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A cross-divisional department spanning

Research and Practice

Faculty Research Interests

The Department of Environmental Health and Engineering has a diverse range of research areas, which focus on the adverse influence of the environment on human health and with controlling these influences. In this regard, the Department considers “environment” in its broadest sense, including the natural, built and social environments.

Our faculty's research focuses on agents in the environment, including biological, chemical and physical environmental agents. The Department engages in a number of activities within this traditional approach, including studies of the sources and environmental distribution of such agents; human exposure to such agents; the body’s response at the molecular, cellular, organ system- and whole-body levels; environmental risk assessment; and prevention and intervention strategies (including environmental engineering, law, policy and communications solutions).

Faculty Member Research Focus

Daniel Barnett, MD
Associate Professor

Dr. Barnett's research includes best practice models to enhance all-hazards public health emergency readiness and response.

Shyam Biswal, PhD
Professor

Dr. Biswal's research focuses on understanding the host factor, Nrf2 that regulates stress response transcriptional program and protects against a range of pathological process (oxidative stress, inflammation, and apoptosis) in diseases such as COPD, lung cancer, and sepsis and develop a novel approach for intervention of these inflammatory diseases by targeting this host factor.

Joseph Bressler, PhD
Associate Professor

Dr. Bressler's laboratory has been studying transporters and their interaction with environmental toxins.

Buckley Research Group
Jessie Buckley, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dr. Buckley’s Research Group focuses on characterizing chemical exposures during pregnancy and early life and determining their effects on child growth and development.   

One Health Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University
Meghan Frost Davis, PhD, DVM
Assistant Professor

 

The One Health Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, led by Dr. Meghan Davis, examines the interface of bacteria and hosts to reduce microbe-mediated disease in humans and animals. This research applies the principles of one health and microbial ecology, evaluating target microbes and bacterial genes specifically and the larger microbial community (microbiome) broadly.

John D. Groopman, PhD 
Anna M. Baetjer Professor

Dr. Groopman’s research involves the development, validation and application of molecular biomarkers of exposure, dose, and effect from environmental carcinogens to high-risk populations. A major emphasis of the research has been in the elucidation of the role of aflatoxins, a common contaminate of the food supply, in the induction of liver cancer in high-risk populations living in Asia and Africa.

Harman Research Group (Landscape Hydrology@JHU)
Ciaran Harman, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dr. Harman's research group studies water flow and transport. Their work combines field work, experimental studies, and numerical modeling.

The Johns Hopkins Environmental Health Microbiology and Immunology Laboratory
Christopher D. Heaney, PhD
Associate Professor

Dr. Heaney's research in the Johns Hopkins Environmental Health Microbiology and Immunology Laboratory (JH-EHMIL) focuses on improving understanding of the dynamics and determinants of environmental and occupational stressors and infectious diseases.

Kirsten Koehler, PhD
Associate Professor

Dr. Koehler's goals are to improve exposure assessment methods to inform occupational and public health policy. Her research goals involve the use of direct-reading instrumentation to improve spatiotemporal exposure assessment.

Kohr Laboratory of Cardiovascular Redox Signaling
Mark Kohr, PhD
Assistant Professor

The focus of the Kohr Laboratory of Cardiovascular Redox Signaling is to elucidate redox-sensitive signaling pathways and to define the mechanistic consequences of redox-based post-translational protein modifications in healthy and diseased myocardium, namely S-nitrosylation and other forms of oxidation.

Keeve Nachman, PhD, MHS
Assistant Professor
Program Director, Food Production & Public Health Program
Center for A Livable Future

Dr. Nachman's research interests include arsenic, food systems, risk science, risk assessment, environmental epidemiology, industrial food animal production, animal waste, animal feed, foraging, urban gardens, agriculture, biosolids, veterinary drugs, Chesapeake Bay watershed protection, antimicrobial resistance, exposure assessment, regulatory toxicology, regulatory policy, chemical residues in food.

Roni A. Neff, PhD, MS
Associate Professor
Director, Food System Sustainability Program & Director of Research, Center for A Livable Future

Dr. Neff's research interests in the Food system, food waste, Farm Bill, climate change, agriculture, policy, communication, sustainability, health disparities, Baltimore, history, occupational injury and illness, resilience.

Preheim Lab Group
Sarah Preheim, PhD
Assistant Professor

The Preheim Lab Group seeks to understand, predict and manipulate complex microbial community function with a goal towards protecting and sustaining human and environmental health.

Research Program of Dr. Ramachandran
Professor

Dr. Ramachandran has conducted research in various areas relating to human exposure assessment in occupational, residential, and outdoor settings. His research has included the development of occupational exposure assessment strategies for airborne contaminants. He has conducted pioneering studies in occupational hygiene decision-making that synthesizes mathematical exposure models, monitoring data, and probabilistic expert judgment within a Bayesian framework. 

Kellogg Schwab, PhD
Professor

Dr. Schwab’s research focuses on environmental microbiology and engineering with an emphasis on the fate and transport of pathogenic microorganisms in water, food and the environment. This work includes extensive laboratory-based research designed to develop and evaluate molecular detection methods with subsequent application of these methods in field-based investigations.

The Wang Laboratory of Human Environmental Epigenomes
Zhibin Wang, PhD
Associate Professor

The long-term goal of the Wang laboratory is to determine how epigenetic codes, including patterns of DNA methylation and combinatorial patterns of simultaneously occurring histone modifications, are established and how this establishment goes awry upon environmental stimuli, thus contributing to human diseases (such as cancers and autoimmune diseases).