News

What's happening in Environmental and Molecular Toxicology?

Congratulations!

• Recent T32 Post Doc with Dr. Patrick Allard, Adam Filipowicz received the SoCal SOT Fall Meeting award!
• Recent Environmental and Mol Tox graduate, Candace Chang, had her project featured as Extramural Paper of the Month by the NIEHS' newsletter, Environmental Factor.  Congrats to Candace and the Araujo Lab!  
• Congratulations to Environmental and Molecular Toxicology graduate Merel Dagher for receiving an IRACDA fellowship!  She will be pursuing her postdoctoral studies in Dr. Catherine Cahill's lab in the Dept. of Psychiatry at UCLA.
• Environmental and Molecular Toxicology trainees present at SOT 2024 in Salt Lake City!
  • Caroline Cherry - Mechanisms of airway injury following woodfire exposure 
  • Zac Zamora - Comparative meta-analysis of liver transcriptome across short-and long-chain PFAS reveals converging molecular pathways
  • Max Levenson - BPA drives transgenerational negative reproductive outcomes in C. elegans through disruption of the synaptonemal complex
  • Adam Filipowicz - Neonicotinoid-induced dopaminergic neurodegeneration in C. elegans
• Allen Louie, a Mol Tox student, recently published two articles with his former group from UC Berkeley!  Check out his articles: "A systematic evidence map of chronic inflammation and immunosuppression related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) exposure" and "Mapping the key characteristics of carcinogens for glyphosate and its formulations: A systematic review."
• Rajat Gupta, one of our Environmental and Molecular Toxicology students, was awarded third place in the poster competition at the Southern California Chapter of SOT in San Diego, October 2022.
• Samuel Delk, one of our Environmental and Molecular Toxicology students, was awarded a T32 fellowship as part of the Vascular Biology Training Grant. 
• 2022-2023 T32 Recipients: Graduate students Candace Chang, Marisol Arellano, Allen Louie, and Thomas Kowal-Safron, and postdocs David Gonzalez and Adam Filipowicz. 
• Rajat Gupta, one of our Environmental and Molecular Toxicology students, recently published his paper, "Electronic and Tobacco Cigarettes Alter Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Oxidative Biomarkers." His interests in research include studying the role of oxidative stress in vascular disease and the mechanisms of how air pollutants promote atherosclerosis as well as cardiovascular diseases. Please click here for more details.
• Abigail Bline, one of our Environmental and Molecular Toxicology students, will be co-chairing and presenting her work entitled "PFASs Impair Meiotic Progression and Alter Ribonucleoprotein Granule Dynamics in C. elegans" in Platform 7: Detecting Rare Mutations, Gene and Germ Cell Toxicity symposium at the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society annual meeting.
• Dr. Lisa Barnhill, Hiromi Murata, Dr. Jesus Araujo, and Dr. Jeff Bronstein (former student, current student, and faculty of the Environmental and Molecular Toxicology IDP, respectively) were selected for the August 2020 NIEHS Extramural Paper of the Month.
• Courtney McClure, one of our Mol Tox students, was elected as the Graduate Student Representative of the Systems Biology Specialty Section of the Society of Toxicology in 2020.
• Dr. Shaily Mahenda, one of our Environmental Molecular Toxicology faculty members, has received a 2018 Mahatma Gandhi Pravasi Samman award from the Government of India Non-Resident Indian Welfare Society.  Please click here for more details. 
• Yen-Wei Chen, one of our Environmental and Molecular Toxicology doctoral students, has been awarded the Judith Blake Award in the amount of $2,500 by the UCLA School of Public Health Honors and Awards Committee. This scholarship is awarded based on general academic excellence combined with a strong commitment to the field of demography, population, and/or reproductive health as a career.  
• Dr. Beate Ritz, one of our Environmental and Molecular Toxicology faculty members, has been named the President of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) for 2018-2020.
• Dr. Shaily Mahendra, one of our Environmental and Molecular Toxicology faculty members, has received the 2017 Paul L. Busch Award from the nonprofit Water Environment & Reuse Foundation, in recognition of her groundbreaking research in developing promising environmental friendly technologies to remove pollutants from water. The honor, awarded annually since 2001, is considered the top recognition in the field of water quality for early- to mid-career researchers. It includes a $100,000 grant for her research.