Executive Council

The executive council is comprised of 7 members. At least one member must represent Canada. North American Chapter members can be elected every-other-year to the Executive Council via electronic elections.

Jessie Buckley, Co-Chair

Jessie Buckley, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina. Her major research areas include identifying sources of chemical exposures, estimating effects of exposure mixtures, and assessing environmental influences on children’s development including bone health and obesity. Dr. Buckley is director of chemical exposure methodology for the Data Analysis Center of the NIH’s Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program, where she oversees data harmonization and pooled analyses of chemical exposures and children’s health.

Alexandra White, Co-Chair

Alexandra White, PhD, leads the Environment and Cancer Epidemiology group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). The overarching research goal for the group is to identify novel and modifiable environmental exposures that are related to women’s cancer risk and to explore underlying biologic mechanisms. Given the high incidence of breast cancer and the widespread prevalence of environmental exposures, her research has the potential to have a substantial public health impact. With the long-term goal of reducing the incidence of cancer in women, she aims to identify environmental carcinogens for which exposure can be mitigated either with policy changes or individual-level interventions. Dr. White’s work leverages the resources of the Sister Study prospective cohort, which aims to identify environmental risk factors for cancer. Recent findings have supported a role for exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollutants, and use of chemical hair products and other environmental exposures in relation to breast cancer risk. A key aspect of this research has been characterizing how suspected environmental risk factors for breast cancer are related to both biological and clinical markers relevant for cancer etiology, including epigenetics and breast tissue characteristics. Using data from the NCI-funded Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium and the Komen Tissue Bank, findings have suggested that exposure to air pollution may be related to changes in the breast tissue that increase a woman’s susceptibility to developing breast cancer.

Aisha Dickerson

Aisha Dickerson, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research evaluates the impact of environmental exposures on neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, with a focus on underserved communities.

Scott Weichenthal

Scott Weichenthal, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His research program is dedicated to identifying and evaluating environmental risk factors for chronic illnesses such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. To support this objective, Dr. Weichenthal develops new approaches to population-based exposure assessment and examines how the urban built environment influences environmental exposures at both the individual and population-level. His past studies have examined the health effects of air pollution from biomass burning, traffic (e.g., ultrafine particles), as well as the oxidative potential of fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5). His current research also examines the use of deep learning models in estimating environmental exposures using images and audio data.

Stephanie Eick

Stephanie Eick, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health and Epidemiology (joint) at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. Her research focuses on the health effects of environmental chemical and non-chemical (i.e., psychosocial) stressors during pregnancy. She has a particular interest in chemical mixtures, as well as understanding how non-chemical stressors can amplify the harmful effects of chemicals. She is also interested biomarkers of stress response, such as oxidative stress and inflammation, and better understanding the biological mechanisms leading to adverse pregnancy and child health outcomes. Her research has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Dr. Eick is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Chemicals, which provides independent scientific advice, information and recommendation to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). Prior to joining Emory, Dr. Eick was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, San Francisco with the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment. She is involved with multiple ongoing, prospective birth cohorts.

Tracy Bastain

Theresa (Tracy) Bastain, PhD, is an environmental epidemiologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California (USC). Dr. Bastain co-directs the Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) Center for Environmental Health Disparities—a Center of Excellence supported by NIMHD and NIEHS that is focused on understanding and mitigating the effects of environmental exposures in early life and during critical periods (e.g., pregnancy) on maternal and child health outcomes with an emphasis on health disparities populations. The MADRES pregnancy cohort of approximately 1000 predominantly Hispanic mother-child pairs from urban Los Angeles is a key population resource established part of the MADRES Center. Dr. Bastain’s primary research interests are in understanding the role of prenatal chemical and psychosocial stressors on postpartum mental health outcomes in women and neurodevelopmental outcomes in children.

Shoshannah Eggers

Shoshannah Eggers, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Dr. Eggers applies epidemiologic methods to investigate potential microbiome-mediated mechanisms underlying environmental effects on health. Her work examines how exposures such as metals, pesticides, and dietary factors influence microbiome composition and function, and how these microbiome changes relate to health outcomes across the life course, including neurological and gut health. She is PI/MPI on NIEHS-funded studies that leverage population-based data and advanced microbiome analytics to explore these complex relationships.

FORMER COUNCILORS

Shohreh Farzan, 2022 – 2024 ### Jaime Madrigano , 2022 – 2024 ### Kate Weinberger, 2021 – 2023 ### Carrie Breton, 2021 – 2023 ### Joan Casey, 2020 – 2022 ### Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, 2020 – 2022 ### Joel Schwartz, 2020 – 2022 ### Patrick Kinney, 2019 – 2020 ### Francine Laden, 2019 – 2020 ### Paul Villeneuve, 2019 – 2021 ### Tracey Woodruff, 2019 – 2021