Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment
We seek climate solutions that can provide for a healthier and more just world today and a livable future for our children.
665 Huntington Avenue
Building 1, Room 1312
Boston, MA 02115
Affiliated Faculty
Our team of affiliated faculty help us expand our breadth of climate and health knowledge and widen our network of mentors and trainees for students across Harvard.
If you’re interested in applying to be an affiliated faculty member, please reach out to Skye Flanigan.
Barrak Alahmad, MD, MPH, PhD studies climate change and health in the Middle East, specifically the adverse impacts of dust storms and extreme temperatures on vulnerable populations. He extensively studied the effects of environmental exposures on migrant workers. Alahmad holds a medical degree from the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, a master’s in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a doctorate in population health sciences from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to his work at Harvard, he was a physician at the Directorate of Public Health, Ministry of Health, Kuwait.

Wynne Armand, MD practices primary care at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Chelsea HealthCare Center, where she provides comprehensive preventive care, chronic disease management and urgent care to adult patients in a diverse, urban setting.
She is a Distinguished Physician in the Division of General Internal Medicine at MGH, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and contributing editor at Harvard Health Publications.
Dr. Armand co-directs Primary Care Office Insite (PCOI), a resource hub that supports high-quality, evidence-based delivery of primary care across Mass General Brigham through knowledge-sharing, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and integration of local information.
Dr. Armand is an associate director at the Mass General Center for the Environment and Health, whose mission is to integrate sustainability into hospital operations, education, and research, and to advocate for policies that support a healthy environment for everyone.
She received her medical degree from University of California San Francisco (UCSF), completed her internal medicine residency at UCSF in a primary care program based at San Francisco General Hospital, and is board certified in Internal Medicine.

Carlos Camargo is a Professor of Emergency Medicine, Medicine, and Epidemiology at Harvard University, and the Conn Chair in Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He founded and leads the Emergency Medicine Network (EMNet, www.emnet-usa.org), an international research collaboration with ~250 hospitals and a mission to advance public health objectives through diverse projects in emergency care. EMNet focuses on respiratory/allergy disorders (e.g., asthma, COPD, anaphylaxis), health services research on emergency care, and social emergency medicine. Dr Camargo also works on the role of nutrition in respiratory/allergy disorders, both in cohort studies and in randomized controlled trials. He is past president of the American College of Epidemiology, and has worked on several U.S. guidelines, including those on diet, asthma, and food allergy. Dr Camargo has compiled >1,400 publications, with an H-index of 162.
Dr. Choma is a Research Scientist at 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, The Washington Post, 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.
David Christiani, MD, MPH, MS, is the Elkan Blout Professor of Environmental Genetics with the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He earned his MD in 1976 from Tufts University, and an MS and MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. He did his post-graduate medical training at Boston City Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Professor Christiani’s major research interest lies in the interaction between human genes and the environment. In the emerging field of molecular epidemiology, he studies the impact of humans’ exposure to pollutants on health, as well as the how genetic and acquired susceptibility to these diseases along with environmental exposures can lead to acute and chronic pulmonary and cardiovascular disease. He is also developing new methods for assessing health effects after exposure to pollutants and has is very active in environmental and occupational health studies internationally.
His global work has taken place in Asia, Africa, and North America where Dr. Christiani and his wide network of collaborators are studying of the reproductive effects of exposure to chemicals, in China; arsenic exposure and bladder and skin cancer, in Taiwan and Bangladesh; exposure to indoor combustion products in respiratory disease in Central America; petrochemical exposures, brain tumors, and leukemia in Taiwan; and the molecular epidemiology of esphageal cancer in Africa.

