Ernani F. Choma

Dr. Choma is a Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research focuses on health risk assessment, with a primary interest in the use of risk assessment to inform policy decisions.

Dr. Choma’s research has focused on fine particulate matter air pollution and on the health co-benefits of climate change mitigation, especially on the transportation sector, where he has assessed health benefits achieved by past regulation and new technologies, such as vehicle electrification and automation. He is also currently working to quantify the health benefits that can be achieved by reducing urban heat islands in the United States. He has participated in several international efforts to improve the quantification of the health effects of fine particulate matter in life cycle assessment and other emission reduction and policy analyses. Dr. Choma’s research has been covered by The Associated Press, The New York Times, ABC News, Popular Science, USA TODAY, The Hill, Newsweek, and other national and international news outlets.

Dr. Choma received his Ph.D. in Population Health Sciences from Harvard University, where he specialized in Risk and Decision Sciences, within the Environmental Health field of study. He is from Brazil and previously received an Engineer degree (Electrical Engineering: Electronics and Communications) and a Master’s Degree (Mechanical and Materials Engineering) from the Federal University of Technology – Parana (Curitiba, Brazil).

Outside of his academic activities, Dr. Choma is an experienced chess player and holds a FIDE Master title from the International Chess Federation (FIDE). As a teenager, he won the Brazilian Championships in the U16 (under 16 years old) and U18 categories, also finishing 11th (T-8th) in the U16 World Youth Chess Championships in 2002. More recently, in 2016, he finished 3rd in the finals of the 82nd Brazilian Chess Championship.