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Scientific Advisory Board

The members of our Scientific Advisory Panel are:

Dr. Haneen Abdella, M.D., oncologist at Miami’s Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, graduated from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine before completing her Pediatric Residency in 2009. She fulfilled her Fellowship in Pediatric Hematology Oncology at Emory University, where her research earned her the award for Best Basic Science Young Investigator Abstract at the Children’s Oncology Group Meeting, September 2012.

Dr. Brenda Birmann, ScD, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of hematopoietic malignancies, on oncogenic virus infections, and on the assessment of immune dysfunction for epidemiologic studies.

Dr. Margaret Kripke, Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she served as executive vice president and chief academic officer. Dr. Kripke served multiple terms on the three-person President’s Cancer Panel. Dr. Kripke, who earned a PhD in immunology from the University of California, Berkeley, is a leading expert in the immunology of skin cancers. In 2012 she was selected as chief scientific officer for The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, where she oversaw the awarding of more than $500 million in research grants before retiring in 2015. While serving on the President’s Cancer Panel, which oversees the development and implementation of the National Cancer Program, the panel produced the path-breaking 2009 report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now.”

Dr Philip Landrigan, Director, Global Public Health Program and Global Pollution Observatory, Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, Boston College. As a pediatrician, public health physician and epidemiologist, Dr. Landrigan’s research focuses on toxic chemicals in the environment and their effects on children’s health and development. Dr. Landrigan’s landmark studies in the early 1970s of children exposed to lead near a large ore smelter in El Paso, Texas was critical in persuading the EPA to remove lead from gasoline and paint, resulting in a 95% decline in lead poisoning in US children. A study he directed in the 1990’s at the National Academy of Sciences defined children’s unique susceptibilities to pesticides and other toxic chemicals and catalyzed fundamental revamping of US pesticide policy. From 2015 to 2017, Dr Landrigan co-chaired the Lancet Commission on Pollution & Health, which reported that pollution causes 9 million deaths annually and is an existential threat to planetary health.

Dr. Michael Scheurer, PhD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, where he also directs the Texas Children’s Cancer Center Epidemiology Program. His research examines molecular risk factors for childhood cancers, and he collaborates on large international consortium studies of a variety of risk factors for childhood leukemias and other cancers.

Dr Martyn T. Smith, Professor of Toxicology and Kaiser Professor of Cancer Epidemiology, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley. Dr Smith is a laboratory scientist with expertise in molecular epidemiology, toxicology, and genomics, and his research is aimed at finding the causes of chronic diseases, including cancer and diabetes. He received the 2010 Children’s Environmental Health Network Award and in 2014 the Alexander Hollaender Award from the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society. Dr. Smith has led the Superfund Research Program Center at Berkeley since 1987, addressing critical problems at Superfund toxic waste sites through original research, translation to appropriate end-users and community engagement efforts, focusing on exposures to high-priority chemicals including arsenic, benzene, trichloroethene, formaldehyde and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Dr Smith helped to develop the ‘exposome paradigm’, which treats all non-genetic environmental stressors as environmental exposures.

Scientific Advisory Board

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