Dr. Christy A. Denckla, PhD (PI) is a clinical psychologist with joint appointments as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, an Associate Member at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and an Assistant Professor of Psychology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Her work aims to understand how adversity affects mental health and well-being across the lifespan, with a particular focus on bereavement. Dr. Denckla’s work is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, foundations, and internal awards. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and her clinical psychology internship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Her doctoral research was completed at Adelphi University in New York.
Dr. Francesca Dominici is the Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population and Data Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative at Harvard University. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the International Society of Mathematical Statistics. In 2024, she was named by TIME100 Health as one of the most influential scientists in global health in the world. Before being appointed founding Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative, she was Senior Associate Dean for Research at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Dominici is also the founder and lead Principal Investigator (PI) for the National Studies on Air Pollution and Health Group (NSAPH), as well as a co-founding PI and leader for the BUSPH-HSPH Climate Change and Health Research Coordinating Center, CAFÉ.
Dr. Dominici’s research has focused on machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, causal inference, and data science to impact climate and environmental policy. Her air pollution studies have directly and routinely impacted air quality policy, leading to more stringent ambient air quality standards in the U.S. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the BBC, the Guardian, CNN, and NPR.

Dr. Duhaime served as Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital until May 2021 and is the Nicholas T. Zervas Distinguished Professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School. She has been a practicing board-certified pediatric neurosurgeon for three decades, with experience in all aspects of pediatric neurosurgical practice including acute trauma, hydrocephalus and brain cysts, Chiari malformations, surgical treatment of epilepsy, craniofacial conditions, brain tumors, congenital spinal cord disorders, and spasticity. She also serves as a consultant for the Child Protection Team at Mass General. She has served on the American Board of Pediatric Neurological Surgery and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Neurosurgery.
Her neuroscience research focuses on the mechanisms, pathophysiology, imaging, and treatment of injury in the immature brain, using translational and clinical research to study injuries occurring in infants and young children, including those seen most commonly in child abuse. The work also investigates plasticity, recovery, and return of function in children and adolescents of different ages.
Wafaie Fawzi is a physician and epidemiologist focused on advancing global health research, education, and practice. He is the Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Sciences and Professor of Nutrition, Epidemiology, and Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. From 2011 to 2018, he served as Chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard. He established and leads the Nutrition and Global Health Program, an interdepartmental initiative aimed at strengthening the evidence base for human health and development.
An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, he has directed the design and implementation of over 30 randomized controlled trials and numerous large observational studies on maternal, child, and adolescent health, as well as major infectious diseases. His work has resulted in more than 600 original research papers and reviews, advancing policies on the safety and benefits of integrated nutritional interventions for pregnant women, infants, and adolescents, and exploring the interrelationships among food systems, climate change, and planetary health.
My laboratory focuses on the molecular basis of population heterogeneity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and the extent to which differences between mycobacterial cells contribute to differences in disease and treatment outcomes. Our work combines bacterial genetic approaches with high throughput methodologies including population genomics, ssRNAseq and quantitative live cell imaging to define the molecular mechanisms by which Mtb generates diversity and how this diversity enables the bacterium to survive subsequent selective forces including antibiotics and immune selection. We further seek to understand the impact of host immune responses on the interaction of Mtb with the infected host, again working at both single cell and genomic levels. My work engages a broad network of collaborators including experts in technologies to assess single cell behavior at MIT and MGH, experts in sequencing methodologies at the Broad Institute and experts in human immunology at the Ragon Institute, where I am the outgoing Director of the TB Program.

