UNIVERSITY PARK — The director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and National Toxicology Program (NTP) is the featured speaker for the Spring Health and the Environment Lecture at 1 p.m. on April 6 in 233 HUB-Robeson Center. Linda Birnbaum, who has spent more than 35 years researching, evaluating and educating the public on risks associated with hazardous environmental exposures, will present her talk titled, “Our Environment, Our Health: An NIEHS Perspective.”
In her lecture, Birnbaum will discuss the impacts of global environmental health, what it means for our local families and communities and 21st-century environmental health challenges such as climate change, arsenic exposure and persistent organic pollutants.
"Dr. Birnbaum has a long-standing, impactful career as a toxicologist and plays a major role in the direction of human health research at the nation's premiere environmental research organization, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences," said Gary Perdew, director of the Center for Molecular Toxicology and Carcinogenesis and John T. and Paige S. Smith Professor in Agricultural Sciences.
As director of NIEHS and NTP, Birnbaum oversees a budget of more than $780 million that funds biomedical research to discover how the environment influences human health and disease.
She is a board-certified toxicologist who has received numerous awards throughout her career, including the North Carolina Award in Science, two NIH Director’s Awards, Women in Toxicology Elsevier Mentoring Award, Society of Toxicology Public Communications Award, and many others. She was also elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, one of the highest honors in the fields of medicine and health.
Birnbaum is an active member of the scientific community. She is the author of more than 800 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and reports. Her own research focuses on the pharmacokinetic behavior of environmental chemicals, mechanisms of action of toxicants including endocrine disruption, and linking of real-world exposures to health effects.
The event, sponsored by the Center for Molecular Toxicology and Carcinogenesis and the Institutes of Energy and the Environment, is free and open to the public. Online registration is requested.
Following the lecture, attendees are invited to a reception and a health and the environment poster session focused on research by students and faculty from across the University. Poster submissions are open through March 24.
For more information, please visit the Institutes of Energy and the Environment’s online event calendar.