Jun Wu, Graduate Program Director and Departmental Graduate Advisor
856 Medical Sciences Quad, Irvine, CA 92697
https://sites.uci.edu/publichealthehs/
The Department of Environmental and Occupational Health provides graduate training in environmental health sciences and offers the Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences. The Ph.D. program offers tracks in Environmental Toxicology and in Exposure Sciences and Environmental Epidemiology. The program in Environmental Health Sciences provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary and appropriate to teach and/or conduct basic and applied research programs in inhalation/pulmonary toxicology, neurotoxicology, reproductive and developmental toxicology, chemical pathology, toxicokinetics, radiation toxicology, molecular carcinogenesis, exposure sciences, environmental and occupational epidemiology, risk assessment, envirommental justice, and community-based participatory research.
Environmental Toxicology involves the scientific study of the entry, distribution, biotransformation, and mechanism of the action of chemical and physical agents that are harmful to the body. The graduate program interprets environmental toxicology as the study of the effects and mechanisms of action of hazardous chemical and physical agents in food, air, water, and soil in the home, the workplace, and the community. It considers experimentally and theoretically such diverse research problems as:
- new scientific approaches to toxicological evaluation of environmental chemicals (e.g. air and water pollutants, food additives, industrial wastes, and agricultural adjuvants) and physical agents (e.g. radiation) at the molecular, cellular, and organism levels
- mechanisms of action in the toxicity of chemical and physical environmental agents
- the molecular pathology of tissue injury in acute and chronic toxicity
Exposure Sciences involves the study of human exposures to chemical environmental contaminants in different media such as air, water, food, and soil and via multiple routes including inhalation, ingestion, and dermal absorption, as well as exposures to physical environmental agents such as radiation, temperature, noise, and other built environment factors. Environmental Epidemiology examines the effects of exposure to environmental agents and other factors on health outcomes. Research in the Exposure Sciences and Environmental Epidemiology Track includes:
- new approaches to the evaluation of human exposures to environmental chemicals, including exposure measurement, modeling, and biomonitoring
- assessing individual and population level exposures to chemical and physical environmental agents and examining associations of these exposures with health and disease outcomes
- exposure to chemical, physical, and psychosocial work environment hazards and health outcomes
- environmental justice and community-based participatory research to improve health equity
Students entering the program have varied backgrounds, including chemistry, biology, physiology, environmental science/engineering/health, epidemiology, and public health. The curriculum is based on a foundation of basic and health sciences with applications of scientific principles to environmental exposures and their potential health effects. Formal course work is enriched by a strong commitment to student-professor interaction throughout the program. An important and integral part of the learning process is an early and intensive involvement of the student in ongoing original research projects in environmental health sciences, especially inhalation/pulmonary toxicology, reproductive and developmental toxicology, biochemical toxicology, chemical pathology, neurotoxicology, exposure sciences, risk assessment, environmental epidemiology, environmental justice, and community-based participatory research. Research grants and contracts are available to support qualified doctoral students as research assistants.