Oliver Freudenreich, MD, a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), serves as co-director of the MGH Psychosis Clinical and Research Program. Dr. Freudenreich is board-certified in general psychiatry and in psychosomatic medicine/consultation-liaison psychiatry. His academic interest lies in improving schizophrenia care across all states of illness, including the development of innovative and accessible treatments for treatment-resistant psychosis as well as better integration between psychiatry and medicine. In addition to his clinical expertise in schizophrenia care and clinical trial expertise in schizophrenia research, Dr. Freudenreich provides psychiatric consultations for medically complex patients with serious mental illness and for diagnostically difficult cases with psychosis who are often cared for in state hospitals. Dr. Freudenreich has published extensively in his areas of interest and has written a handbook on psychotic disorders; its second edition was published in 2020. He teaches and speaks on a regular basis at international and national meetings. Recent awards include the MGH Department of Psychiatry Clinical Excellence Award and the 2022 Outstanding Psychiatrist Award for the Public Sector from the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society.
Dr. Peng Gao joins the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in November 2024 as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health and Exposomics. Previously, Dr. Gao was Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also held an appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering. Dr. Gao received his master’s degree in chemistry from Case Western Reserve University and his doctoral degree in Soil and Water Sciences from the University of Florida. After completing postdoctoral training at Stanford University School of Medicine, Dr. Gao began to work in exposomics, which examines the holistic impact of a person’s environmental exposure totality over their lifetime. His research using innovative exposomics techniques in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, has contributed significantly to our understanding of environmental influences on various respiratory diseases, including asthma, lung cancer, and pulmonary arterial hypertension.
Recently, following a large chemical spill and combustion event in East Palestine, Ohio, his team collaborated with local community partners to investigate the post-accident chemical exposome profiles in the impacted areas.
Professor Hammitt’s research concerns the development and application of quantitative methods—including benefit-cost, decision, and risk analysis—to health and environmental policy. Topics include management of long-term environmental issues with important scientific uncertainties, such as global climate change and stratospheric-ozone depletion, evaluation of ancillary benefits and countervailing risks associated with risk-control measures, and characterization of social preferences over health and environmental risks using revealed-preference, stated-preference, and health-utility methods. He has served on six National Academies of Sciences panels and more than a dozen advisory committees to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies. He received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society for Risk Analysis in 2015 and the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis in 2021 and is a fellow of both societies.

Andrew Hantel, MD, is a faculty member in the Divisions of Leukemia and Population Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, and he is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). He received his MD from Loyola University Chicago; trained in internal medicine, adult hematology/oncology, and medical ethics at the University of Chicago and in population sciences at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Dr. Hantel’s clinical care focuses on patients with leukemia and related blood cancers; he also serves as a hospital ethics consultant. His research program leverages health services and care delivery methods to address ethical dilemmas in cancer discovery and delivery, for which he receives research funding from the National Institutes of Health, American Society for Clinical Oncology, American Cancer Society, and Greenwall Foundation. A main focus of Dr. Hantel’s current work is on cancer health in the context of climate change.

Marissa Hauptman, MD, MPH is a board-certified pediatrician and Co-Director of the Pediatric Environmental Health Center, Co-Director of the Region 1 New England Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hauptman’s research focuses on leveraging and integrating environmental screening tools, geospatial and biologic marker data into clinical medicine to both research and mitigate environmental and social health disparities in children with chronic diseases. She was awarded an NIH/NIEHS K23 Career Development Award entitled, Air Pollution, Stress and Asthma Morbidity Risk: Role of Biological and Geospatial Markers.”

Rebecca Henderson is one of 25 University Professors at Harvard, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also has more than twenty-five years of major public board experience. Rebecca’s research explores the degree to which the private sector can play a major role in building a more sustainable economy. Her publications include Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors (University of Chicago Press), Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective (Oxford University Press) and Political Economy and Justice (University of Chicago Press). She is also the author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire which was shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey 2020 Business Book of the Year Award. She can be reached at rhenderson@hbs.edu.
Adele Houghton, FAIA, DrPH, LEED AP, works at the intersection of buildings, public health, and climate change. She is a member of the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows and received a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she also teaches. Her book, Architectural Epidemiology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), co-authored with Professor Carlos Castillo-Salgado of Johns Hopkins University, proposes a novel method for architectural design: combining neighborhood-scale environmental health data with participatory community engagement to maximize a building’s positive ripple effect on community and planetary health.



