2024 Awardees

View the 2023 Awardees

John Goldsmith Award

Beate Ritz

Beate Ritz, MD, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health with co-appointments in Environmental Health Sciences and Neurology at the UCLA, SOM; and a member of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. She initiated the field of air pollution and pregnancy outcome research in the mid-1990s. Her lab has studied the effects of occupational and environmental toxins focusing on air pollution and pesticides, developing geographic information system (GIS) based exposure assessment tools and also applying omics approaches to discover biological signatures for environmental factors impacting pregnancy and reproductive outcomes (gestational disorders, adverse birth outcomes, placenta function), neurodevelopment (autism, cerebral palsy, ADHD), and neurodegeneration (Parkinson’s and Alzheimer disease). Dr. Ritz served on multiple National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine (NAS-IOM) committees, U.S. EPA panels, and the Scientific Advisory Board for the California State Air Toxics Assessment program. She has served as President of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE in 2018-19). In 2007, she received the Robert M. Zweig M.D. Memorial Award (Clean Air Award), and in 2022, the Society for Epidemiology Research (SER) Ken Rothman Career Achievement Award for scientific innovation in research or teaching of epidemiology. In 2024, she received the John Goldsmith award for sustained and outstanding contributions to the knowledge and practice of environmental epidemiology from the ISEE.

Tony McMichael Award

Tanya Alderete

Tanya L. Alderete is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. She holds a PhD in Integrative Biology of Disease from the University of Southern California, where she also completed postdoctoral training in environmental epidemiology. Dr. Alderete's research is centered on elucidating the impact of environmental exposures, such as air pollution and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), on the gut microbiome and its role in the development of obesity and metabolic diseases throughout the lifespan. She employs a range of advanced statistical and multi-omics methodologies, including metabolomics and microbiome analyses, to identify novel biomarkers and mechanisms of disease. With extensive experience in large-scale epidemiological studies, Dr. Alderete has explored the effects of environmental exposures on maternal and child health. She is the Principal Investigator of several NIH-funded projects, including R01 grants focused on the health impacts of air pollutants and PFAS in early life. Her work integrates high-dimensional data science techniques to better understand and mitigate the health risks associated with environmental contaminants.

Rebecca James Baker Award

Matthew Shupler

Dr. Matt Shupler is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard Chan School of Public Health, where his research focuses on socioeconomic disparities in the association between ambient air pollution, temperature and adverse pregnancy and early childhood outcomes. For his PhD at the University of British Columbia and previous postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Liverpool, Dr. Shupler led the coordination of two large, multinational studies, called PURE-Air and CLEAN-Air(Africa), respectively. One of the key aims of these studies was to investigate drivers of variation in exposure to household air pollution from the use of polluting cooking fuels across low- and middle-income countries. Through these projects, Dr. Shupler conducted air pollution research in more than a dozen countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and South America. Matt’s research has included identifying determinants of exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and assessing interventions that contribute to increased use of clean cooking fuels to reduce the adverse health and climate impacts of household air pollution. Matt recently received funding from Harvard India Research Center to expand his research on the PURE-Air study by linking the PM2.5 exposures collected during his PhD dissertation to cardiovascular disease outcomes obtained in the PURE cohort. Dr. Shupler has also previously worked as a global health fellow and consultant for the United Nations Foundation (Clean Cooking Alliance) and collaborated with the World Health Organization to improve the methodology for assessing the health impacts of household air pollution exposure.

2024 ISEE Fellows

Pau Chung Chen	National Health Research Institutes
Haidong Kan	Fudan University
Marcela Tamayo Ortiz	Columbia University

Best Environmental Epidemiology Paper (BEEP) Award

Racial and ethnic disparities in phthalate exposure and preterm birth: A pooled study of 16 US cohorts
Barrett M. Welch et al.

Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 131, Issue 12, December 2023

LMIC Best Abstract Winners

Nataly Damasceno De Figueiredo	Early life metal mixture exposure and birth outcomes - PIPA Project - Brazil
Jyothi S Menon	Chemical characterization and source identification of indoor PM2.5 in urban and rural households in India

SNRN Best Abstract Winners

Student Researchers

Arzoo Dhankhar	Comparative assessment of pollen profiles in three cities of India
Lola Menant	Prenatal exposure to persistent organic pollutants and pubertal development among 12-year-olds children
Maria Lourdes Aparicio	Socio economic and environmental disparities in chronic kidney disease mortality in Argentina: An Ecological Study from 2017 to 2019
Neha Sehgal	Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in serum and breastmilk samples among pregnant farmworkers in Thailand
Rachit Sharma	Spatial heterogeneity in the acute effects of ambient air pollution and temperature on pediatric seizures and epilepsy across New York

Early Career Researchers

Kim van Daalen	Climate, gender and health: the road to COP29
Li Wending	Metabolomic signature of arsenic exposure and metabolism: evidence from the Folic Acid and Creatine Trial (FACT)
Iohanna Filippi	Glyphosate Internal Doses of Exposure and Health Effects in Populations from an Agricultural Area of the Province of Cordoba (Argentina)
Jordan McAdam	Mixtures of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and testicular germ cell tumor risk in U.S. military personnel: A nested case-control study