Environmental Health Sciences Center

Our Pilot Projects Program is one of the main ways we fund environmental health research. 
 

The UC Davis School of Medicine Environmental Health Sciences Dean's Fellowship is for promising junior to mid-career faculty in the SOM to accelerate their career development and create a path for others to follow in the area of environmental health sciences. Below are the EHS Dean's Fellow award recipients for 2022.

Pamela Lein, PhD is a neurotoxicologist and developmental neurobiologist who studies the interaction between genes and environment that can lead to a variety of complex disorders from asthma to autism and Alzheimer’s.

Dr. Lein’s work focuses on the way environmental stressors like pesticides and near-roadway exposures—which include car exhaust and particles from tire wear and tear—can both change the structure of nerve cells and disrupt how they communicate with each other and with other tissues throughout the body.

Anthony Wexler, PhD, MS is a research scientist who measures and models atmospheric aerosols related to urban smog, human health and global warming. His engineering background is the foundation for his understanding of the body’s physiological systems.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, MPH, is an environmental epidemiologist committed to furthering our understanding of how both specific exposures and global climate or planetary changes harm health. Her work has tackled the effects of substances like metals, pesticides, air pollutants, organic compounds, and endocrine disruptors on cancer, pregnancy, perinatal outcomes, respiratory health, immune markers and neurodevelopment. Additional themes have included innovations in epidemiologic methods, and the interactions of environmental factors with nutrition, genetics, and social stressors.

• BS in Biology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (1998)

• MS in Epidemiology, University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City, IA (2000)

• PhD in Epidemiology, University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City, IA; Dissertation Title: “Maternal Caffeine Intake, Selected Metabolic Gene Variants, and Neural Tube Defects” (2007)

• Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Autism Research Training Program at the MIND Institute, Sacramento, CA (2008 – 2010)

Project TENDR is a unique collaboration of leading scientists, health professionals and children’s and environmental advocates.  The group, co founded by EHS Center Director, Irva Hertz-Picciotto and Maureen Swanson of the Learning Disabilities Association of America, formed in 2015 out of concern over the now substantial scientific evidence linking toxic environmental chemicals to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder, attention deficits, hyperactivity, intellectual disability and learning disorders.