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A Brief History of the Program:
Establishment and Collaboration Efforts

The history of research and training at Harvard University aimed at understanding the effects of the environment on human health began in earnest with the establishment of the Harvard School of Public Health in 1913. The Training Program in Environmental Health Sciences was built upon longstanding, highly successful, collaborative efforts. Professor Armen H. Tashjian established the Program in 1985 with the aim of training independent and productive scientists for key positions in academic, government, and industrial settings.

We have as our mission the education of a select group of students such that they can become leaders in the field of environmental science. Fundamental insights in this field have emerged from research at HSPH, including for example, early seminal work on the effects of radiation (i.e. identification and definition of the hazards of radium used in painting watch dials), metal toxicity (identification of the health hazards of beryllium in lighting), and environmental respiratory disease (identification and measurement of hazardous air pollutants). All of these important developments in the field of environmental science evolved from the collaboration of chemists, engineers, physicians, and biological scientists. There is a longstanding HSPH tradition of collaboration and scientific excellence, which continues today and is the hallmark of this Training Program.

The establishment of the current Program has allowed environmental science within the University to flourish and for the laboratory sciences at HSPH to become a centerpiece for training in environmental health. During the last ten years this Training Program has supported 60 predoctoral students, and 12 continue in training with the others having assumed positions in academia, government, or industry. Alumni of the program are now working for such institutions as: University of Washington, Harvard School of Public Health, MIT, Royal Children's Hospital in Australia, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the NIH, NIOSH, Institute of Food Research, Aventis, University of Pompeu Fabra, Unsituto Butantan, Sloane-Kettering, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Northwestern School of Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Millenium, Eli Lilly, Jackson Labs, Dartmouth College, California Institute of Technology, Rockefeller University, Johns Hopkins University, University of California at San Francisco, Nara Medical University in Japan, Chiba University, Boston University, US EPA, and Abbott Pharmaceutical.