BIOS

Dr. Deborah Cory-Slechta is a Professor of Environmental Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical School (URMC). She previously served as Chair of its Department of Environmental Medicine and Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Environmental Health Sciences Center in 1998, and as Dean for Research from 2000 to 2002. She then became Director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI) and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Community Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School from 2003 to 2007, before returning to URMC. Dr. Cory-Slechta has served on national review and advisory panels of the National Institutes of Health, the NIEHS, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Center for Toxicological Research, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She currently serves on the Advisory Committee for Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention of the CDC. In addition, Dr. Cory-Slechta has served on the editorial boards of the journals Neurotoxicology, Toxicology, Toxicological Sciences, Fundamental and Applied Toxicology, Neurotoxicology and Teratology, and American Journal of Mental Retardation. She has held the elected positions of President of the Neurotoxicology Specialty Section of the Society of Toxicology, President of the Behavioral Toxicology Society, and been named a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Her research has focused largely on the relationships between brain neurotransmitter systems and behavior, and how such relationships are altered by exposures to environmental toxicants, particularly the role played by environmental neurotoxicant exposures in developmental disabilities and neurodegenerative diseases.

Neal Fann serves in the Office of Air and Radiation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where he has developed extensive experience in quantifying and characterizing the human health impacts, and monetized benefits of changes in criteria and toxic air pollution. In this role, he has performed technically complicated and policy-relevant benefits assessments in support of major EPA regulatory actions, including the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury and Air Toxics Rule, among many others.
Mr. Fann manages the PC-based environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program (BenMAP) software, a model relied upon by EPA, stakeholder groups, researchers and international analysts to quantify the impacts and monetized benefits of air quality improvements. To ensure that this model remains the state-of-the-science and is properly specified with the best available data, he continually and critically evaluates the newest air pollution epidemiology and economics literature.
Mr. Fann also has regularly contributes to the academic literature, publishing air pollution risk assessment and Environmental Justice assessments in journals, including Risk Analysis and Environmental Science & Technology. Most recently, he wrote a commentary in Environmental Health Perspectives, articulating the benefits of tighter integration between air pollution epidemiology and risk assessment. His recent publications also include a national assessment of the public health burden of recent levels of PM2.5 and ozone in the United States, and a proof-of-concept approach for maximizing the public health benefits of air quality improvements while achieving a more equitable distribution of risk. Prior to joining EPA, he received a Master’s of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science from Trinity University.

Jonathan Levy is a Professor of Environmental Health in the Department of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health. He has published more than 100 articles on topics related to air pollution exposure assessment and health risk assessment, with a focus on urban environments and issues of heterogeneity and equity. Recent and ongoing research topics include evaluating spatial patterns of air pollution in complex urban terrain, developing methods to quantify the magnitude and distribution of health benefits associated with emissions controls for motor vehicles and power plants, using systems science approaches to evaluate the influence of indoor environmental exposures on pediatric asthma in low-income housing, and developing methods for community-based cumulative risk assessment that includes chemical and non-chemical stressors. Dr. Levy has served on numerous national advisory committees, including the National Research Council Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Methods Used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Research Council Committee on Science for EPA’s Future, and the Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis. Dr. Levy was the recipient of the Walter A. Rosenblith New Investigator Award from the Health Effects Institute in 2005. He received his Sc.D. from Harvard School of Public Health in Environmental Science and Risk Management, with a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard College.

Lawrence Martin works in EPA’s Office of the Science Advisor on the Risk Assessment Forum Staff.  He is a science coordinator for the Cumulative Risk Assessment Technical Panel and Ecological Oversight Committee. He worked in the area of science policy in the EPA Office of Research and Development since 1992 addressing issues of state, local and tribal government technology transfer and environmental justice, as well as ecological, economics and air research planning. Prior to EPA Mr. Martin was employed by the District of Columbia as a science advisor to the City Council Committee on Public Works and the Environment. He attended East Carolina University pursuing undergraduate studies in Earth Sciences and Urban and Regional Planning, and a Master’s of Science in Environmental Health.

Devon Payne-Sturges, Dr.P.H., is the Assistant Center Director for Human Health at the U.S Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Center for Environmental Research (NCER). She is responsible for conducting strategic research planning and directing NCER’s approximately $20 million human health research program. She serves as the primary NCER contact on human health research for interactions with the EPA Office of Research and Development’s Human Health National Program Director, EPA Program Offices, Regions, ORD Centers/Laboratories on Program Reviews, Research Planning-Research Coordinating Teams, and Multi-Year Plans, including Research Strategy/Priority Setting. Her areas of research include use of exposure biomonitoring for policy analysis, risk assessment, environmental health indicator development, children’s environmental health and environmental health of minority populations. Dr. Payne-Sturges was recently appointed to U.S. EPA’s Risk Assessment Forum and is serving on the Cumulative Risk Assessment Technical Panel and as chapter lead for the agency’s exposure assessment guidelines focusing on exposures of vulnerable and susceptible populations. She is EPA’s representative on the interagency Federal Collaboration on Health Disparities Research (FCHDR) executive committee. She possesses Master’s of Public Health and Doctor of Public Health degrees in Environmental Health Sciences from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to joining the EPA, Dr. Payne-Sturges served as the Assistant Commissioner for Environmental Health with the Baltimore City Health Department.

Madeleine Kangsen Scammell is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health and a Core Director of the Partners in Health and Housing Prevention Research Center (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the Boston University Superfund Research Program (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences). Her research is mostly community-driven and community-based and includes mixed-methods analysis that incorporates qualitative and quantitative data obtained using social science and epidemiological research methods. She is the Principal Investigator of an EPA STAR grant to develop new analytic techniques for examining the cumulative risks of exposure to social and chemical stressors.

Brad Schultz, of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development, National Exposure Research Laboratory is working to improve the availability of information for community-based environmental decision-making, especially related to cumulative risk assessment. Prior to working in EPA/NERL, he worked in the EPA Region 5 office (Chicago), EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (DC), the National Health and Environmental Effects Laboratory (Chapel Hill), NY City Department of Environmental Protection, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has worked on local environmental issues in those capacities and others in a number of states. His work in the EPA sustainable and healthy communities’ research program, community public health component, includes serving as the task lead for cumulative risk assessment and co-leading the Community-Focused Exposure and Risk Screening Tool (C-FERST; epa.gov/heasd/c-ferst).  Although his research is largely related to human exposure assessment, his strong interest is in integrating exposure research with health, economic, risk communication and whatever else is needed to reduce barriers to use of the best science for community-level decision-making.