December 31, 2018
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH RETREAT
The Environmental Health Department held a comprehensive research retreat on December 10th. Discussion was organized around three themes:
- The Air We Breathe and Outdoor Environment – Air Pollution, Climate
- The Places We Live and Work – Indoor/Built Environment
- The Food, Water, Consumer Products and Medicines We Use – Chemicals, Metals, Nano
There was considerable overlap with the work of the Center, and the discussion highlighted the role of the Center in promoting multi-disciplinary approaches to environmental health research, training, and translation. Several weaknesses (opportunities for improvement) were also identified.
CENTER RETREAT
Because of the overlap with the Research Retreat, our annual Center Retreat, normally is mid-October, was postponed until the Spring of 2019. Look for an announcement soon.
CENTER LOGO
One of the issues identified in the EH Research Retreat, was the need to better identify Center activities. To that end, we would like to develop a Center Logo. Start working on ideas that we could present at the Center Retreat.
JAMES L WHITTENBRGER LECTURE
On December 5th, Dr. John Balmes gave the 19th James L Whittenberger Lecture. This lecture honors James Whitttenberger, chair of the department from 1948 to 1980, and Founding Director of the Harvard-NIEHS Center from 1962 to 1980. This year’s speaker, Dr. John R. Balmes, is Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and Director, Joint Medical Program and Professor of Environmental Health Science, University of California Berkeley’s School of Public Health. Dr. Balmes reflected on his experience as a member of the California Air Resources Board in his talk entitled “Research to Regulation: a Physician-Scientist’s Search for Health Equity in Air Quality and Climate Change”.
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH COLLOQUIUM
Following this year’s Colloquium theme of Re-Envisioning Environmental Exposures, on December 13th Dr. Christopher A. Lowry, Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado, Boulder gave a provocative talk on “An Immunization Strategy for Prevention of Psychiatric Disorders: Focus on Microglial Priming and Neuroinflammation”
Put these up-coming Colloquium on your calendar:
- Thursday, January 31st: Staci D. Bilbo, Director of Research, Lurie Center for Autism, MassGeneral Hospital for Children, and Lurie Family Associate Professor of Pediatrics, and Program in Neuroscience
Harvard Medical School - Tuesday April 2nd: Michael Brauer, Professor in the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia and an Affiliate Professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Dr. Brauer will speak on “Health and the Built Environment: Looking to the Future”.
PILOT PROJECTS
Congratulations to the following recipients of Pilot Projects awards from our fall competition:
- Joseph Allen (Assistant Professor) “Impact of healthy material interventions in offices on reductions in fluorinated chemicals and endocrine-disrupting potency of indoor dust”.
- Jaime Hart (Assistant Professor), “A pilot study of associations of multipollutant exposures on risk of anovulation”
- Ross Osgood (Post-Doctoral Fellow) “The role of sex hormones in microbiome-dependent effects on pulmonary response to ozone”
- Sneh Toprani (Post Doctorial Research Fellow) “Assessing DNA damage and repair capacity in airline flight crew”.
Spring Pilot Project applications are due March 8, 2019. Check out the Center web site for details. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/niehs/pilot-project-program/
SPECIFIC AIMS REVIEW
On December 6th we had our Specific Aims Review. In these informal sessions, we attempt to tune up the specific aims pages for of new and experienced investigators preparing grant applications. Senior Center members who have served on study sections along with our junior peer investigators provide feedback on these critical pages of the grant application. Center members, affiliates, and trainees are encouraged to participate whether they submit draft Specific Aims pages or not.
Participants in this review included:
- Andrea Bellavia, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Environmental Health preparing an R03 application on PBDEs mixture and preterm birth.
- Peter James, Assistant Professor in Population Medicine (HMS) preparing and R01 application on built environment and cardiovascular disease
- Feiby Nassan (Post-Doctoral Fellow) preparing a K99/R00 application on the effect of ambient temperature on men’s fertility
- Crystal North, Instructor in Medicine and Mass General Hospital, preparing a K23 application on “Air pollution, systemic inflammation, and chronic lung disease in rural Uganda”
- The next Specific Aims Review Session will be held on April 25th, 2019. Check our calendar for details.
