and Fuller Awardee. He also serves on the US EPA National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC). Young was nominated by ESE Alumni, Terry Rolan and John Ramaley. “John is highly respected and very knowledgeable about the water business. It will probably be a surprise to him that I would submit this nomination since he and I see the utility business from public vs private perspectives. Nonetheless he is a very fine representative of ESE and UNC and he has earned my respect,” said Ramaley in his nomination letter. Young was the featured guest of the Department on April 25, 2008. During his visit, ESE Professor and Chair Mike Aitken presented him this award at the ESE Ice Cream Social, Young presented a seminar entitled “ The Business of Water – Trends Impacting Service Quality and Sustainability “ and was the guest speaker at Learning & Libations (L & L) held at the Carolina Brewery. Terry Rolan (left), Phil Singer and John Young (right) at the 2008 Ice Cream Social 27 2008 ESE NEWS ESE is proud to present the following staff with much deserved Star Heel Awards. This award was created by a staff news (Left to Right): Oksana Kosyk, Nadia Georgieva, Melody Levy, Elise Pohl, Nataliya Vanchosovych Robin Whitley Service Appreciation Awards The University recognizes and expresses appreciation for the long-term service of permanent SPA and EPA Non-Faculty employees, both full-time and part-time. Eligibility for awards is determined by an employee’s Total State Service according to the University’s fiscal year, July 1 through June 30. The program currently recognizes employee service at five-year intervals, beginning with five years and ending with fifty years of service. 2008 awardees: Nadia Georgieva - Five Years Oksana Kosyk - Five Years Jim Wallace- Five Years generous sponsorship from TIAA-CREF and supple-mented by ESE. It allows individual departments to award a gift certificate to deserving employees. 2008 awardees: DJ Fedor Melody Levy Rebecca Lloyd Elise Pohl Nataliya Vanchosovych Robin Whitley Star Heels and Service Award Winners receive their honors during 2008 ESE Holiday Party Young entrepreneur in ESE is illustrator of new book for minority children Melody Levy, 26-year-old assistant for student services in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, is the lead illustrator of the first in a series of children’s books called Mrs. Applebee and the Sunshine Band. Book One, Meet the Class (2007), is authored by André Wesson, a UNC alumnus and founder of Se7enth Swan Publishing Group, LLC, which will publish the Mrs. Applebee series. Se7enth Swan addresses the need for learning material to meet the needs of African American and Hispanic children, aged three to ten, by generating products that help minority children “reclaim their identities and both imagine and create endless possibilities for their lives.” Levy also serves as the company’s director of operations.”We are committed to helping all children view themselves and education in a positive light,” Levy says. “We intend to do this by including positive multicultural images in our products and constantly emphasizing to our audience that learning is fun.” ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 2008 Star Heels 28 2008 ESE NEWS faculty/staff updates for 2008 New hires: 1/1/08, Jacqueline A. MacDonald, Assistant Professor 1/1/08, J. Jason West, Assistant Professor 1/16/08, Karen Yokley, Postdoctoral Trainee (EPA NHEERL) 2/11/08, Peter Sandusky, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Rusyn lab) 4/1/08, Anne Helmer, HR Facilitator 5/1/08, DJ Fedor, Specialty Trades Tech 6/1/08, Ying Li, Postdoctoral Research Associate (UAE/MacDonald) 7/1/08, Lisa Casanova, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Sobsey lab) 7/1/08, Jill R. Stewart, Assistant Professor 7/1/08, Rebecca C. Fry, Assistant Professor 8/1/08, Lisa Smeester, Research Specialist 8/21/08, Eli Rosen, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Kamens) 9/1/08, Tiina Folley, Research Specialist 9/1/08, Alea Morren, Admin Support Specialist 9/1/08, Myroslav Sypa, Applications Analyst 9/1/08, Nataliya Vanchosovych, Admin Support Specialist 9/1/08, Zuber Farooqui, Postdoctoral Research Associate (UAE/West, Vizuete) 9/1/08, Kunhi Thengumthara, Postdoctoral Research Associate (UAE/West, Vizuete) 9/1/08, James Merchant, Gillings Distinguished Professor 9/15/08, Jennifer Platt, Research Associate/Project Manager (UAE) 10/1/08, Chris Davidson, Applications Analyst 11/1/08, Kaida Liang, Social Clinical Research Manager 12/1/08, Zhenfa Zhang, Research Specialist Promotions/Reclassifications: 3/1/08, Leena Nylander-French, Promotion to Professor 9/1/08, Howard S. Weinberg, Promotion to Associate Professor with tenure 11/1/08, Deborah Williams, Business Officer (formerly Faculty Assistant) 12/31/08, Fredric Pfaender, Professor to (fixed term, part-time) Professor (50 %) Departures/Leaves: 1/1/08, Dale Whittington, Pogue Leave (Spring 2008 semester) 2/18/08, Suramya Waidyanatha, Senior Scientist 4/1/08, Robyn Gardner, Human Resources Facilitator 5/31/08, John (Chad) Roper, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Aitken lab) 7/1/08, Donna Simmons (Retired), Administrative Officer 7/1/08, Cass Miller, Kenan Leave (Fall 2008 semester) 7/17/08, Karen Yokley, Postdoctoral Trainee (EPA NHEERL) 7/31/08, Christine Stauber, Postdoctoral Research Associate (Sobsey) 8/1/08, Matt Coy, Processing Assistant 8/31/08, Otto D. (Chip) Simmons, III, Research Assistant Professor 9/1/08, Gunnar Boysen, Research Assistant Professor 11/7/08, Peter Sandusky, Postdoctoral Research Associate 12/19/08, Sara Rodriguez, Postdoctoral Research Associate 29 2008 ESE NEWS ESE honor roll of donors, 2008 Individuals Elizabeth Ann Hayes Adams Oscar Hunter Adams Robert Adamski Michael Demilt Aitken R F Albani Terry P Anderson Eugene Appel Linda Appel William Brian Arbuckle William Moseley Archer III Robert Glenn Arnold Carol S Ashley David Bruce Babcock Patricia Michel Backus Nina J Baird Frank Hauser Barr James Joseph Barry III David Allen Barskey C W Bartholomai Mary Ann Baviello Michael Peter Bell Christine S Berndt Robert Alan Berndt Mark Dean Beuhler David Michael Bolda Elise Johnston Bolda Michael Austin Boyd Kristin A Bradley-Bull Jo Ellen Brandmeyer Philip Postel Braswell David Arnold Broaden Vance Brooks Kenneth S Broun Marjorie Broun Arthur Emil Bruestle Edward Bryan Joel Simpson Bulkley Omisade Billie Burney-Scott Meredith Casteel Talia Chalew Charles Groce Chandler Linda Laughridge Chandler Ching Kuang Chen Cassandra Maurer Childs Kimberley Dene Cizerle Michael A Clarke Terri Ann Colangelo Richard Francis Cole Jean Marie Colthurst Gretchen Anne Cowman Burton Craige Heather Barkley Craige Mara C Cusker Gonzalez William Alexander Darity Jr Frederick Emerson Davis Robert Lloyd Davis Clifford Earl Decker Jr Ruth Deer DeHolton Carrie Anne Delcomyn Keith Allen Demke Brian Andrew Dempsey Patricia M DeRosa Jan Elizabeth DeWaters Guy Thomas DiDonato Francis A DiGiano Wendy Doughtery Leroy Charles Doughty Gloria Dragonette Patricia Nicole Drummey Howard J Dunn James Kenneth Edzwald Dan Elliott George Roy Elmore Jr Michael William Enghauser Jose Antonio Felix-Filho Kevin Michael Fitzpatrick Margaret Mary Fitzsimmons Sheila Lani Flack Robert