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Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy (2018)

Chapter: Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
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Appendix

Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome

Ronald M. Atlas (Chair) is professor of biology at the University of Louisville. His early research focused on oil spills and bioremediation. He later focused on the molecular detection of pathogens in the environment, which informs the development of biosensors to detect biothreat agents. Dr. Atlas is the author of nearly 300 manuscripts and 20 books. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and has received the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Award for Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the ASM Founders Award, the Edmund Youde Lectureship Award in Hong Kong, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Guelph. He has served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Advisory Committee, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Planetary Protection Board, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Scientific Working Group on Bio-forensics, and the National Institutes of Health’s Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. He has also served as the ASM president and is co-chair of the ASM Biodefense Committee. Dr. Atlas has been the chair or a member of numerous National Academies committees. He received his PhD in microbiology from Rutgers University.

Kjersti M. Aagaard is a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics of Baylor College of Medicine. She specializes in maternal–fetal medicine, in which her research interests include basic-science investigations and translation into clinical research. She is specifically interested in microbiome interactions with preterm birth and in the role of the in utero environment and epigenetics in fetal programming and development. Dr. Aagaard earned her MD from the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis and her PhD from the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine.

Elaine Hsiao is an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology and the Department of Medicine, Digestive Diseases at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research interests include the microbiome, neurobiology of disease, neuroimmunology, and host–microorganism interactions. Specifically, her research explores the effects of the microbiota on the nervous system and communication between microorganisms and the nervous system. Dr. Hsiao also studies the particular functions of microbiome species and the effects of modification of the microbiome on neurologic disease. She was the De Logi Chair in Biological Sciences at UCLA, received a National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award, and was selected for the Forbes “30 under 30 in Science & Healthcare.” Dr. Hsiao was the 2013 Caltech Everhart Lecturer and served on the White House Office of Science and Technology Microbiome Forum. She received her PhD in neurobiology from the California Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
×

Yvonne Huang is an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Huang’s research interests include the microbiome, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and interactions between therapeutics and the microbiome. Her work on the respiratory microbiome in asthma and COPD includes trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. She was a Yale/Johnson & Johnson Physician Scholar in International Health and served as associate director of the adult cystic fibrosis program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Huang earned her MD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, trained in internal medicine at Yale, and completed a fellowship in pulmonary/critical care medicine at UCSF.

Curtis Huttenhower is an associate professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an associate member at the Broad Institute. Dr. Huttenhower’s laboratory worked extensively with the National Institutes of Health Human Microbiome Project (HMP) to identify and characterize the microorganisms found in association with both healthy and diseased humans. In 2015, he co-led one of the follow-up HMP2 Centers for Characterizing the Gut Microbial Ecosystem in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. He received a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2010 for his research on microbial communities and was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2012. Dr. Huttenhower was also awarded the Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology in 2015. He is a member of the editorial boards of the academic journals Genome Biology, Microbiome, and BMC Bioinformatics. Dr. Huttenhower received his PhD in genomics from Princeton University.

Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown is an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering and is part of the Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology in the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. She specializes in molecular microbial ecology for bioremediation, the use of microbial systems for bioenergy production, and human intestinal microbial ecology and its relationship to obesity, bariatric surgery, and autism. She is an author of five patents and more than 70 peer-reviewed publications and has presented numerous talks and posters at national and international conferences. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and completed her PhD in environmental engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Susan Lynch is a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is the director of the Colitis and Crohn’s Disease Microbiome Research Core and the associate director of the Microbiome in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program. Dr. Lynch’s research program focuses primarily on the gastrointestinal microbiome and its role in the origins and maintenance of chronic inflammatory diseases, including airway diseases. She was awarded the Rebecca Buckley Lectureship by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Global Thinkers in 2016, and serves as an American Society of Microbiology Distinguished Lecturer and a senior editor for Microbiome. Dr. Lynch earned her PhD in molecular microbiology at the University College Dublin.

William Nazaroff is the Daniel Tellep Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His research group studies the physics and chemistry of air pollutants in proximity to people, especially in indoor environments. The group also works in the domain of exposure science and stresses the development and application of methods for understanding mechanistically the relationship between emission sources and human exposure to pollutants. Dr. Nazaroff has served as president of the Academy of Fellows in the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate and president of the American Association for Aerosol Research. For the National Academies, he chaired the Planning Committee for the Workshop on Health Risks of Indoor Exposure to Particulate Matter and served

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
×

on the Committee on the Effect of Climate Change on Indoor Air Quality and Public Health and the Committee on Air Quality in Passenger Cabins of Commercial Aircraft. Dr. Nazaroff earned his PhD in environmental engineering science from the California Institute of Technology.

