Mary Berlik Rice
Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Respiratory Health
Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Departments
Department of Environmental Health
Other Positions
Director, Center for Climate Health and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE)
Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Associate Professor of Medicine
Medicine-Beth Israel Deaconess, Harvard Medical School
Related Links
Biography
Dr. Mary B. Rice MD MPH is the director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (Harvard Chan C-CHANGE) and the Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Respiratory Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is a practicing pulmonologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), where she serves as the director of research for the division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine and oversees the BIDMC Institute for Lung Health.
At Harvard Chan C-CHANGE, Rice tests solutions for patients, healthcare systems, communities, and national policymakers that reduce climate impacts and improve health and resilience. Rice's area of investigation focuses on the influence of environmental exposures, especially air pollution and climate change, on the respiratory health of children and adults and the development of interventions to mitigate these health effects. She is a principal investigator of two National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded studies to test if home air purification improves respiratory health and slows biological aging in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and she leads a research program supported by Wellcome to pinpoint how pollutants drive disease to inform climate mitigation strategies across the U.S. She co-leads the Center for Effective and Accessible Research-based Testing for Health (C-EARTH), an NIH-funded P20 Center at Harvard Chan School, which aims to test and disseminate practical solutions for heat stress in low resource communities in the U.S. and internationally. She also leads the environmental health research program of the American Lung Association Lung Health Cohort, the nation’s first prospective cohort focused on lung health and early interception of chronic lung disease.
Rice chaired the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Environmental Health Policy Committee from 2018-2021 and has served as chair of the Environmental, Occupational and Population Health (EOPH) Assembly of the ATS since 2024. In 2020, she received the Jo Rae Wright Award for Outstanding Science from the ATS, a national award recognizing tomorrow's leaders in science. From Oct 2024 until Jan 2025, she served on the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), an independent scientific committee that advises the U.S. EPA on National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). In 2025, she was awarded the Mid-Career Achievement Award by the Assembly on Environmental, Occupational and Population Health at ATS, and in 2026, she received the Award for Excellence in Law and Medicine from Indiana University (IU) McKinney School of Law and the IU School of Medicine. Rice is a member of the faculty research committee at Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University.