Trained in psychiatry and history of science, David Jones is the Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard University. His research has focused on the causes and meanings of health inequalities (Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality since 1600) and the history of decision making in cardiac therapeutics (Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care). He is currently at work on four other histories, of the evolution of coronary artery surgery, of heart disease and cardiac therapeutics in India, of the threat of air pollution to health in India, and of the history of air pollution research in the United States. His teaching at Harvard College and Harvard Medical School explores the history of medicine, medical ethics, and social medicine.
My research centers on the virology, molecular epidemiology of HIV in Africa along with implementation science work to improve HIV outcomes. I have worked in West Africa since the 1980s and in 2000, I created and directed the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN), with a $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Since 2004, I led the Harvard President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) providing prevention, care and HIV antiretroviral therapy in Nigeria, Botswana, and Tanzania. In addition to the capacity building for clinical, laboratory and research capabilities, the program provided treatment for over 160,000 AIDS patients. The PEPFAR program in Nigeria has developed an extensive electronic medical record system that provides real time access to >100,000 patients on antiretroviral treatment. These databases allow us to promote better clinical care and also to answer operational research questions dealing with the efficacy of ART and PMTCT interventions and modulators of this response. Along with Nigerian colleagues, my research group has addressed topics including with HIV co-infections, determinants of ART efficacy and evaluation of PMTCT interventions. In an effort to optimize HIV outcomes we have characterized losses to follow-up in HIV care, treatment and PMTCT interventions and HIV drug resistance. I am currently co-PI for a trial of point of care HIV viral load monitoring to enhance ART outcomes and retention on ART in Nigeri…

Lakshmi Karthikeyan is a public health researcher with over 13 years of experience specializing in epidemiology of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Currently she is a Senior Project Manager & Research Associate at the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, Chennai, India. She manages a large-scale surveillance and prevention projects in South Asia aimed at reducing the burden of NCDs. Dr. Karthikeyan’s research focuses on diabetes prevention in rural populations, lifestyle interventions, and the intersection of environmental exposures with disease prevention. She has recently completed her PhD research on the prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes in rural India. She is also a GEO Health Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Undergone training at the Department of Environmental Health during fall 2024 at HSPH.

Dr. Rachel Knipe is a physician scientist in the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. In her clinical practice, she cares for patients with critical illness and chronic pulmonary diseases, with a focus on interstitial lung diseases. She runs a research program focused on mechanisms of pulmonary fibrosis, caused by a variety of lung injuries from connective tissue diseases to viral infections to inhalational and idiopathic causes. Her work focuses on the role of the vasculature and endothelial cell dysfunction in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis.
Karestan C. Koenen, PhD aims to reduce the population burden of mental disorders through research, training, and advocacy. She is passionate about using science to overcome violence and trauma, which are major preventable causes of health problems globally.
Research
Dr. Koenen directs the Biology of Trauma Initiative at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard where she is an Institute Member. Her research focus is three-fold. First, she studies why some people develop PTSD and related mental and physical health problems and why some people are resilient when exposed to similar traumatic events. Second, she investigates how violence, trauma, and PTSD alter long-term physical health and accelerate aging. Third, she aims to expand access to evidence-based mental health treatment for survivors of violence and trauma. To this end, she co-wrote the book, Treating Survivors of Childhood Abuse and Interpersonal Trauma: STAIR Narrative Therapy with Drs. Marylene Cloitre, Lisa Cohen. Kile M Ortigo, and Christie Jackson.
Relevant links:
Biology of Trauma: https://www.broadinstitute.org/biology-trauma-initiative-broad-institute
Book can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Treating-Survivors-Childhood-Interpersonal-Trauma-ebook/dp/B0859BZZDM
Training
Dr. Koenen leads the NIMH-funded Training Program in Psychiatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics (T32) and the Interdisciplinary Concentration in Population Mental Health.

Dr. Susan Korrick is a clinician scientist with 30+ years’ experience conducting environmental epidemiologic studies in children and adults. She is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Channing Division of Network Medicine and Harvard Medical School and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA. She holds a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine, and an M.P.H. from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work characterizes the toxicities of environmental contaminants (eg, metals, organochlorines, phthalates, phenols), place-based exposures (eg, air pollution, traffic), and social disadvantage among populations ranging in age from newborns to elderly adults. Dr. Korrick’s focus is on understanding the impact of these risk factors on neurocognitive function and reproductive health. She is responsible for the training and supervision of doctoral students and post-doctoral trainees in environmental and occupational epidemiology. She has been an invited speaker/expert panelist in CDC/ATSDR, NIEHS, and U.S. EPA sponsored forums addressing the human health impacts of environmental contaminants and prioritizing goals for children’s environmental health research. She has served on multiple EPA Science Advisory Boards including the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Board for Lead, Drinking Water Committee, and Hydraulic Fracturing Research Scoping Stud…
Dr. Kourosh is a board certified dermatologist and Associate Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Environmental Health at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. She is a graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where she received the institutions awards for Leadership and Outstanding Professionalism and Humanism as a physician.
Dr. Kourosh is committed to patient advocacy and solving public health problems for patients with skin disease. She developed the Skin Advocate iPhone App, a free smartphone application that connects patients with patient advocacy organizations for their skin conditions. She has served as Editor in Chief of Dialogues in Dermatology, the official podcast and internationally subscribed educational program of the American Academy of Dermatology.
As the Founding Director of the Dermatology Division of Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Kourosh has built and led the clinics providing access to dermatologic care for underserved communities and created multiple community programs to serve them. As the Founding Director of the Clinic for Pigmentary Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Kourosh created the clinics and center for research at MGH for skin conditions disproportionately affecting people of color.


