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Lida Chatzi, MD, PhD is professor of population and public health sciences in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC. She has more than 20 years of experience in environmental health research and a track record of research productivity in multi-disciplinary translational settings (R01s, R21s and U01) focusing on the influence of environmental chemical exposures on health outcomes by integrating human population data and experimental study designs. She has demonstrated her leadership skills as Director (USC Center for Translational Research on Environmental Health) and Deputy Director [NIEHS-funded P30 Southern California Environmental Health Science Center (SCEHSC)] in centers featuring novel bench to population team science, community engaged solution-based research, and training/career development at all stages.

As a physician, epidemiologist and public health researcher, Chatzi leads an interdisciplinary program of research focused on advancing our understanding of how exposure to environmental chemicals affect metabolic health. Overall, her investigations have focused on the health effects of environmental toxicants classified as endocrine disruptors, including perfluoroalkyl substances, organochlorine pesticides, phenols, phthalates, and metals, on long-term youth health, especially, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and fatty liver disease. As Director of the USC Center for Translational Research on Environmental Health (USC-R-TEN), she is focused on understanding the influence of environmental pollutants on health outcomes by integrating human population-data and multi-omics methods to develop and comprehensive understanding of exposure risk and disease development.

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Ans Irfan, MD, EdD, DrPH, ScD MPH, MRPL, associate professor of population and public health sciences in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC, examines the role society and policies play in climate change, the need to confront the big questions, and how we might adjust our approach to improve humanity's outcome.

Irfan’s research questions things that are normalized within neoliberalized academy by applying the decolonial lens to re-think existing global environmental research, teaching, and practice paradigms; especially within the climate justice context. Irfan developed and teaches PM 599: Social Dimensions of Climate Change in a Sustainable World, which introduces students to a wide range of climate health areas, including the foundations of climate science, climate justice, climate coloniality, climate vulnerability, politics of climate change, geoengineering, and climate ethics, and climate communications. His mission is for students to actively contribute to social mobilization around climate change by developing climate and science communications skills and generating public scholarship to raise awareness and mobilize climate action.

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Shohreh Farzan, PhD is an environmental epidemiologist, with a background in molecular biology and toxicology. Farzan’s research focuses on the impact of environmental contaminants on maternal-child health, with a special interest in cardiometabolic health. Much of Farzan’s work focuses on the role of environmental exposures in altering preclinical indicators of cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk, particularly during vulnerable lifestages, such as childhood and pregnancy. Within the Maternal and Developmental Risks of Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) study, a NIMHD-funded Center of Excellence on Environmental Health Disparities Research, she focuses on the role of prenatal air pollutants and psychosocial stressors on maternal postpartum cardiometabolic health. Farzan also leads multiple studies of the impacts of toxic metals and air pollutants on preclinical biomarkers of cardiovascular dysfunction in children and adolescents, both as PI of a NIEHS R01 to investigate the role of air pollutants in the development of atherosclerosis in the transition from childhood to young adulthood and as MPI of the ECHO LA DREAMERs study. She is also MPI of a NIEHS Research to Action R01 that established the Children’s AIRE cohort to investigate environmental contributors to children’s respiratory health in a rural border region of California to inform community-engaged public health actions and the recipient of a NIEHS K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award.

Connie Valencia, MPH, CHES, PhD is a Sustainability Solutions Community Engagement Fellow in the Environmental Justice Research Lab in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences in the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Valencia is a first-generation college Latina, born and raised in Boyle Heights. She earned her BS in Psycho-bio with a minor in Chicano Studies from UCLA; Master’s in Public Health with an emphasis in Environmental Health and Community Health from Cal State University Fullerton (CSUF) and PhD from the University of California Irvine (UCI) Program in Public Health. Her research is focused on understanding the role that neighborhood resources have in engaging residents in discussions on environmental health disparities through qualitative research methods. She also assess the protective role of neighborhood institutions on air pollution exposure among Hispanic/Latino ethnic enclaves through quantitative research methods. She is currently collaborating on the Imperial Valley Respiratory Health & the Environment (AIRE) study.

Learn more about the USC Children's AIRE Study

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Jane K. Steinberg, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Sciences and Public Health in the Keck School of Medicine at USC. Trained as a behavioral scientist, her research focuses on determinants of multiple risk behaviors (alcohol/drug use, tobacco and cannabis use) among youth, and the development of effective programs and policy responses to reduce health risks and achieve health equity. Dr. Steinberg also serves as the Director of Public Health Practice for the department. She is currently a co-investigator on a HRSA workforce development grant to develop a career pipeline for MPH students into public health sector careers through scholarships, workforce training, mentorship and career placement opportunities. Dr. Steinberg received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Davis, and her MPH and PhD in Community Health Sciences from the University California, Los Angeles.

Learn more about Trojan Scholars for Advancement in Public Health

More than a typical scholarship, Trojan Scholars for Advancement in Public Health is a merit-based scholarship and mentorship program that is aimed at training Master of Public Health students to attain knowledge and competencies that will enable them to secure positions in public health organizations that address health disparities and inequities among residents of Los Angeles County.

The program will provide full scholarship to select recipients that covers up to 42 units of tuition required to complete MPH training. Scholarship recipients will participate in an academic and career building mentorship program focused on core public health functions and social determinants of health.

As part of their training, MPH students will complete an applied practice experience (practicum) in one of the partner organizations that serve areas of Los Angeles County with high proportions of health disparities and underserved residents.

Learn more about the Master of Public Health Program

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Jesse Goodrich, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Environmental Health at the University of Southern California. His research combines data on environmental exposures with information on molecular-level biological processes to understand the effects of environmental pollutants on the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. He is particularly interested in examining these questions in children and adolescents because they may be more susceptible to the adverse health effects of environmental pollutants.

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Zhanghua Chen, PhD is an environmental epidemiologist and biostatistician with multidisciplinary expertise in environmental health, biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical medicine, obesity and diabetes pathophysiology, genomics, metabolomics, and data science. She has a strong track record in environmental health research with particular interests in the health effects of early-life environmental exposures in children and adults, the epidemiology of diabetes and obesity, and methods of multi-omics studies.

Chen aims to contribute her research to early prevention and treatment of complex diseases. She is creative, collaborative and highly productive. She is establishing a novel research area in environmental epidemiology by leveraging the advanced metabolomics and multi-omics approaches. Chen is the principal investigator on the NIEHS-supported K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award: “Metabolomic Signatures Linking Air Pollution, Obesity and Diabetes”. She has also published many papers in well-received medical journals such as Diabetes Care and American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Her accomplishments in environmental health research have received wide media attention from national and international news agencies, e.g., Reuters and Xinhua News Agency.

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Mariana Stern, PhD is a professor of clinical population and public health sciences and urology, and the Ira Goodman Chair in Cancer Research. Stern is co-lead of the CoGENES program along with Lourdes Baezconde Garbanati, and associate director for population science at USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Stern obtained her undergraduate training in Biology at the University of Buenos Aires, School of Sciences, in Argentina with a focus on molecular and evolutionary genetics. She obtained her PhD in Cancer Biology at the University of Texas-MD Anderson Cancer Center and pursued postdoctoral training in molecular epidemiology at the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health. At USC, she is currently Director for the MS in Applied Biostatistics and Epidemiology program and teaches undergraduates and graduate students. Her overall research interests cut across the following main themes: diet and cancer, clinical epidemiology of prostate cancer, and cancer health disparities in Latino populations.

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