Harold Forbes Jr Donald L Fox Alexandra Steiner French Wendy Lynn Fuscoe Robert Ernest Gandley Jay Marshall Goldring C Montrose Graham Jr Kathleen Marie Gray David Allan Green Stefan Johannes Grimberg James Robert Grube II Martin Edward Gurtz Elizabeth Alexander Guthrie Kenneth Gutterman Mohammad Taghi Habibian Howard Palmer Haines David Michael Hamby Jane Holman Hardwick Peggy L Harris Robert Lee Harris Jr Kenneth James Hausle Richard John Heggen Tara Lynn Hickey Julia Terrell Hickman John Malvern Higgins Jr Nancy Hochberg Alexander Ryan Hodges Thomas Clemmer Holloway William E Holman Gerald C Hook Omar Snowden Hopkins Claudia B Horowitz Cathy Howell Jeffrey Alan Hughes Marshall L Hyatt Tracy Lynn Jackson Bruce Allan Jacobs Jessica St Aubin Jacobs Joseph Francis Jadlocki Jr Jaret Carl Johnson Monica Jolles Baxter Lee Jones Curtis Jones Richard Miles Kamens Joseph Francis Kanney James Stuart Kantor Christopher Kees Mariah Leigh Keller Judith Kincaid Marcia Klebanow Lisa Pfrogner Knowles Christopher F Knud-Hansen Peter Jonathan Kolsky Bert Petty Krages II N Scott Kukshtel Patricia Weggel Laane Sandra W Lake Debra Lang J Tate Lanning Jr Charles Duane Larson Donald Thomas Lauria Marie M Lauria Paul Thomas Lauria Andrew James Lawler Desmond Frederick Lawler David Ernest Layland Margaret Edith Layne Philip Lehman Kurt Vance Leininger Donald Eric Lentzen Rosemary Budd Lentzen James Robert Leserman Susan D Levin Linda West Little Frank A Loda Jr Sharon Corinne Long Walter R Lynn Khalil Hosny Mancy Patricia Worley Mancy John Clyburn Matheson III Denise Louise Matthews Craig Stephen Maughan Alex Simon Mayer M Timothy McAdams Donald Edward McCall William Sheffield McCoy Scott Miller McCurley Mary Elizabeth McCutchen Leslie Jane McGeorge Douglas Lyndal McKay Margaret C McKinney Ross McKinney Sr David Nicholas McNelis Maria E Meisch James Chamblee Meredith Donna Volney Michaux Margaret S Misch Christine Lorraine Moe Jim Moore Jonathan David Moore Mary Berkley Mueller Timothy James Mukoda Robert Wesley Mullennix Patricia Louise Murphy Katherine Sue Neitzel Raymond Joseph Nierstedt Michael Arthur Noska Ray Thurmond Oglesby William Kevin O'Neil Douglas Martin Owen Cristy Smathers Patten Read Lewis Patten Robert Francis Peoples Howard B Perry Howard August Peters David Edward Pinsky Marcy Leigh Policastro Susan Pollitt Jefferson Boyce Prather Elizabeth Larsen Pullen Jonathan Jay Pullin Alan J Rabideau Norman DePue Radford Jr Brian Lee Ramaley David Alan Reckhow Bobby Riley Redding Thomas Franklin Redick Thomas Andrew Ridgik Alan E Rimer J Thomas Rimer Laurence Rimer Linda Bray Rimer Glenn Donald Rives Charles Eric Rodes Herbert Harold Rogers Anthony Terrell Rolan Scott Edward Rowden S Reid Russell III David Hess Sarr Teresa Marie Savarino Jennie Perey Saxe James K Schaefer Marion Eldredge Schoenbach Victor Julian Schoenbach Christopher Roman Schulz Kellogg Jonathan Schwab Robert E Seymour Jr Andrew J Shapiro Dorothy B Silver William Golden Simpson Jr Philip C Singer Lawrence M Slifkin Miriam Kresses Slifkin Leonard Smock V L Snoeyink James Harold Southerland Gerald Eugene Speitel Jr Lee Spencer Robert Spielman Jeanne Stahl Jane Patricia Staveley Doran Webster Stegura Pearson H Stewart Jeanette Stokes Joel Leslie Storrow Mary H Sugioka Mary Elizabeth Hibbs Sutton Abby Little Swanson John Henry Sweitzer James M Symons Pickens C Talley J Chi-Chung Tang Jeanie Driver Taylor Lois H Terrill Colin G Thomas Jr Kent William Thomas Margaret B Thomas Blossom McGarrity Tindall John Eric Tobiason Christopher R Tompkins Jr Cheryl Mather Toms Kimberly Dawn Simpson Tum Suden Billy G Turner David Marc Turner Margaret Bliss Umphres