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Committee Biosketches
David L. Eaton, Ph.D. (Chair), is the dean and vice provost of the Graduate School at the University of Washington and professor of environmental and occupational health sciences and of public health genetics. Dr. Eaton’s research has focused on the metabolism of drugs and environmental carcinogens. He is interested in determining how useful animal toxicity testing data are to predicting human response, as well as understanding how individuals may differ in their susceptibility to cancer-causing chemicals. He served as president of the Society of Toxicology, as vice president of the Toxicology Education Foundation, and on the Board of Trustees of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences, of which he is an Elected Fellow. He previously served on seven committees convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on a variety of environmental health topics. Dr. Eaton received his Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Kansas Medical Center. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Anthony J. Alberg, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a professor and the chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. He was previously the Blatt Ness Endowed Chair in Oncology, professor of Public Health Sciences, and the associate director of Population Sciences of the Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Alberg is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on non-melanoma skin cancer, cigarette smoking, health effects of secondhand smoke, etiology of tobacco-associated
malignancies, and tobacco prevention and control. He currently serves on the Cancer Screening and Prevention Editorial Board of the National Cancer Institute’s Physician Data Query, as the chair-elect of the Cancer Prevention Committee of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and has served as editor for the Epidemiology Section of the American College of Chest Physician’s Lung Cancer Guidelines II and III, associate editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and has been a contributing author to two Surgeon General’s reports on the health consequences of smoking. In South Carolina, he is a member of the state’s Cancer Control Advisory Committee (CCAC) and is chair of the CCAC’s Cancer Surveillance Committee. He has previously served on the National Academies committee addressing the health implications of raising the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products. Dr. Alberg received his M.P.H. from the Yale University School of Medicine and his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Maciej Goniewicz, Ph.D., is an associate professor of oncology at the Department of Health Behavior, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York. Dr. Goniewicz’s primary research area is in nicotine pharmacology, with a focus on nicotine dependence and smoking cessation. He has research experience in smoking cessation behavioral treatment, pharmacotherapy, and pharmacokinetics in both clinical and community-based settings. His current research is focused on new nicotine-containing products and alternative forms of tobacco. These studies include the laboratory evaluation of the products, pharmacological and toxicological assessment, surveys among their users, and their potential application in harm reduction and smoking cessation. Dr. Goniewicz received his Pharm.D. and Ph.D. in toxicology and pharmacology from the Medical University of Silesia, Poland.
Adam Leventhal, Ph.D., is a professor of preventive medicine and psychology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Leventhal is a clinical psychologist who conducts longitudinal cohort research, laboratory studies, and clinical trials. Major foci of his work include adolescent and young adult substance use, comorbidity between psychiatric disorders and addiction, e-cigarette use and tobacco regulatory science, addiction psychopharmacology and genetics, and addiction among populations subject to health disparities (e.g., African Americans, women). He directs the University of Southern California Health, Emotion, & Addiction Laboratory, a multidisciplinary team of scholars, staff, and students that supports scientific and educational activities in the health promotion and disease prevention field. Dr. Leventhal received his M.A. in psychology and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Houston.
José E. Manautou, Ph.D., is a professor of pharmacology and toxicology and interim chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy. Dr. Manautou’s research interests include target organ toxicity, hepatic detoxification and disposition mechanisms, and hepatotoxicants and interference affecting susceptibility to chemical injury. He is a former councilor of the Society of Toxicology and of the society’s Mechanisms Specialty Section. He previously served on a committee of the National Academies addressing health risks of trichloroethylene. Dr. Manautou received his Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology from the Purdue University School of Pharmacy.
Sharon McGrath-Morrow, M.D., M.B.A., is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with a joint appointment in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. McGrath-Morrow is also the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Pulmonary Fellowship Director, a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a member of the American Academy of Pediatric Tobacco Consortium. She is a pediatric pulmonologist and clinician scientist who runs a translational laboratory modeling neonatal lung injury. Her research interests include understanding the neonatal immune response to acute lung injury, respiratory outcomes in preterm infants with chronic lung disease, and the impact of secondhand and thirdhand smoke on postnatal lung growth and adult lung function. Dr. McGrath-Morrow received her M.D. from the University of Virginia.