Regina LaRocque is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is a faculty member of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her clinical and research interests are in infectious diseases, environmental health and travel medicine.
Dr. LaRocque received her MD from Duke University School of Medicine and MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed her residency training and fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. LaRocque is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a Fellow of the International Society of Travel Medicine.
Dr. LaRocque co-directs the Global TravEpiNet (GTEN) consortium, a CDC supported network of travel clinics across the U.S. which aims to improve the health of international travelers. She serves as Chief Medical Editor of the CDC Yellow Book: Health Information for International Travel.

Dr. Carol Lim, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a psychiatrist with the MGH Psychosis Clinical and Research Program. She provides care to patients across all stages of psychotic disorders, including individuals in the First Episode Early Psychosis Program and those with chronic schizophrenia in the Recovery and Ongoing Care Clinic. She serves as the Medical Director of the MGH Clozapine Clinic and as a consultant psychiatrist for MGH’s second opinion psychosis consultation service. Dr. Lim conducts clinical trials aimed at identifying safer and more effective treatments for schizophrenia. Additionally, she treats patients with serious mental illness at the Freedom Trail Clinic, an MGH community partner mental health center. She directs the MGH Fellowship in Public and Community Psychiatry.
Prior to joining the faculty, she completed her Psychiatry residency at Dartmouth, followed by a fellowship in Public and Community Psychiatry at MGH. She received her Bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Brown University, Medical Degree from Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea, and Master of Public Health degree from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

