New Investigators
The HSPH-NIEHS Center provides partial research salary support for newly recruited investigators. These funds help develop the research programs of new and young investigators who are beginning their research careers. Typically these funds provide approximately 40% to 60% salary support for two years.
How are New Investigator Funds distributed?
New Investigator Funds are administered by New Investigator Committee consisting of the Center Director Dr. Douglas Dockery (Chair of Environmental Health), Associate Director Dr. Brent Coull (Chair of Biostatistics), and the Dean for Academic Affairs Dr. James Ware (Dean for Academic Affairs), along with the Chairs of other Departments in the case of joint searches.
Previous and Current Center New Investigators
Dr. Heather Nelson was appointed as Assistant Professor of Environmental Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health in 2002. Dr. Nelson received an M.P.H. in Toxicology from the University of Minnesota in 1993 and a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Harvard University in 1998. Dr. Nelson was a Center New Investigator in the 2003/4 academic year. Dr. Nelson is investigating cancer susceptibility and etiology using both laboratory and epidemiologic tools. This work blends information on population exposures and life histories with both constitutional and somatically acquired changes to develop a global picture of tumorigenesis. Her work aims to identify high-risk subgroups, as well as define new molecular disease classifications for future translational work. She is investigating the adverse effects of arsenic exposure, using both in-vitro and population genetics approaches.
Dr. Nelson’s research focuses on non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC). Using a large population-based, case-control study of incident NMSC, she is investigating how common genetic variation modifies risk of disease. Exposures of interest include UV, sunburns, ionizing radiation, and immunosuppressive drugs. Genetic modifiers of disease risk under investigation include DNA repair, immune-modulation, and stem cell niche genes. In addition, she is investigating the molecular epidemiology of tumors; including HPV infection, epigenetic alterations, and mutation at p53, ptch, and ras. Dr. Nelson has also has undertaken a study of genetic susceptibility to malignant mesothelioma, a highly fatal disease with strong environmental and genetic components. She is utilizing whole-genome scan approaches to investigate genetic susceptibility in addition to exploring the role of SV40 in mesothelioma etiology.
In 2007, Dr. Nelson was appointed Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School Of Public Health. She maintains a faculty appointment as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at HSPH.
Dr. Xin Xu graduated from Beijing Medical University and received his doctoral degree in molecular pharmacology from the University of Cincinnati in 1996. He then came to the Harvard School of Public Health as a post-doctoral fellow. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Genetic Epidemiology in 2002. He was a Center New Investigator in 2003 and 2004. Dr. Xu is currently supported in part as a Mark and Catherine Winkler Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health.
Dr. Xu’s primary research interest is the genetic epidemiology of complex traits in humans. Dr. Xu has been working on several gene-mapping projects, including two large HSPH-China collaborative studies on essential hypertension and asthma. A number of QTLs (quantitative trait loci) for blood pressure- and asthma- related phenotypes have been identified. Currently Dr. Xu is working on fine-mapping of asthma susceptibility genes in the chromosomal regions identified previously.
Dr. Xu is also interested in developing novel statistical methods and tools in genetic analysis, and collaborates closely with his colleagues in the Department of Biostatistics. With Dr. L.J. Wei, he proposed a “unified Haseman-Elston” (H-E) method for sibpair linkage analysis which had been shown to be uniformly more powerful than other H-E methods. Dr. Xu has collaborated with Dr. Nan Laird in developing a unified approach for testing genetic association in arbitrary pedigrees. In addition, Dr. Xu is interested in bioinformatics, especially in the computation analysis of genomic sequences.
Dr. Daniel Tschumperlin was appointed Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Airway Biology in 2003. He was a Center New Investigator in the 2006/7 academic year. Dr. Tschumperlin’s research focuses on the interface of mechanics and biology in the lung, specifically how lung cells respond to their mechanical environment, and how in turn they modify the lung's mechanical behavior. His interests focus on chronic environmental lung diseases like asthma and pulmonary fibrosis, which are characterized by tissue remodeling that can be both irreversible and relentlessly progressive.
The goal of these studies is to better understand the causes and pathophysiology of asthma and pulmonary fibrosis within that span the molecular to the tissue level, leading to novel preventive and therapeutic approaches to lung disease. Center support has sparked Dr. Tschumperlin’s research to begin addressing the role of environmental agents that exacerbate asthma or initiate fibrosis, especially in terms of their effect on the genes that modulate the biomechanical abnormalities of these disorders. Dr. Tschumperlin has been participating in activities of the Particles Core, especially emphasizing his interests in airway mechanics and asthma morbidity related to particles.
Dr. Francine Laden was appointed Assistant Professor of Environmental Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health in 2004. She also has appointments as Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at HSPH, and as Assistant Professor of Medicine, Channing Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She was a Center New Investigator in the 2005/6 academic year. Dr. Laden’s successful work while sponsored by the Center helped her gain her current support as a Mark and Catherine Winkler Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health.
Dr. Laden has been participating in activities of the Particles and the Organics Research Cores. Dr. Laden's research focuses on the environmental epidemiology of cancer and respiratory disease. She has been working with the Nurses' Health Study, a large prospective cohort of U.S. women, to examine possible environmental risk factors (including exposures to PCBs and DDT) of breast cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In the Harvard Six Cities Study, she has studied the associations of specific sources of particulate air pollution with mortality.
