2026 Award Winners

View 2025 Awardees

The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) honors outstanding contributions to the field through five core awards and the ISEE Fellow Program, all presented at our annual meeting. To learn more about each award, visit the ISEE Awards page.

John Goldsmith Award

Dr. Bell's Contributions to Air Pollution Epidemiology, Climate and Health, and Environmental Justice

The most notable area in which Dr. Bell has a sustained record of innovative, policy-relevant work is in the field of air pollution epidemiology research. Her work addresses scientific questions regarding how air pollution affects health and contributes to informed decision-making and to greater public understanding of environmental health hazards. Her work has been on the leading edge of mathematical modeling to examine the relationships among air pollution, weather, and human health endpoints such as mortality and hospital admissions. Other work addresses health impacts of weather, the exposureresponse curve between concentrations and health risks. The impact of her work on policy is evident by its frequent citation in US Environmental Protection Agency’s standards and proposed standards in relation to fine particulate matter (PM2.5). For example, the EPA’s proposal to lower the PM2.5 standard cited numerous studies that Michelle led or co-authored. Dr. Bell’s work has extended far beyond studies of air pollution to include work that encompasses a broader picture of complex and real-world exposures, such as heat waves, cold, greenspace, blue space, the oil and gas industry, and concentrated animal feeding operations, expanding the impact of her highquality research. Michelle is constantly pushing new areas by applying her strong quantitative techniques to new environmental issues. Importantly, Dr. Bell has been at the forefront of incorporating environmental justice into environmental and air pollution epidemiology, such as long-standing research evaluating whether heterogeneity in pollution-health estimates can be explained by differences social and structural factors. Dr. Bell takes a broad view of unequal environmental burdens, such in a recent paper she co-authored with a graduate study and published in the American Journal of Public Health on how discrimination places the LGBTQ+ community disproportionately at risk for environmental exposures. Her research on environmental disparities considers many different types of disparities such as variation in exposure or health response by subpopulation, but also areas that are less studied such as the incorporation of measurement error by subpopulation based on the uneven distribution of air pollution monitors. She has a successful track record of funding to support her environmental health disparities research, serving as PI on multiple R01 grants from the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Dr. Michelle Bell is the Mary E. Pinchot Professor of Environmental Health at Yale University’s School of the Environment with secondary appointments in the Yale School of Public Health and Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. These faculty appointments reflect Dr. Bell’s highly interdisciplinary training and research approach, as she has completed formal training in epidemiology, environmental engineering, biostatistics, and ethics and philosophy. Dr. Bell’s work creatively and meaningfully bridges interdisciplinary work among engineers, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, exposure scientists, ethicists, and social scientists. Her recent receipt of a Masters in Philosophy/Ethics illustrates her exceptional commitment to lifelong learning, deep compassion for humanity, and paradigm-shifting approaches to research through incorporation of different knowledge domains.

Tony McMichael Mid-Tern Career Award

Dr. Turner's Exemplary Service to Global Public Health

Dr. Turner's leadership of the EU-funded INTERCAMBIO project exemplifies this vision. By systematically evaluating the health effects of climate change and green transition-related occupational exposures through participatory, intervention-based research, she is helping to expand the scope of environmental epidemiology. Rather than stopping at risk identification, she pushes toward solutions, co-created with workers, industries, and policymakers. Furthermore, the INTERCAMBIO project is among the few projects based on interventions rather than observational approaches, something that is crucial and that is missing from our usual research. This translational mindset reflects the spirit of Tony McMichael: science that is not only rigorous, but transformative.

Her service to global public health institutions further illustrates her influence. As Overall Chair of the IARC Monograph on Automotive Gasoline in 2025, she led an international working group that evaluated complex evidence and contributed to a Group 1 carcinogen classification. She has co-chaired the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Occupational Burden of Disease Estimation, served on WHO advisory groups on air pollution and climate change, and contributed to major IARC evaluations, including Night Shift Work. In each of these roles, she has demonstrated not only technical expertise but balanced leadership.