David Mendez, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. His research focuses on the application of mathematical/computational models for public health policy, particularly in the field of tobacco control. He has conducted research on the impact of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence and health outcomes. He has also been involved in research to evaluate policies regarding residential radon and the uptake of the human papillomavirus vaccine. He is currently engaged in a study to evaluate the impact of peer pressure on smoking uptake among teenagers using systems dynamics and agent-based models. He served on a prior committee of the National Academies assessing agent-based modeling in tobacco control. Dr. Mendez received his M.S. in applied statistics, M.S. in operations research/systems science, and Ph.D. in management science from Michigan State University.
Richard Miech, Ph.D., is a research professor at the Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. Previously, Dr. Miech had been a professor and department chair in the Department
of Health and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver. His work focuses on trends in substance use, with an emphasis on disentangling how these trends vary by age, historical period, and birth cohort membership. His research interests also include the causes and consequences of substance use over the life course. Dr. Miech received his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University.
Ana Navas-Acien, M.D., is a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Navas-Acien’s research investigates the long-term health effects of widespread environmental exposures (arsenic and other metals, tobacco smoke, air pollution), their interactions with genetic and epigenetic variants, and effective interventions for reducing involuntary environmental exposures. For more than 10 years, she has been working on environment-related research in population-based cohort studies such as the Strong Heart Study, a study of cardiovascular disease and its risk factors in American Indian communities, and the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, a study of cardiovascular, metabolic, and lung disease in urban settings across the United States. She has served on National Academies committees addressing inorganic arsenic and the scientific capabilities of the Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Navas-Acien received her M.D. from the University of Granada, M.P.H. from the National School of Health, Madrid, Spain, and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
Kent E. Pinkerton, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine and the Department of Anatomy, Physiology, and Cell Biology in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Pinkerton also serves as director of the university’s Center for Health and the Environment. Dr. Pinkerton’s research interests focus on the health effects of environmental air pollutants on lung structure and function, the interaction of gases and airborne particles within specific sites and cell populations of the lungs in acute and chronic lung injury, and the effects of environmental tobacco smoke on lung growth and development. Prior to 2008, he received research support from Phillip Morris and has collaborated with other researchers who received research support from Phillip Morris. He previously served on committees of the National Academies related to estimating mortality risk reduction from decreasing tropospheric ozone exposure, formaldehyde risk assessment, and particulate matter surveillance. Dr. Pinkerton received his Ph.D. in pathology from Duke University.
Nancy A. Rigotti, M.D., is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and associate chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Rigotti has pioneered research on interventions to reduce smoking prevalence and the burden of tobacco-related morbidity and mortality. A general internist, her clinical research focuses on developing and disseminating interventions for smoking cessation within primary care practices and inpatient settings. She founded and directs the Massachusetts General Hospital Tobacco Research and Treatment Center. She is a past president of the Society of General Internal Medicine and a past president of the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco. She was a scientific editor of the 1989 Surgeon General’s report on tobacco, a comprehensive review that provided scientific support for policy making and she was a deputy editor of Nicotine & Tobacco Research. Dr. Rigotti received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School.
David A. Savitz, Ph.D., is a professor of epidemiology in the Brown University School of Public Health, with a joint appointment in obstetrics and gynecology and pediatrics in the Alpert Medical School. His epidemiological research has addressed a wide range of many important public health issues including environmental hazards in the workplace and community, reproductive health outcomes, and environmental influences on cancer. He has done extensive work on health effects of nonionizing radiation, pesticides, drinking water treatment by-products, and perfluorinated compounds. He was the president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research and North American Regional Councilor for the International Epidemiological Association. He was compensated by Best Practice Management Inc. through an unrestricted grant from Star Scientific to chair a panel discussion and author a 2006 summary paper on the public health implications of smokeless tobacco use as a harm reduction strategy. Dr. Savitz received his master’s degree in preventive medicine from The Ohio State University and Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Gideon St.Helen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of medicine, Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Department of Medicine, at the University of California, San Francisco. The focus of his research program is the utility and evaluation of biological markers of tobacco use and exposure for epidemiology, risk assessment, product regulation, and identification of susceptibility factors for tobacco-related diseases. His ongoing research on the clinical pharmacology of e-cigarettes includes studies on nicotine
pharmacokinetics, cardiovascular and subjective effects of e-cigarette use, patterns of use, and influence of e-cigarette device characteristics such as flavors on the clinical pharmacology and safety of e-cigarettes. Dr. St.Helen received his Ph.D. in toxicology from the University of Georgia.