Andrew Patterson is an associate professor of molecular toxicology at Pennsylvania State University. He studies the metabolism of drugs and foreign chemicals by the human body and how chemicals in diets or nutrients derived from diets influence health and disease. Much of his research involves the use of metabolomics tools. Dr. Patterson was a research fellow of the National Cancer Institute, and he served on the National Academies committee responsible for planning the workshop Getting the Most from Microbiome Research in the Next Decade. He earned his PhD in genetics from the George Washington University.

John F. Rawls is an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the Duke University School of Medicine and director of the Duke Microbiome Center. He has secondary appointments in Duke University’s Department of Medicine, Center for Host–Microbial Interactions, and Cancer Institute. Dr. Rawls’s laboratory uses zebrafish and mouse models to study how intestinal microbiota affect vertebrate health. He was recognized as a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Rawls received his PhD in developmental biology from Washington University.

Joseph V. Rodricks is a founding principal of Ramboll Environ. An expert in toxicology and risk analysis, he has consulted for hundreds of manufacturers and government agencies and for the World Health Organization in the evaluation of human health risks associated with exposure to chemical substances. Before Environ, Dr. Rodricks served for 15 years as a scientist at the US Food and Drug Administration; in his last 4 years, he served as associate commissioner for health affairs. His experience extends from pharmaceuticals, medical devices, consumer products, and foods, to occupational chemicals and environmental contaminants. He has served on the National Academies Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and on 30 other boards and committees of the National Academies, including the committees that produced the seminal works Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process (1983) and Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment (2009). Dr. Rodricks has nearly 150 scientific publications and has received honorary awards from three professional societies for his contributions to toxicology and risk analysis. He earned his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Maryland, College Park and was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

Pamela Shubat is retired from the Minnesota Department of Health Environmental Health Division, where she supervised the work of the Health Risk Assessment Unit. She has worked on many aspects of risk assessment, toxicology, and exposure assessment. For example, she has been involved in work on sensitive subpopulations and life stages and drinking-water contaminants. Dr. Shubat’s major responsibilities have included research on fish contaminants, childhood lead-poisoning prevention, population-based exposure assessment, and rules for groundwater contaminants. In addition to state work, she served as an appointed member and chair of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee and as a peer reviewer for EPA projects that involved methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, and risk-assessment practice. Dr. Shubat is a member of the EPA Federal–State Toxicology Risk Analysis Committee. She earned a PhD in pharmacology and toxicology from the University of Arizona.

Brian Thrall is an associate director in the Biological Sciences Division and chief scientist for the Health Impacts and Exposure Science Group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). He has over 20 years of experience in leading research programs focused on developing and applying systems-toxicology and exposure-science

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
×

strategies to elucidate and ultimately predict biologic response pathways modulated by exposure to environmental agents of concern to human health. As director of PNNL’s Center for Nanotoxicology, Dr. Thrall leads a multidisciplinary team that uses state-of-the-art genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, and cell imaging to understand receptor-mediated interactions between biologic systems and engineered nanomaterials. In addition, he serves as the thrust leader for PNNL’s Microbiomes-in-Transition research program, which includes a focus on developing tools and strategies to elucidate microbiome–exposome interactions. Dr. Thrall earned his PhD in pharmacology and toxicology from Washington State University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
×

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
×
Page 106
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
×
Page 107
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
×
Page 108
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
×
Page 109
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographic Information on the Committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24960.
×
Page 110
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A great number of diverse microorganisms inhabit the human body and are collectively referred to as the human microbiome. Until recently, the role of the human microbiome in maintaining human health was not fully appreciated. Today, however, research is beginning to elucidate associations between perturbations in the human microbiome and human disease and the factors that might be responsible for the perturbations. Studies have indicated that the human microbiome could be affected by environmental chemicals or could modulate exposure to environmental chemicals.

Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk presents a research strategy to improve our understanding of the interactions between environmental chemicals and the human microbiome and the implications of those interactions for human health risk. This report identifies barriers to such research and opportunities for collaboration, highlights key aspects of the human microbiome and its relation to health, describes potential interactions between environmental chemicals and the human microbiome, reviews the risk-assessment framework and reasons for incorporating chemical–microbiome interactions.

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