May 2023| Center for Human Health and the Environment

Upcoming Events

Please join us for our Spring Mini-retreat at the Transfer Food Hall: https://www.transfercofoodhall.com/ on May 24 from 3-6 pm. We will be celebrating the successes of CHHE members (including someone who just got an incredible score on his R01 - find out May 24), discussing plans for next year, and learning more about what's up with CHHE. There will be plenty of time to mix and mingle and reconnect with your fellow Center members and with members of our Community Stakeholder Advisory Board. Hope to see you there!

We will send out a calendar invite, so please respond so we have a head count for food and drinks!

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The Chancellor's Faculty Excellence Program EHS Cluster (Jane Hoppin, Cathrine Hoyo, Mike Cowley, Shobhan Gaddameedhi, Jonathan Hall, and cluster lead Rob Smart) participated in a gala at JC Raulston Arboretum, hosted by the Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs. The purpose was to identify strategic areas for investment to address emerging challenges in the environmental health sciences.

RIG and Core Updates

NEW RIG: Plastics in the Natural Environment Research Interest Group (PINE RIG)

Plastics are ubiquitous in the environment and in our lives. Even though many of the ingredients in plastics and plasticizers are suspected and known toxic hazards that may induce powerful and perhaps transgenerational impacts, the consumer demand for plastics continues to rise. Since 1970, over 45,000 scientific papers have been published on plastics in the environment globally. Yet, few of those scientific papers have truly shed light on the impacts of plastics to human health and the environment. Undoubtedly, with future climate change, these impacts will be intensified!

PINE RIG’s Main Objective: The plastics in the natural environment research interest group (PINE RIG) seeks to engage the CHHE scientific community in scientific dialog related to plastics. This dialog should eventually lead to research collaborations, proposal submissions, and scholarly products, collectively designed to have a positive impact on human health from exposure to plastics.

Comparative Pathology Core

CHHE has been looking for new pathology core support, since our CHHE pathologist Hannah Atkins left CHHE in January. To fill the void, we are going to contract with EPL Pathology Labs: https://www.epl-inc.com/ to help provide the intellectual input CHHE members need with regard to pathology: reading slides, getting input on how to best collect specimens, etc. CHHE members can still use their seed funds for pathology support to prepare or stain slides in the cores at NC State or UNC. If you are interesting in getting some pathology support for your project, please reach to CHHE through the CHHE website on the quicklinks page (contact the Comparative Pathology Core) and we will followup with you to get things started.

KUDOS

Karen Litwa received the Scholar-Teacher Award. The purpose of the annual Scholar-Teacher Awards is to recognize faculty members who effectively integrate research and or creative activity with their teaching roles. These individuals not only excel in their research, teaching, and practice but blend these key faculty roles in such a way that enables them to inform one another and model this integration for students and colleagues. Poster

Ayse Ercumen is one of the 25 NC State faculty to be named to the 2022-2023 class of Goodnight Early Career Innovators. The Goodnight Early Career Innovators program recognizes and rewards promising NC State early-career faculty whose scholarship is in STEM or STEM education. Dr. Ercumen also received the 2023 Outstanding Global Engagement award. The Outstanding Global Engagement Award encourages and recognizes exceptional accomplishment in globally engaged teaching, research, extension, and/or engagement and economic development.

Randy Jirtle presented an invited talk at the AMMG Meeting in Miami, April 29, 2023 on the human imprintome in health and disease.

Fred Wright's T32 "Graduate Program in Bioinformatics" has been renewed, 2021-2025. This grant has emphasis on Environmental Bioinformatics and it supports five graduate students a year.

Reminders

Cite and acknowledge NIH award support and the CHHE’s P30 grant in future publications and presentations by including this –

“Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P30ES025128. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.”

Publications citing the Center grant in the acknowledgements of a manuscript and in the deposit of the manuscript in NIEMS are the currency for the P30 renewal!

CHHE Resources and Facilities Page for NIH Grants is available on the CHHE website .

PINS: When submitting your grants, be sure to select "Center for Human Health and the Environment" as a center in PINS.

Click here to check out CHHE Cited Publications!