Dr. Laden is also involved in two studies examining the relationship of exposure to diesel exhaust with lung cancer and other respiratory mortality. The first is a continuation of follow-up of the U.S. Railroad Workers Study which characterized exposures and health consequences related to diesel particulates. The second is a retrospective epidemiologic study among trucking industry workers. One of the major aims of the trucking study is to improve methods of defining past exposures to diesel exhaust using detailed work history records, extensive exposure monitoring or current working conditions.
Dr. Christopher Paciorek is Assistant Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics. He was a Center New Investigator in the 2006/7 academic year. Dr. Paciorek is applying Bayesian statistics, spatial statistics, and statistical computing to environmental health studies I the particles and the Metals Research Cores. His primary interest lies in the use of Bayesian models to integrate information from diverse sources to make predictions about latent spatial and temporal processes. Much of his work involves the use of spatial and spatio-temporal models to estimate exposure to pollutants and then using these exposure estimates in epidemiological models for health outcomes. One example is a project recently funded by the Health Effects Institute which uses monitoring data, satellite observations, and a deterministic model to estimate chronic exposure to particulate matter (PM) in the eastern U.S. He also has proposed a method for optimally sampling contamination at Superfund Sites.
Dr. Marc Weisskopf was appointed Assistant Professor of Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology in the Departments of Environmental Health and of Epidemiology in 2007. He is currently supported as a Center New Investigator and is actively involved in the Metals Research Core.
Dr. Weisskopf has an unusual background with dual doctoral degrees - one in neuroscience and one in environmental epidemiology. This background has helped him develop a research niche in neuroimaging and noninvasive measures of brain neurochemistry. With assistance from a Center pilot project, Dr. Weisskopf recently published a study of lead exposure and neurochemistry using Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) (Weisskopf, Hu et al. 2007). MRS combines the imaging procedures of MRI with the measurement capacity of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. MRS can noninvasively quantify neurochemicals such as choline, n-acetyl-cysteine, glutamate, myoinositol and creatine. Each of these chemicals corresponds to specific tissues or tissue components such as myelin, neurotransmitters and glial cells. He found that among elderly men, higher bone lead levels are associated with increased myoinositol, suggesting that lead is associated with glial cell toxicity, a finding which has been reported in animal studies. Perhaps more intriguing, similar findings of increased myoinositol have been found in Alzheimer's Disease (AD), suggesting that lead and AD may share some common pathways. Obviously this work may lead to future studies of lead as a risk factor for AD, and is already the basis of new RO1 application that Dr. Weisskopf recently submitted(Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Lead, and Cognition-R01 ES005257 Priority score 214, resubmitted November 2007).
Dr. Quan Lu was appointed Assistant Professor of Lung Biology in the Department of Environmental Health in 2007 and is a current Center New Investigator. Dr. Lu has expertise in functional genomic screening to identify novel genes critical to important cellular responses (Lu, Wei et al. 2004). He was recruited because of his interest in applying this powerful approach to environmental health questions. It is worth noting that we succeeded in recruiting Dr. Lu, who had multiple competing offers, in large part due to the milieu offered by the Center, which he realized would help his developing research program. Specifically, the Center is providing access to biological samples, analytical core facilities, and key collaborations. His interest is illustrated by a project to identify human genes, whose inactivation renders cells more susceptible to dioxin-initiated cell transformation—a crucial step in the breast carcinogenesis process. He is using a genome-wide gene inactivation library in a non-transformed mammary epithelial cell model to isolate neoplastically transformed cell clones, whose phenotype is dependent on both gene inactivation and dioxin-exposure. This will allow identification of inactivated target genes and validation of their roles in dioxin-initiated transformation.
Dr. Lu is also collaborating with other members of the Metals Research Core to apply these novel approaches to functional genomic screening for genes involved in metal toxicity to neural cells and for identification of genes that mediate the ability of certain air pollution components to down-regulate macrophage anti-bacterial function. With mini-pilot funding from our center, he is using a high throughput genomics technology to study the role of metals in neurotoxicity by exposing neuronal/glial culture system to low concentrations of metals. After exposure, he then uses siRNA libraries to turn off each of 40,000 genes one at a time, and compares the impact of gene silencing on metal toxicity. This highly innovative approach to gene-environment interaction research will prove invaluable in determining the mechanism of actions of metals. It can direct clinical studies of population-based research in our cohort projects. As such his work, provides a strong link in translating research from the bench to human populations.
Dr. Alex Lu has just been appointed Assistant Professor of Environmental Exposure Biology and will be a Center New Investigator next year (2008-2009). He is very accomplished in the area of exposure assessment and analysis, specifically in the area of pesticide exposure. His research includes the implementation of a longitudinal study on children to determine the impact of dietary intervention on their exposure to pesticides. He has also developed saliva bio-monitoring as a valuable alternative for measuring chemical exposures in humans. He is developing a molecular marker to measure long-term exposure to pesticides, considered one of the major obstacles in pesticide bio-monitoring for epidemiologic health studies. The potential marker includes measuring pesticide adducts in blood. The issues he grapples with in pesticide research are relevant to other non-persistent environmental chemicals, including phthalates, bisphenol A, and other modern synthetic chemicals. He should therefore contribute to our Organics Research Core agenda. He will be expanding our core analytical organic chemistry capacity in the Center. This would complement some of the existing expertise at HSPH and also allow for an expansion into new areas of research for the Organics Research Core.