As a climate psychologist, James counsels individuals and parents experiencing climate distress to build resilience and coping. He consults with organizations seeking to enact climate-conscious projects and sustainable practices using behavioral strategies, and finally, he raises awareness about the health impacts of climate change through speaking and writing collaborations.
My major area of research and teaching is cancer epidemiology. I am the Director of the Cancer Epidemiology and Cancer Prevention Program (Area of Interest) within the Department of Epidemiology here at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). In addition, I am Leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.
After receiving my doctoral degree in epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (formerly the Harvard School of Public Health), I trained as a post-doctoral fellow in cancer epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. At the Karolinska, I gained expertise in using nationwide health registries to examine cancer etiology and formed a long-term partnership with epidemiology colleagues in the Nordic countries. For the past 9 years, my primary faculty appointment has been at the Harvard Chan School, where my research uses integrative molecular epidemiology approaches within cohorts in the United States and globally to investigate research questions focused on cancer etiology, mortality, and survivorship. I serve as co-Principal Investigator for the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (https://sites.sph.harvard.edu/hpfs/) as well as IRONMAN (see below). Below is a summary of some major areas of interest.
Dr. Kari Nadeau is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health and John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies. She practices Allergy, Asthma, Immunology in children and adults. She has published over 400+ papers, many in the field of climate change and health. Dr. Nadeau, with a team of individuals and patients and families, has been able to help major progress and impact in the clinical fields of immunology, infection, asthma and allergy. Dr. Nadeau is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the U.S. EPA Children’s Health Protection Committee.
For more than 30 years, she has devoted herself to understanding how environmental and genetic factors affect the risk of developing allergies and asthma, especially wildfire-induced air pollution. Her laboratory has been studying air pollution and wildfire effects on children and adults, including wildland firefighters. Many of the health issues involving individuals and the public are increasing because of global warming, sustainability practices, and extreme weather conditions. She oversees a team working on air pollution and wildfire research along with a multidisciplinary group of community leaders, firefighters, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and policy makers. Dr. Nadeau was appointed as a member of the U.S. Federal Wildfire Commission in 2022.
Daniel Neafsey’s laboratory studies the evolutionary genomics of malaria parasites and mosquito vectors. Prior to becoming a faculty member at Harvard, he led a research group at the Broad Institute, where he retains a role as Associate Director of the Broad Institute’s Genomic Center for Infectious Disease. He is excited by the potential for new technology and data to turn the tide against diseases like malaria.
Neafsey’s current projects involve the application of comparative genomic and population genetic analyses to Plasmodium malaria parasites and Anopheles mosquitoes to study population structure, natural selection, and genomic factors underlying parasite and vector phenotypes that impact public health. Neafsey’s interests also include the use of pathogen polymorphism data to inform vaccine design and understand vaccine efficacy, analysis of drug resistance mechanisms and evolution, the use of clinical genotyping data to interpret disease transmission dynamics, and the development of new genomic protocols and informatics tools to address key questions in infectious disease and global health.
Dr. North is a pulmonologist and critical care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Department Associate in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. She is a physician-scientist with expertise in the influence of environmental and infectious exposures on lung health among vulnerable populations in sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, she focuses on the influences of ambient air pollution and chronic HIV infection on lung health in Uganda, where she has established two observational clinical research cohorts totaling nearly 1,400 study participants over the last 10 years that includes longitudinal spirometry, ambient and personal air pollution exposure metrics, stored biospecimens, and chest CT imaging. Dr. North’s current work is focused on defining lifespan lung function trajectories, identifying predictors of worse lung health, and designing and implementing behavioral modifications to reduce personal air pollution exposure. She has maintained continuous grant funding since 2015, including grants from the NIH, ATS, Harvard CFAR, Parker B. Francis Foundation, Harvard NIEHS Center, and Harvard Global Health Institute. Dr. North earned her MD from the University of Washington, her MPH from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, completed internal medicine residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital – Cornell and PCCM fellowship at the Harvard combined program.


Elizabeth Pinsky, MD, completed training in both pediatric medicine and child psychiatry, and works as a pediatric consult-liaison psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is the Associate Director of the Pediatric Psychiatry Consultation Service, and at Shriner’s Hospital for Children Boston. She is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Her clinical interests focus on the intersection of child mental and physical health, including childhood trauma associated with medical care and fostering resilience in medically ill children. Dr. Pinsky believes that climate change poses the most urgent threat to children at that intersection of physical and mental health, and that clinicians caring for children have a responsibility to advocate for a rapid and just transition off fossil fuels.
Dr. Pinsky serves as the Associate Director for Advocacy at the Mass General Center for Environment and Health, is co-chair of the MGH Climate Mental Health Initiative, and is also a founding member of Climate Code Blue, a Boston-area climate action group for physicians and other health professionals.
John Quackenbush is Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Professor in the Channing Division of Network Medicine, and Professor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. John’s PhD was in Theoretical Physics, but in 1992 he received a fellowship to work on the Human Genome Project. This led him through the Salk Institute, Stanford, The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), and to Harvard in 2005. John uses massive data to probe how many small effects combine to influence human health and disease. He has more than 300 scientific papers and over 73,000 citations. Among his honors is recognition in 2013 as a White House Open Science Champion of Change.