If you have edits/corrections or suggestions for improvement, please let me and Monica Russell know.
August, 2018
Last week (August 26-30) the Center was well represented at the 2018 Joint Annual Meeting of the International Society for Exposure Sciences (ISES) and the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) in Ottawa. There were over two thousand attendees at this premier meeting on environmental health exposure assessment and epidemiology.
Our Center members and affiliates presented many outstanding presentations and posters.
Congratulations to Petros Koutrakis, Professor of Environmental Sciences, who received the first ISES Excellence in Exposure Science Award.
This award is inspired by the work of visionary individuals who have helped shape the field of exposure science and who supported the origins and growth of ISES and have now passed on but left a strong legacy.
Congratulations to Audrey Gaskins, research associate in Nutrition who received an ISEE New Investigator Award.
In addition to great science, it was terrific to see so many of our current and former Center members and affiliates. Lots of networking and catching up. Thanks to Skye Flanigan who organized, and Joe Allen, Francine Laden, and David Christiani who sponsored a reception for all the Harvard (current and former) attendees last Monday. There must have been over a hundred of our colleagues there at some point during the evening.
Back in Boston, we have been working on our website. Please take some time to review. In particular, try our new calendar (www.hsph.harvard.edu/niehs/events/) and our Center Profiles https://staging.connects.catalyst.harvard.edu/NIEHS_Profiles/search/ .
If you have edits/corrections or suggestions for improvement, please let me and Monica Russell know.
July 2018
NIEHS Core Centers Meeting
Our Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center was well represented at the annual meeting of the 20 NIEHS Core Science Centers last week at the University of California Davis. This meeting provides an opportunity for the Centers to get together to discuss science and operations among themselves and with the NIEHS staff. There are three parallel tracks during the meeting, for investigators, community outreach coordinators, and administrators.
In plenary sessions, Dr. Linda Birnbaum, the NIEHS Director, and Dr. Claudia Thompson, the Core Centers Program Director, provided insights into future directions at the institute. Dr. Birnbaum previewed the new NIEHS Strategic Plan which she described as an evolution rather than revolution of the previous five year strategic plan. In response to a question, she affirmed that the institute is thinking more broadly in defining environment to include other factors such as stress and nutrition.
Among the highlights of this meeting are poster-discussion presentations by 10 Emerging Scientific Investigators chosen from the 20 Centers. Tamarra James-Todd presented her work on “Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals and Gestational Diabetes Risk: Epidemiological Evidence from Average- and High-Risk Populations“. In this poster-discussion format, groups of conference attendees circulated among the posters, switching every 15 minutes. Each 15 minutes, the presenter made a short pitch followed by questions, which they repeated with 5 different groups of attendees. Tamarra’s work was very well received, as illustrated in the attached pictures of Linda Birnbaum listening to Tamarra’s presentation.
The Community Engagement was highlighted throughout the meeting in plenary sessions and topical sessions among the CEC coordinators. Ann Backus, the Director of our Community Outreach Core, was busy connecting and exchanging best practices with her peers and advocating for community based research.
The Center Administrators have a chance to share best practices, and discuss administration with the NIEHS staff. Monica Russell and Cori Chisholm reviewed our recent competing renewal application and the wrap-up of our current 5-year cycle of funding with Dr. Linda Bass and Bryann Benton of NIEHS.