Gladwin Olin Unrau David Francis Utterback Ralph Gene Wallace Jenny Warburg John R Wells Roland Willis Wentworth J Keith Weston Gary John White Melinda Faye Wiggins Jack Eugene Wilson David Winter Patty Winter Robert Oakley Winters Dana Lynn Woodruff John David Wray Robert Stanley Wright Kuan Mu Yao Antoinette Young Beverly Ann Young John Sterling Young Jr Guo Zhishi Michael Alexander Zustra Corporations/Foundations American Water Works Assoc. Black & Veatch Camp Dresser & McKee Clorox Company Duke Energy Foundation Environmental Group of the Carolinas Exxon Mobil Corporation - HQ HDR Engineering, Inc NC Section AWWA Inc. North Carolina Symphony Orange Water & Sewer Authority Patterson Harkavy LLP Peoples & Quigley Inc Sojourner Group, LLC The Formaldehyde Council Inc Trussell Technologies 30 2008 ESE NEWS 2008 seminars and events JANUARY 1/16/08: ENVR 400; Dr. Marc Serre (Assistant Professor, ESE); Space/Time Statistics and its Environmental and Health Multidisciplinary Applications 1/23/08: ENVR 400; Kenneth Fortino (PhD Student, ESE); Climate Change and Lake Sediments: An Arctic Perspective 1/26/08: Guest Seminar; Rob Pinder (Scientist, Atmospheric Modeling and Science Division, NOAA-EPA Partnership); Can Air Quality Models Capture the Observed Impacts of Emission Reduction Programs? 1/30/08: Bagel Breakfast 1/30/08: ENVR 400; Pamela S. Birak (PhD Student, ESE); Subsurface Wastes at Former Manufactured Gas Plants: What Are They and How Can We Clean Them Up? FEBRUARY 2/6/08: ENVR 400; William B. Allshouse (PhD Student, ESE); Space/Time Modeling of Hydrogen Sulfide from Hog CAFOs in Eastern North Carolina 2/13/08: ENVR 400; Kim de Bruijne (PhD Student, ESE); Comparing the Toxicity of Fresh and Aged Diesel Exhaust Using a Newly Developed /In Vitro/ Exposure System 2/15/08: Guest Seminar; Michael C. Kavanaugh (Vice President and National Science and Technology Leader, Malcolm Pirnie, Inc); Environmental Engineering in the 21st Century: Balancing Economic Growth Risk Reduction and Sustainability 2/27/08: Bagel Breakfast 2/27/08: ENVR 400; John R. Ridpath (PhD Student, ESE); Identification of a Possible Human Population Hyper- Susceptible to Formaldehyde MARCH 3/1/08: Open House 3/5/08: ENVR 400; William E. Funk (PhD Student, ESE); New Techniques Using Protein Adducts as Exposure Biomarkers 3/19/08: Bagel Breakfast 3/19/08: ENVR 400; Dr. Steven B. Wing (Associate Professor, Epidemiology, UNC); Integrating Epidemiology with Community Action for Environmental Justice 3/26/08: ENVR 400; Leigh-Anne Krometis (PhD Student, ESE); Are All Microbes Created Equal?: Indicator Organism and Pathogen Partitioning in Urban Stormwater APRIL 4/2/08: ENVR 400; Dr. Xin Yang (Postdoctoral Research Associate, ESE); What is in our Drinking Water?: Disinfection Byproducts Generated During Chloramination 4/11/08: Spring Picnic; UNC Farm 4/16/08: Bagel Breakfast 4/22/08: Guest Seminar; Rose M. Cory (Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory); Deconstructing Dissolved Organic Matter: Linking Chemical Composition with Reactivity 4/24/08: Guest Seminar; Dev Niyogi (Assistant Professor, EAS & Agronomy & Indiana State Climatologist, Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Perdue); Impacts of Anthropogenic Land Cover Changes on Regional Rainfall 4/25/08: Ice Cream Social & Awards Presentation 4/25/08: ESE Distinguished Alumni Seminar; John S. Young (COO, American Water); The Business of Water -Trends Impacting Service Quality and Sustainability 4/28/08: Guest Seminar; Carlo De Michele (Assistant Professor of Hydrology &Water Resources, Dept. of Environmental, Hydraulic, Infrastructure & Surveying Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy); Modeling Hydrologic Extremes in Stationary and Non- Stationary Environments via Copulas and SDEs 4/29/08: Guest Seminar; Jamie Bartram (Coordinator of WHO’s Managing Environmental Risks to Health Program); Developments in Water and Health at the World Health Organization MAY 5/2/08: Guest Seminar; Vera I. Slaveykova (Swiss National Science Foundation Professor, Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland); Dissolved organic matter as a key player in metal bioavailability 5/9/08: Donna Simmons Retirement Reception AUGUST 8/27/08: ENVR 400; Rebecca Fry (Assistant Professor, ESE); Revealing the Genome-wide impact of Arsenic Exposure SEPTEMBER 9/3/08: ENVR 400; Grace Wallenborn (PhD Student, ESE); Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease: The Role of Zinc 9/5/08: Guest Seminar; Joe Rudek (Scientist, NC Office of Environmental Defense); Atmospheric and Aquatic Impacts of Hog Farms 9/10/08: Bagel Breakfast 9/10/08: ENVR 400; Dan Gatti (PhD Student, ESE); Understanding the role of genetic background on liver gene expression 9/17/08: ENVR 400; Seth Ebersviller (PhD Student, ESE); Rapid Shift in Toxicity Due to Gas-Particle Interactions in the Atmosphere 9/24/08: ENVR 400; Joachim Pleil (Research Physical Scientist, Methods Development and Applications Branch, Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division, EPA and Visiting Scholar, ESE); Evidentiary breath analysis for alcohol: chemical interferences and toxicokinetics related to environmental co-exposures 31 2008 ESE NEWS 2008 seminars and events OCTOBER 10/1/08: ENVR 400; Gina Panasik (PhD Student, ESE); Taking Empirical Data to Model Nitrogen in an Agroecosytem Best Management Practice 10/3/08: Guest Seminar; Walid Elshorbagy (Associate Professor, Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, United Arab Emirates University); Water Issues in the United Arab Emirates and UAE University 10/6/08: Guest Seminar; Walid Elshorbagy (Associate Professor, Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, United Arab Emirates University); Coastal Water Quality in the United Arab Emirates 10/8/08: Bagel Breakfast 10/8/08: ENVR 400; Lisa Casanova (PhD Student, ESE); This will only hurt for an hour: environmental health, vaccination, and polio control. 10/10/08: Picnic at Anderson Park 10/13/08: Guest Seminar; David Rosenberg (Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State University); Multi-scale water management and modeling for Jordan 10/22/08: ENVR 400; Julianne Tajuba and Jessica Lewis (MSPH Students, ESE); Where in the world is Engineers without Borders 10/29/08: ENVR 400; Rebecca Clewell (PhD Student, ESE); Rubber ducky, you’re no longer the one: phthalates and children NOVEMBER 11/1/08: Open House 11/5/08: ENVR 400; Fred Pfaender (Professor, ESE); 37 years in DESE: Time flies when you’re having fun 11/7/08: Dan Okun Memorial Symposium 11/12/08: Bagel Breakfast 11/12/08: Guest Seminar; Tony Fane (University of New South Wales, Australia); The Energy Challenge for Membrane Technology 11/17/08: Guest Seminar; David W. Schnare (Director, Center for Environmental Stewardship at the Thomas Jefferson Institute); 30 years at the public trough and musings on the future of environmentalism DECEMBER 12/4/08: Holiday Party ESE News Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering CB #7431 Rosenau Hall Gillings School of Global Public Health University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7431 Nonprofit Org. U. S. Postage Paid Permit No. 177 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1110 |
OCLC number | 49499415 |