Rod Rahimi is a pulmonary physician-scientist who focuses on understanding the fundamental mechanisms driving airway diseases. Specifically, his laboratory works on defining the mechanisms dictating immune responses to airborne allergens (aeroallergens). They are particularly interested in understanding how T cells respond to aeroallergens in the context of health and airway diseases such as asthma, COPD, and Cystic fibrosis. In healthy individuals, the immune system maintains immune tolerance to aeroallergens. However, a subset of individuals with airway diseases exhibit a maladaptive type 2 (allergic) immune response to aeroallergens, leading to T helper type 2 (Th2) cells and IgE that drive allergic airway inflammation. Climate change and air pollution increase the risk of developing allergic airway disease as well as worsen disease severity. While therapies have been developed to reduce allergic airway inflammation, none re-establish immune tolerance to aeroallergens to cure allergic airway disease. His lab uses sophisticated genetic, immunological, and imaging tools in mouse models and humans to ask fundamental questions about the mechanisms dictating the immune response to aeroallergens. Their long-term goal is to identify novel therapeutic approaches to promote immune tolerance to aeroallergens in allergic airway diseases.

My research is focused on exploring the pathophysiology underlying environmentally-mediated kidney diseases, particularly those related to heat exposure, and on using these physiologic understandings to develop and apply improved prevention and treatment regimens. In addition to my MD training, I hold a master’s degree in public health with a focus on epidemiology and biostatistics. Much of my work focuses on chronic kidney disease of nontraditional cause (CKDnt), an emerging form of kidney disease in which heat stress appears to play an important role. I was principal investigator and first author for one of the early prevalence studies on CKDnt in a hotspot region in Central America, and have since led research to determine the accuracy of kidney function estimating equations in CKDnt populations.
My research is divided in three main areas: First, I am interested in epidemiology looking at the health consequences of exposure to pollutants. To date this has had two focuses: health effects of lead and health effects of air pollutants. I have recently begun work looking at water contamination.
In lead, I have examined cardiovascular effects of lead exposure in adults, cognitive effects in children, auditory effects in children, and effects of lead on children’s growth. I have also done work on sources of lead exposure, including establishing gasoline lead as the major source of lead exposure in the United States.
My air pollution work has examined both acute and chronic effects of air pollution exposure. Recent research has established that exposure to fine combustion particles in the air at concentrations well below current standards are associated with a range of adverse health effects from increased respiratory symptoms, to increased hospital admissions, to increased deaths. This work has led to a tightening of the U.S. air quality standards.
I have also done considerable work on health effects of ozone exposure. I have several international collaborations underway in this area. Recent work has been focussed on the cardiovascular effects of air pollution, and on factors which modify the response to air pollution. Recent work has suggested diabetics are more susceptible, for example.

Shalini H. Shah, DO is a practicing board-certified pediatrician, environmental medicine physician, and assistant director for the Boston Children’s Pediatric Environmental Health Center (PEHC) and Region I Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU). She studied Biological Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and attending medical school at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. She completed her residency in pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and her fellowship in pediatric and reproductive environmental health at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Roger L. Shapiro, M.D., M.P.H., is a Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research in Botswana focuses on HIV prevention, treatment, and cure, and he leads clinical trials and nationwide surveillance studies in these areas. Over the years, he has also explored the impact of environmental factors on infectious diseases. His work has examined seasonal variations in adverse birth outcomes among women with and without HIV, and how temperature and rainfall patterns affect vector-borne and waterborne illnesses. While working at CDC early in his career, he investigated the impact of ocean temperature on Vibrio vulnificus cases in the United States. A leader in international collaborations, Dr. Shapiro has guided multidisciplinary teams in assessing environmental determinants of health outcomes, ensuring that climate adaptation strategies are integrated into infectious disease prevention. Through his work, he continues to advance scientific understanding of how environmental changes shape global health challenges.