June 2018
We are sad to note that Les Kobzik is retiring from his position as Professor of Pathophysiology here in the Department of Environmental Health, and has stepped down as Associate Director of the Center and Director of the Integrated Health Science Facility Core. We have two outstanding colleagues stepping into these roles, Marc Weiskopf as Associate Director and Quan Lu as Director of the Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core. However, we will truly miss Les’ unique leadership and mentoring style. As Stephanie Shore remarked at the Retirement Celebration for Les earlier this month:
Most of us know Les as the most rational and practical of leaders. Les was never a big fan of meetings (who is?), but I can’t remember how many meetings I have sat through in which meaty, seemingly unresolvable issues, were suddenly cut through with a simple but elegant solution offered in a “hey why don’t we try this” kind of way, without ego, without the need to be right, in fact in a very non-Harvard kind of way. Les was and still is the first person I get to read my grants. He never offers a lot of detailed comments, but the big picture comments always cut right to the heart of the issue and are almost always offered with solutions that deals with the major issues. He was the same in seminar – offering helpful criticism with a big dollop of useful ideas and suggestions. Les led with a combination of intelligence, wit and compassion that made him loved by administrators, faculty, fellows and students alike. I know that I was not the only one who was dismayed when he told us he would be stepping down as MIPS director and moving to California.
Thanks Les for your thoughtful, insightful leadership over the past decade, and best wishes for happiness and success in California.
One of Les’ legacies is the Facility Access Fund program, a rapid-response funding mechanism through the Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core that allows users to benefit from the many well equipped biological, clinical and translational resources offered on a fee for service basis by our Harvard affiliates or other unique, specialized, time sensitive or commercial resources. Center Members and their research teams may apply for funding at any time. Requests of up to $7,500 will be considered. Funds are only to be used for services not covered by extant grants. FAF proposals can be made at any time. More information and instructions can be found here. Two awards were made in June:
Augusta Williams, MPH, Doctoral Student, Environmental Health. “Cities For Health”
Mariane Wessling Ressnick, MS, PhD, Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry, Departments of Molecular Metabolism and of Nutrition. “Transport and Metabolism in HepaRG Cells”.
Congratulations also to the three young investigators who received Center Pilot Project awards from the spring competition.
David Itiro Kasahara, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Department of Environmental Health, Harvard Chan School of Public Health. “Transfer of Enhanced Responses to Air Pollution from Obese to Lean Mice via Gut Microbiota Transplant.”
Emma Preston, M.P.H., Ph.D., Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Assessing Consumer Product Chemical Exposures in Daycare Facilities: Portable Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) as a Novel Forensic Tool.”
Mary B. Rice, M.D., M.P.H., Assistant Professor, Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, “Sampling the Nasal Epithelial Lining Fluid as a Non-Invasive Indicator of Metal and Microbial Exposures and Immune Response sin People with COPD.”
The next Center Pilot Project submission date is Friday, September 7th, so start getting your proposals together. Grants for up to $25,000 are available for Harvard post-docs, research scientists, and faculty. You do not have to be a Center Member, but you do need a Center Member as a co-investigator or sponsor. Instructions and application forms can be found here.
Looking forward to the start of the academic year in the fall, we are scheduling outstanding speakers for our Center EH Colloquium. The theme this year will be “Re-Envisioning the Environment—Integrating Environmental Exposures of People and Place” in preparation for the start of the next five year cycle of the Center. We are also scheduling Research Core Seminars. These Colloquia and Research Seminars will be the second and third Thursday of each month, 1:00 to 2:30 in Building 1, room 1302. If you have suggestions for speakers, please forward to Marc Weisskopf for EH Colloquium, Susan Korrick for Metals Research, Tamarra James-Todd for Organics Research, or Jaime Hart for Particles Research, with a copy to Monica Russell.
Have a great 4th of July Holiday!
May 2018
We have been catching our breath after submitting our competing renewal on April 17th. Never the less the work of the center continues.
On May 2nd, the Community Engagement Core sponsored a workshop on “Asthma and Obesity: Approaches to care” here at Harvard Chan. This workshop organized by Ann Backus and Traci Brown was the result of extended conversations with community leaders regarding high rates of asthma and obesity in Dorchester. This workshop brought together leading researchers on the links of obesity with incidence and severity of asthma, practitioners working in community health centers, and program managers from the Boston Public Health Commission. Outstanding presentations on scientific evidence and community health care experience were followed by breakout sessions to discuss approaches to improve prevention and treatment of individuals with asthma and obesity. The workshop was highlighted on the HSPH website, and a more detailed workshop summary will be posted on the Community Engagement Core website.