From the beginning of her career, Dr. Michelle Turner has combined intellectual rigor with a commitment to global public and environmental health. Her research excellence is unquestionable: she has produced 158 peer-reviewed publications, including numerous highly cited landmark papers on air pollution, cancer, occupational exposures, and climate-related risks. Her work on long-term air pollution exposure and mortality, including among never-smokers, has helped redefine how we understand environmental carcinogenesis. Her contributions to occupational cancer epidemiology and international pooled analyses in relation to climate change have strengthened our knowledge across the field. Yet what distinguishes Michelle is not only the quantity or impact of her work, but her scientific vision. She consistently asks the larger questions: How can environmental epidemiology anticipate emerging risks? How can it respond to the climate crisis? How can it better protect, vulnerable populations, and future generations?

Rebecca James Baker Award

How Dr. Ugalde-Resano’s Research Reflects the Legacy of the Rebecca James Baker Award

In his doctoral thesis, he demonstrated for the first time, the existence of mixtures of organochlorine pesticides that are associated with the development of various subtypes of breast cancer in Mexican women. This topic of study has been recognized with awards at international conferences such as the USA-Latin American Exposome Symposium and the ISEE 2023 Annual Conference. More recently, Rodrigo delved into the study of mixtures of environmental risk factors for type 2 diabetes mellitus, and the resulting work was awarded the highly-competitive Rosenkranz Prize for medical research. In a short time, he has published several scientific manuscripts. Rodrigo is also sharing his analytical experience with new students, both national and international, through summer courses that he has taught in Mexico and Costa Rica.

Dr. Ugalde-Resano is a physician and surgeon who graduated with honors from the Faculty of Medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, later earning a Doctorate of Science degree with honors from the Mexican School of Public Health. He works as a researcher at the Environmental Health Directorate of the Center for Population Health Research at the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico. He has collaborated on various epidemiological research projects evaluating health deterioration and its relationship with environmental pollution. His main research interest is analyzing the effect of complex mixtures of environmental factors on cancer development, as well as fostering scientific communication and outreach to promote interventions for cancer prevention. Additionally, he has worked on building collaboration networks among young researchers in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2024, he was awarded the highly competitive Rosenkranz Prize for research in epidemiology and public health.

ISEE Fellows

Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan

Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research

Professor Atsuko Ikeda

Hokkaido University

Pauline Mendola, PhD

EEH/University at Buffalo

Best Environmental Epidemiology Paper (BEEP) Award

Fen Wu

“Arsenic Exposure Reduction and Chronic Disease Mortality,” published in JAMA, Nov 2025

LMIC Best Abstract Winners

Ilce Da Silva

“A GSTM1-Null Variant Modifies Blood Levels of Cadmium, Aluminum, and Lead in Adults Chronically Exposed Near a Steel Company”

Lina Jaalouk

"Mental Health, Lived Experiences, and Coping Within the Infertility Exposome Among Lebanese Women: A Mixed- Methods Triangulation Study"

Rahman Md Mahbubur

"Reduction in children’s blood lead levels following soil remediation at abandoned used lead acid battery sites in Bangladesh: three-arm trial"

Doris Seyinde

"Association between ambient fine particulate matter exposure and birth outcomes in Nigeria

SNRN Best Abstract Winners

Khushboo

Asia & Western Pacific Chapter

Influence of ENSO in Modulating PM2.5 Levels and Related Mortality in South Asian Countries

Alicia Abi Nader

Eastern Mediterranean Chapter

The AWAIR Project: Building a Community Air Quality Network in Lebanon During Crises

Sara Allaouat

Africa Chapter

Long-term exposure to road traffic noise and the incidence of dementia and Alzheimer's disease

Asma'a Alselwi

Eastern Mediterranean Chapter

Association of long-term exposure to air pollution and cardiometabolic multimorbidity: Results from the German National Cohort (NAKO)

Daphne Berden

Europe Chapter

Impact of novel air purification strategies on children's health and cognitive function: a crossover design

Gabriela De Jesus Cipriano Flores

Europe Chapter

Cutting carbon, maintaining the cutting edge in quality: decentralised data review in a multi-site pregnant women cohort in India

Astrid Herrera Lopez

Latin America and the Caribbean Chapter

Short- and Long-Term Effects of Air Pollution on COPD Exacerbation in Three Colombian Cities

Tian Ma

North America Chapter

Effects of ambient temperature on infectious diseases risk among older adults in the United States

Anneleen Massot

Europe Chapter

An exposome-wide investigation of environmental determinants of adolescent cognitive performance

Leyre Notario Barandiaran

North America Chapter

Profiling Early Neurodevelopment With Machine Learning: Insights From the Environmental influences On Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program