John Spengler, Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation, and Co-Director of the JPB Environmental Health Fellowship Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has conducted research on personal monitoring, air pollution health effects, indoor air pollution, and a variety of environmental sustainability issues. Several of his investigations have focused on housing design and its effects on ventilation rates, building materials’ selection, energy consumption, and total environmental quality in homes. Spengler’s current research focuses on health and the built environment and the wellbeing benefits of exposure to Nature. Recently, his efforts included assessing COVID mitigation strategies for schools, airports and aircraft. Now, Spengler and his team are focused on adaptation to mitigate extreme heat, particularly in vulnerable urban neighborhoods.
Alexander Tsai is a board-certified psychiatrist at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he is director of the Program on Social Policy and Behavioral Health at the MGH Center for Global Health. He also has academic affiliations as an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Through his research, he seeks to understand how large-scale social pathogens such as stigma, discrimination, and structural violence affect the distribution of mental health outcomes in vulnerable populations in the U.S. and in eastern and southern Africa. Dr. Tsai is founding co-editor-in-chief of the journal Social Science and Medicine-Mental Health. He was elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2021 and the American College of Psychiatrists in 2023.
Dr. von Stackelberg has long worked at the intersection of science and policy, originally in assessing public health and ecological risks of exposure to environmental contaminants, which expanded to the role of natural systems, expressed as ecosystem services, in supporting well-being, and the subsequent valuation of those ecosystem services to support policy analyses around planetary health. She is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Environmental health and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Team Leader for the Biogeochemistry of Global Contaminants Group (Sunderland Lab) at Harvard University, and Director of Research Translation for the Harvard Superfund Research Program (MEMCARE). Her ScD dissertation was based on a contingent valuation survey to monetize the benefit associated with risk reductions to ecological receptors exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls in the environment. She has several risk assessment projects to interpret and map in vitro data to key events in adverse outcome pathways to evaluate specific regulatory health outcomes associated with exposure to per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS), heavy organics, mixtures of metals, and emerging contaminants associated with tire wear particles.
Walter C. Willett, M.D., Dr. P.H., is Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Willett studied food science at Michigan State University, and graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School before obtaining a Masters and Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Willett has focused much of his work over the last 40 years on the development and evaluation of methods, using both questionnaire and biochemical approaches, to study the effects of diet on the occurrence of major diseases. He has applied these methods starting in 1980 in the Nurses’ Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Together, these cohorts that include nearly 300,000 men and women with repeated dietary assessments, are providing the most detailed information on the long-term health consequences of food choices.
Dr. Willett has published over 2,000 original research papers and reviews, primarily on lifestyle risk factors for heart disease, cancer, and other conditions and has written the textbook, Nutritional Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press, now in its third edition. He also has written four books for the general public. Dr. Willett is the most cited nutritionist internationally. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of many national and international awards for his research.

Mollie Williams is a dedicated public health professional who has devoted her career to promoting access to care and advancing health equity. She currently serves as the Executive Director of The Family Van and Mobile Health Map, where she draws upon her extensive experience to provide vital healthcare services to underserved communities in Boston and beyond. In addition to her leadership roles, Mollie is also a passionate educator and researcher, serving as a Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She has co-authored several publications, including the fifth edition of Health Program Planning and Evaluation. Mollie holds an MPH from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and a DrPH in Health Policy and Management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The area of my research interest focuses on the health consequences of exposure to air pollutants and climate change, and environmental health disparities.
My research interests are shaped by my background and training in both epidemiology and statistics, by developing and applying statistical methods for epidemiological investigations. My work has contributed substantially to our understanding of air pollution and climate change-mediated health impacts.
My research is focused on four main topics: (1) the impact of air pollution on mortality and morbidity in adults focusing on cardiovascular disease, and neurological disorders; (2) the assessment of the health consequences of extreme temperatures and other weather parameters on mortality and morbidity, (3) the characterization of susceptibility, vulnerability, and environmental health disparities; and (4) children’s health. In so doing, my work leverages administrative health data, cohort data, sociodemographic and environmental data.

Dr. Mingyu Zhang is a faculty member in the Department of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Zhang received his PhD (environmental epidemiology) and MHS (cardiovascular disease and clinical epidemiology) degrees from Johns Hopkins University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.
The primary focus of Dr. Zhang’s research program is to understand how environmental exposures shape disease risks and impact cardiovascular and metabolic health across the lifespan. His scholarly collaborations at Johns Hopkins and Harvard have led to 47 manuscripts published in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Zhang has successfully competed for grants from the American Heart Association (AHA) and has received prestigious awards such as the AHA Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award for New Investigators and the Scott Grundy Fellowship Award for Excellence in Metabolism Research.
Major media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Reuters, have covered Dr. Zhang’s work. His research has also been cited in guidelines by national and international organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Public Health Association (APHA). Dr. Zhang currently serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Trials.