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Advisors

  • Consultants

    • Professor Adjunct of Epidemiology (Environmental Health)

      Dr. Hines is Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in 1980. Following his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, he became Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor at the Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases and the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In 1989, Dr. Hines was recruited to the Wayne State University School of Medicine as Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Pediatrics Associate and in 1995, was promoted to Professor of Pharmacology. In 1999, he assumed a position as Professor of Pediatrics and Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Medical College of Wisconsin where he also served as Associate Director of the Children’s Research Institute of the Children’s Hospital and Health Systems and Co-Section Chief of Clinical Pharmacology, Pharmacogenetics, and Teratology in the Department of Pediatrics. In addition, Dr. Hines was Adjunct Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and served as Co-Director for a collaborative NIEHS Environmental Health Sciences Center between the two institutions. In 2012, Dr. Hines accepted the position of Associate Director for Health at the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL) in the Office of Research and Development of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In this position, he managed the three NHEERL health divisions and their diverse research portfolio, as well as the Research Core Unit. He retired from the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2020. Throughout his academic career, Dr. Hines’ research was supported by various organizations, including state health departments, private foundations, industry contracts and the National Institutes of Health. He is a member of the Society of Toxicology where he was elected to the Presidential Chain, serving as President from May 1, 2019 through April 30, 2021. He has served on numerous Federal and State science advisory panels and as an Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member for nine peer-reviewed journals. He currently is a member of the Drug Metabolism and Disposition and Current Topics in Toxicology Editorial Boards. During his career, Dr. Hines approached research questions using a transdisciplinary strategy, assembling and leading research teams with expertise spanning from molecular biology and analytical chemistry to clinical cohort studies. Dr. Hines has over 150 publications focused on mechanisms whereby exposures to environmental toxicants or drugs alter gene regulation and the genetic/epigenetic basis for interindividual differences in response to exposures. Over the last 13 years of his academic career, his research turned to elucidating how and through what mechanisms the enzymes involved in toxicant and drug disposition change during early life stages and the interaction of genetic/epigenetic variation with this normal developmental process. The impact of this body of work has resulted in an h-index of 52 and numerous invitations to present his research at both national and international meetings.
  • External Advisory Committee

    • Scientific Director of the Severo Ochoa distinction - ISGlobal

      Manolis Kogevinas is a senior researcher and he is currently the Scientific Director of the Severo Ochoa distinction at ISGlobal. He graduated at the Medical School of Athens, Greece and did his PhD in Epidemiology at the University of London (1989). He worked at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO), Lyon, at the Municipal Institute of Medical Research (IMIM) Barcelona and was co-Director of CREAL (Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology), Barcelona. He was Professor of Epidemiology at the Medical School, Heraklion, Greece, and at the National School of Public Health, Athens, Greece. He serves in several WHO and other expert committees and in EU research evaluation committees.He has published more than 600 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and has given numerous invited talks. He directed 14 Doctoral researchers and has mentored numerous other MPH, PhD and postdoc researchers. He was President of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) 2016-2017 and was Director of the European Educational Programme in Epidemiology (EEPE), Florence.In recent years he focused his research on the effects of circadian disruption on health conducting large case-control studies and also studies in molecular epidemiology and the exposome. He is committed to public health and is active in Europe and globally in the promotion of research in environmental epidemiology and translation of research findings into policy.
    • Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Co-Director, NEWT Center - Rice Univeristy

      Dr. Qilin Li teaches courses and conducts research on physical and chemical processes that impact water quality in natural aqueous environment as well as water/wastewater treatment systems. Dr. Li’s current research focuses on the behaviors of environmental colloids and macromolecules at aqueous-solid interfaces and the subsequent impact on their fate and transport in natural and engineered systems. Ongoing research projects investigate fouling of membrane materials during surface water filtration, seawater desalination and wastewater reuse, nanotechnology enabled drinking water disinfection and surface microbial control, the environmental fate, transport and ecotoxicity of engineered nanomaterials, and sustainable water infrastructure. Dr. Li’s research group is devoted to finding a solution to sustainable water supply.
    • Distinguished Professor of Molecular Toxicology & Carcinogenesis - PennState University; Deputy Director, The Penn State Cancer Institute - PennState University

      Distinguished Professor of Molecular Toxicology & Carcinogenesis; Deputy Director, The Penn State Cancer Institute
    • Professor, School of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center – New Orleans

      Professor, School of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center – New Orleans. Dr. Ronis received his B.A./M.A. in Natural Sciences (Pharmacology) from Cambridge University, England in 1982 and his Ph.D. (Physiology and Biochemistry) from Reading University, England in 1985. After postdoctoral fellowships in the Toxicology Program at North Carolina State University (1985-1987) and at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden (1987-1989), Dr. Ronis joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in 1989 and become full Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Pharmacology & Toxicology in 2002. Dr. Ronis research lies at the intersection of nutrition and toxicology. His early work focused on the regulation and comparative biochemistry of cytochrome P450 enzymes with a focus on the effects of persistent environmental pollutants and alcohol. Subsequently, he has worked on the role of nutrition in alcohol pathology in liver and bone; the endocrine and biological effects of soy products and phytoestrogens and the skeletal toxicity of polychlorinated biphenyls. He served as Associate Director for Basic Research at the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center and Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute from 2002-2015 when he moved to join LSUHSC. Dr. Ronis has been a member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT) since 1989. He was president of the South Central Chapter (SCSOT) from 2006-2007 and 2015-2016. He is also a member of the Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA), the International Society for the Study of the Biological Effects of Alcohol (ISBRA) and the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR). He has served as permanent member of NIH Study Sections including ALTX4, XNDA and Systemic Injury from Environmental Exposures (SIEE). He was an editorial board member for the journal Experimental Biology & Medicine (2002-2008) and of the World Journal of Hepatology (2009-2013). He is currently an Associate Editor of Drug Metabolism Reviews and is an Associate Editor for the Pharmacology Section of the online journal “Biology”. NIH has funded his research continuously since 1990 and he is currently PI on an R37 MERIT award from NIAAA. He is the author /co-author of over 250 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.
    • Distinguished Professor - Oregon State Univeristy

      Robyn Leigh Tanguay (Formerly Robert Leonard Tanguay) is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology, the Director of the Oregon State University Superfund Research Program, Director of the Sinnhuber Aquatic Research Laboratory, and the Director of an Environmental Health Sciences Center. She received her BA in Biology from California State University-San Bernardino, her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California-Riverside, and postdoctoral training in Developmental Toxicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She serves on a number of academic, commercial, and federal advisory boards and is on the editorial board for several scientific journals. Over the past several years she has pioneered the use of zebrafish as a toxicology model and recently developed automated high throughput instrumentation to accelerate phenotype discovery in zebrafish. A major focus is on identifying chemicals and mixtures that produce neurotoxicity. Phenotypic anchoring coupled with the inherent molecular and genetic advantages of zebrafish is used to define the mechanisms by which chemicals, drugs, and nanoparticles interact with and adversely affect vertebrate development and function.