Mark your calendar for our upcoming Center EH Colloquium on May 17th entitled “Microglia and the Lung-Brain Axis” by Dr. Michelle Block, Associate Professor of Anatomy & Cell Biology, School of Medicine, Indiana University. This is part of our “Environmental Exposures Across the Life Course in Aging and Cognitive Decline “series.
APRIL 2018
We are very pleased to report that our competing renewal application for years 55 through 59 of our Harvard Chan – NIEHS Center was submitted on April 13th. This is a huge effort every five years. The application was a total of 69 pages. The research plan, that is the scientific plan, is only about 80 pages. The bulk of the grant application consists of tables, biosketches, and lists documenting the tremendous productivity of our Center over the past five years. Thanks to everyone for their contributions to this effort. We are particularly grateful to Monica Russell, our Center Administrator, Cori Chisholm, our Financial Adminstrator, and Maureen Sciortino, our Sponsored Research Team Leader for pulling this all together together and successfully submitting this massive document.
This application first documents the successes of our Center over the past five years. For example, we had 692 publications citing the Center. Thanks for remembering to include “ES000002” in your acknowlwdgements.
We received 118 Pilot Project applications, of which 52 (44%) were funded for a total of $1,161,874 (average $22,344 per award). These 52 Pilot Projects have resulted in 46 publications in peer-reviewed journals to date. Most impressively, the funded Pilot Projects have resulted in 14 new NIEHS grants with a total cumulative budget of $7,091,321 direct, plus 7 grants from other agencies.
We also awarded 115 Facility Access Fund (mini-pilot) grants with individual budgets of up to $7500. These FAF mini-pilots allowed Center members to utilize many state-of-the-art technologies and to expand their research into emerging areas of inquiry. Examples include the use of high-throughput chemical screening, multiple ‘omics analyses, microbiome analyses, biological and engineered nanovesicles, epigenetic regulation of non-coding RNAs, and novel biomarker discovery. These IHSFC-funded studies have resulted in >80 publications and helped our Center members secure much larger NIH/NIEHS funding, including 11 R01s and an NIEHS Center grant on Nano-toxicology (U24).
We reviewed 51 proposals in our Specific Aims reviews. We received very positive feedback regarding the value of these reviews, although we need to do a better job of following up on actual submissions and results of those submissions.
We are very proud of the impact of our Center on building capacity in environmental health. In addition to our fellows and faculty here at Harvard, we have populated other centers across the United States and other countries. Over the past five years, 27 Center investigators have been appointed to faculty positions in other academic institutions. These include 6 Professors, 14 Assistant/Associate Professors, and 8 Instructors/Lecturers/Researchers. These appointments not only seed and support the environmental health programs at those institutions, but also build an expanding network of environmental health collaborators for the Center.
Looking ahead, Marc Weiskopf, our current Deputy Director, will be taking on leadership of the Center in the next cycle, starting April 1st. 2019. I will stay on to assist him as Deputy Director.
Following discussions at our Center Retreat last October, with our External Advisory Committee in November, and multiple meetings with our Center leaders, Marc has defined a new vision for the Center over the next five years “Re-Envisioning the Environment—Integrating Environmental Exposures of People and Place”. Rapid technological developments and the increasingly wired and connected world have expanded our ability to measure the external environment, human biology, and their interaction to generate a rich and nuanced picture of environmental exposures of people and place. The future of environmental health will be one of complex integration across a varied and rich exposure space. With this in mind, the theme of the Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center in the competing renewal is a re-envisioning of the exposure environment and the integrated effects of chemical and non-chemical stressors of people and place to better understand the impact of exposure on human health.
To make this happen we propose to create a new Geospatial and Contextual Methods Core led by Francine Laden. This facility core will provide access to geographic information systems (GIS) currently provided through the Environmental Biostatistics and Informatics Core. The GCMC will expand these resources to include training and support in use of geographically referenced data collection, visualization, and analysis, along with support in accessing and understanding relevant data sources for characterizing and measuring aspects of the broad environmental landscape. The GCMC will also facilitate access to, or development of, mobile applications that can be integrated into the Center’s population health studies to enhance the characterization of the complex environmental exposure space.
