News

What's happening in Environmental and Molecular Toxicology

Congratulations!

• 2026- Congrats to Darcy Van Deventer, one of our T32 Trainees, on publishing two first-author publications this year! Check them out: Prenatal pesticide exposure and neuroblastoma - A statewide case-control study in California and Exposure to Industrial Air Toxics and Risk of Breast Cancer in California: The Multiethnic Cohort Study
• 2026 - Congratulations to Tahee Kim, one of our EMT students, for her poster Bioprinted colorectal cancer organoids as a Platform for large-scale therapeutic screening. at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 
  
• 2026 - Presentations at the Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting
  • Dr. Patrick Allard, Professor (Leveraging In Vivo, In Vitro, and In Silico Approaches to Accelerate the Discovery of Novel Reproductive Toxicants & From Correlation to Causation: Development and Application of Novel Approaches to Implicate Epigenetic Mechanisms in Toxicological Responses) - Symposium Session
  • Dr. Sarah Avila-Barnard, EMT Postdoctoral Trainee (The Metabolo-Epigenetic Role of AS3MT in Arsenic Exposure) - Poster
  • Caroline Cherry, EMT Postdoctoral Trainee (Woodsmoke-Induced Airway Injury Is Preventable with MEK Inhibition) - Workshop Presentation
  • ​Samiksha Deme, EMT Student (Integrated Multiomic analysis of arsenic-induced perturbations to the pluripotency network of mouse embryonic and epiblast-like stem cells) - Poster
  • Dr. Feng Gao, Assistant Professor (Learning Aging and Disease related Epigenetic Trajectory for Type 1 Diabetes) - Poster
  • Dylan Hatai, EMT Student/T32 Doctoral Student Trainee (Perinatal E-cigarette Exposure Disrupts Lung Function and Germ Cell Development in Offspring) - Poster
  • Rachel Kim, T32 Doctoral Student Trainee (Neurotoxicity Risk Modeling of Oral-Mucosal BPA Exposure from Dental Resin Composites: Implications for Reassessing the U.S. EPA Standard) - Poster
  • Siri Langmo, EMT Student (Associations between Secondhand Electronic Cigarette Aerosol Exposure in Vape Shops and Airway Mechanics) - Poster
  • Max Levenson, EMT Student (Epigenetic alterations of histone post-translational modifications in response to alcohol) - Poster
  • Allen Louie, EMT Student (Genetic and Chemical Modulation of Heme Oxygenase-1 Regulates Ultrafine Particle-Induced Inflammation in Macrophages) - Poster
  • Natalya Pelayo, EMT Student (SMILES to brain: predicting blood-brain barrier permeability of environmental chemicals) - Poster
  • Darcy Van Deventer, T32 Doctoral Student Trainee (Prenatal pesticide exposure and neuroblastoma - A statewide case-control study in California) - Poster​​
• 2025 - Dr. David H. Gonzalez, former EMT T32 Postdoc Trainee, recently published his paper, Inhalation of electrophilic and redox active electronic cigarette aerosol increases oxidative potential in the lung in an acute manner. In this paper, he presents a new methodological development for assessing the redox status in the lungs of mice exposed to toxicants such as electronic cigarettes. This study was co-authored by current EMT students Allen Louie, postdoc Rajat Gupta, and faculty members Dr. Jesus Araujo and Dr. Suzanne Paulson.
• 2025- Congratulations to Dr. Cherry on being named a recipient of the 2025 Chorafas Foundation Award, recognizing her outstanding research and achievements!
• 2025- Rajat Gupta's article, Diesel exhaust induces gut microbiome dysbiosis and reduced fecal acetate: Role of acetate supplementation, has just been published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety.
• 2025- Congratulations to Dr. Thomas Kowal on passing his thesis defense!
• 2025- Congratulations to Dr. Zacary Zamora on passing his thesis defense!
• 2025- Congratulations to Dr. Marisol Arellano on passing his thesis defense!
• 2025- Congratulations to Dr. Samuel Delk on passing his thesis defense!
• 2025- Congratulations to Allen Louie for being awarded a highly competitive Dissertation Year Fellowship award! 
• 2025- Congratulations to Dr. Caroline Cherry on passing her thesis defense!
• 2025- Congratulations to Dr. Rajat Gupta on passing his thesis defense!
• 2025- Presentations at Society of Toxicology 
  • Adam Filipowicz (Imidacloprid and flupyradifurone cause dopaminergic neurodegeneration)- Poster
  • Marisol Arellano (Fungicide-induced aminergic neuron toxicity, neuroinflammatory response, and alterations in autophagic flux in a zebrafish model)- Poster
  • Allen Louie (Heme oxygenase-1 Modulates Inflammation and Macrophage Polarization Induced by Ultrafine Particles in Bone Marrow-Derived Macrophages)- Poster
  • Rajat Gupta (Ultrafine Particulate Matter Exposure Induces Gut Dysbiosis and Alters Fecal Short Chain Fatty Acids in Association with Worsened Atherosclerosis)- Poster
  • Caroline Cherry (T32) (Woodfire Smoke Induced Mucociliary Airway Injury is Preventable with MEK Inhibition)- Poster
  • Thomas Kowal (Integration of Ex Vivo Single Cell RNA Sequencing with In Vitro Bulk Transcriptomics to Optimize Selection of Immortalized Cell Lines for Hepatotoxicity Screening)- Poster
  • Zacary Zamora (Evaluating the Differential Metabolic Effects of GenX Exposure on Genetically Distinct Mouse Strains of Both Sexes)- Poster
  • Feng Gao (Leveraging autoencoders for high-dimensional epigenetics biomarkers-based cancer type prediction and pattern recognition)- Poster
  • Max Levenson (T32) (Wood smoke particulate matter promotes a stress response and negative reproductive outcomes in C. elegans)- Poster
  • Dylan Hatai (T32) (The Molecular Mechanisms of Perinatal E-cigarette-Induced Asthma)- Platform Presentation
  • Ingrid Cely (Sex-dependent effects of PFOA on pancreatic islets from pro-diabetic mice with human islet amyloid polypeptide transgene)-Poster
• 2025- Congratulations to EMT Student, Siri Langmo, on her appointment to the TRDRP Predoctoral Award!
• 2025- Congratulations on the appointments of Drs. Araujo, Gomperts, and Ritz to the UCLA Health Wildfire Steering Committee.
• 2025- Congratulations to Dr. Patrick Allard on his election as Vice President-Elect of SCSOT
• 2025- Congratulations to previous Molecular Toxicology T32 Postdoc, Adam Filipowicz for his appointment as postdoctoral representative of SCSOT
• 2025 - A recent publication of Integrated hepatic transcriptomics and metabolomics identify Pck1 as a key factor in the broad dysregulation induced by vehicle pollutants. This study was co-authored by current EMT students; Rajat Gupta, Siri Langmo, and Allen Louie and faculty members Xia Yang and Dr. Jesus Araujo.
• 2025 - Rajat Gupta, an EMT student, was recently awarded with the Society of Toxicology Outstanding Graduate Student Leadership Award by the Inhalation and Respiratory Specialty Section (IRSS).
• 2025- Rajat Gupta, an EMT student, was recently awarded the Dr. Laxman Desai Graduate Student Best Abstract Award by the Association of Scientists of Indian Origin-SOT (ASIO-SOT)