Finally, mark your calendar for upcoming Metals Research Core Seminar by Dr. Melinda Power, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University who will speak on “Metals, Cognitive Aging and Dementia” on May 1st.
MARCH 2018
On April 1st we begin the 55th consecutive year of the Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center. As we start this new year, we are pleased to announce several changes in the leadership of the Center. First, Marc Weisskopf will the new Associate Director of the Center. Quan Lu will direct the Integrated health Sciences Facility Core. Susan Korrick will be directing the Metals Research Core. Russ Hauser will direct the Organics Research Core. Jaime Hart will be directing the Particles Research Core. While we will continue to use the Particles Core for short, Jaime wants to emphasize that our interests are not restricted to particle but include the full range air pollutants.
We are preparing our competing renewal to continue this extraordinary record for another 5 year. This competing renewal application is due April 17th. This is why we have been sending out inquiries regarding the results of the Center in terms of scientific accomplishments, publications, new grants, and new positions for our members.
Mark your calendar for our Center EH Colloquium on April 25th on “Parental Stress Epigenetic Programming of Neurodevelopment” by Dr. Tracy Bales, Professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
FEBRUARY 2018
We received five pilot project applications by the spring application date. These have been sent for scientific review, including one or two external reviews, before programmatic review. We hope to provide the results within the next couple of weeks. For those who missed this deadline, we will again be accepting applications in six months, that is the first week of September.
Dr. Tamarra James-Todd, Mark and Catherine Winkler Assistant Professor of Environmental Reproductive and Perinatal Epidemiology was named the Center New Investigator. Dr. James Todd is studying and improving women’s reproductive and long-term health by: 1) evaluating the role of environmental chemicals on adverse maternal health outcomes; 2) assessing racial/ethnic disparities in environmental chemical exposures and adverse health outcomes; and 3) developing pregnancy and postpartum interventions to improve women’s chronic disease risk. She currently has a Center Pilot Project entitled “Phthalates, PPAR-ϒ target gene expression, and maternal obesity measures in the perinatal period”.
Mark your calendar for our Center Colloquium on February 22nd“Pesticide Exposure as a Risk Factor for Alzheimer’s Disease: Evidence in Man and Mice” by Dr. Jason Richardson, Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Acting Associate Dean, Acting Chair, Northeast Ohio Medical University.
January 2018
Happy New Year!
The Pilot Project program remains the core of our Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center. We had nine excellent Pilot Projects proposed in the fall. Each was reviewed by at least three experts, including generally two from outside the Center. We were able to fund four:
- Joseph G. Allen, “Emission reductions and climate/health co-benefits from energy use reductions in Harvard‘s buildings.”
- Jaime Hart, “High-Resolution Metabolomics in COPD: Elucidating Biological Responses to Multipollutant Indoor Air Exposures.”
- Tamarra James-Todd, “Phthalates, PPAR-ϒ target gene expression, and maternal obesity measures in the perinatal period.”
- Quan Lu, “Extracellular Vesicle (EV) MicroRNAs, Metal Exposure and Alzheimer’s Disease.”
We are looking forward to seeing the results of these studies at our Annual Retreat in the fall.
There are two Pilot Project submission dates each year. The next submission is in one month, on Friday, February 2nd.
All Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center Members are eligible to apply for pilot project funds. Other faculty, research scientist, and post-doctoral fellows may apply in collaboration with a Center Member as co-investigator. Please note this change, that post-doctoral fellows are now eligible to lead Pilot Projects.
Note, applications for Facility Access Funds (Mini-Pilots) are accepted at any time through the Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core.
Don’t forget to acknowledge the intellectual and financial support and services of the Center in your publications – e.g. “supported in part by the Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center for Environmental Health (P30ES000002).” This is particularly important as we prepare our competing renewal application due in April of this year!