Category Archives: PROTECT Team

Nancy Cardona is a trainee from University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus who worked under the mentorship of Dr. Carmen Velez-Vega within the Community Engagement Core from August 2015 until February 2019. While she was working with us, Nancy revised translational materials for reporting scientific results back to cohort members, participated in report back […]

On July 10th-11th PROTECT, CRECE, and ECHO researchers from Northeastern University, University of Michigan, and University of Puerto Rico came together to discuss research progress and protocol harmonization across the three projects. The meeting was held at the University of Michigan where researchers discussed the Puerto Rican cohort participant visit schedules, forms and questionnaires, data […]

Almost all of today’s automated systems generate some form of data either for diagnostic or analysis purposes. A data management framework and repository are commonly employed whenever a large amount of data is collected, providing a capability to deliver secure and reliable storage, data exploration and data sharing.  Designing an effective data management framework plays […]

Recent environmental articles have increasingly focused on the potential dangers of chemicals that seem ever present and almost unavoidable in many facets of modern life. At CRECE, PROTECT and ECHO, we study many different chemicals which are present in the environment and lifestyle products to see how they impact pregnancy outcomes and children’s development in […]

Since PROTECT has started studying the environmental causes of higher levels of preterm birth in Puerto Rico preterm birth rates have dropped significantly; from 18% of all births in 2011 which was considered the highest in the world, to 11% by 2017.[1] However, this rate still ranks amongst the highest rates in the world; especially […]

Since plastic became known as the “miracle material that has made modern life possible” in 1950, humanity has produced 9.2 billion tons of plastic. [1] Plastics are produced using a large variety of materials which are often harmful to the environment and have been commonly found in human tissue. [2] PROTECT studies Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals […]

On Friday, June 21st from 10-11:30 am EDT the PROTECT Training core will be hosting the PROTECT Academy Seminar on Big Data Analytics for PROTECT researchers, staff, and trainees to attend. This seminar will be a new addition to the PROTECT Academy Interdisciplinary Introductory Seminar Series focused on Environmental Health Disciplines for Non-Experts presented to […]

On Friday, May 17th, more than 30 PROTECT, CRECE, and ECHO researchers, research staff, trainees and nurses met at the Condado Plaza Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico to discuss research status, recruitment, plans and data management for the three research projects. Co-Directors Akram Alshawabkeh, José Cordero and John Meeker started off the meeting by […]

On Thursday, May 16th PROTECT researchers met in Puerto Rico to visit 4 different Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) and clinics where participants for the PROTECT, CRECE, & ECHO Cohorts are recruited. PROTECT/CRECE/ECHO researchers and staff participated in the clinic visits, including Akram Alshawabkeh, José Cordero, Anne Magrath, Ingrid Padilla, Carmen Vélez Vega, John Meeker, […]

From April 3rd-4th the PROTECT team hosted the 2019 Annual Northeast SRP Meeting at the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute where SRP researchers, staff, and trainees from Boston University, Columbia University, University of Rhode Island, Harvard University, Dartmouth College, MIT, Brown University, and University of Pennsylvania joined together to discuss their ongoing work and […]

From Saturday, March 9th to Thursday March 14th, PROTECT researchers attended the 58th Annual Society of Toxicology Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. The Annual SOT Meeting has a global presence, consisting of “…members from 60+ countries and is dedicated to enhancing the impact and relevance of toxicology around the globe.”[1] When asked about the meeting PROTECT […]

On Thursday, December 13th, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences  (NIEHS) hosted a two-day conference for the Partnerships for Environmental Public Health (PEPH) Annual Meeting, where various environmental health science professionals came together to discuss the topic of reporting back research results. Members of PROTECT’s Community Engagement Core (CEC) discussed the significance of PROTECT’s […]

On December 1st, 2018, PROTECT Project 5’s Long Chen was promoted to Associate Research Scientist. After working under the leadership of Akram Alshawabkeh as a Post Doc since early December 2017, Long’s work ethic, leadership abilities, and accomplishments continue to guide his success. In his new role, Long will be assuming the administrative responsibilities of the […]

PROTECT Project 4 team members recently presented study findings that organic carbon concentration in cave sediments can be used as tracer of input from Hurricane Maria and other Natural Disasters at a recent geological researcher’s conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. On Tuesday, November 6th, PROTECT Trainees Autum Downey and Jill Riddell presented a poster with these […]

PROTECT Collaborator and former trainee Dr. Kelly Ferguson recently won the 2018 NIEHS Mentor of the Year Award. Presented by the NIEHS Trainees Assembly (NTA), this award aims to honor an NIEHS scientist who has used training to support NIEHS fellows and trainees scientifically and personally. To qualify, a mentor could be a Principal Investigator, […]

The impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria on the island is massive, with over a thousand lives lost and over $90 billion dollars in damage, part of which decimated the electric grid and 80% of the agricultural sector. Many Puerto Ricans were left homeless and a total of 215,000 people left the island for the […]

On Monday, September 17th, the PROTECT team kicked off the 2018-2019 academic year with the annual Trainee Orientation and Welcome. This multi-institutional meeting hosted by the Training Core is held every fall as a means of introducing new student trainees to PROTECT. The event also serves as an update for all attendees on the progress the PROTECT […]

 PROTECT welcomes Patrick Compton, a new PhD student at Northeastern University studying Civil Engineering with a concentration in Environmental and Water Systems. Patrick graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2013 with a BS in Environmental Engineering and spent the next five years on active duty as a Civil Engineering Officer. He has worked on […]

On March 2nd and 3rd, 2018, 42 PROTECT researchers, trainees, administrators, advisers, colleagues, and guests from across mainland U.S. and Puerto Rico gathered in Atlanta, Georgia for the Center’s Annual Retreat. This year’s retreat was slightly out of the ordinary due to its location; normally held in Puerto Rico, the event needed to be rebooked to […]

On December 8th and 9th, 2017, PROTECT team leaders from around the U.S. and Puerto Rico came together for an executive committee at the Residence Inn Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia, PA to discuss progress, data integration and plans. The first day of the meeting focused on integrating data from PROTECT and related research (ZIP, CRECE) […]

PROTECT team members from all of the Center’s partner institutions attended the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Superfund Research Program (SRP) 30th Annual Meeting held from December 6th through 8th, 2017 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The meeting was hosted by Penn SRP Center with support from PROTECT and Dartmouth SRP Centers. The theme of the […]

On October 19th, 2017, the Lancet Commission released a report on pollution and health said by NIEHS Hazardous Substances Branch Chief Bill Suk, Ph.D., to be “the first analysis to report the impacts of all kinds of pollution in all parts of the world, both health and economic.” The report took two years to develop […]

On September 20th, 2017, Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, made landfall in Puerto Rico, nearly immediately rendering the island’s power grid, cellphone towers, and even its banking system inoperable. Puerto Rico’s director of safety and public protection, Héctor Pesquera, explained the situation, saying “Everything collapsed simultaneously.” The hurricane is reportedly the most powerful storm […]

PROTECT is excited to report that Dr. José F. Cordero, PROTECT Co-Director, was selected by The American Public Health Association (APHA) to receive the 2017 Sedgwick Memorial Medal for Distinguished Service in Public Health in recognition of his public health research and mentorship achievements as well as his lifelong effort to translate scientific findings to […]

On August 23rd, PROTECT researchers Roger Giese, Yishan Lin, and Ljiljana Rajic, presented at the SRP-organized American Chemical Society symposium “Economic impact of environmental health research: A case study of the NIH/NIEHS Superfund Research Program.” The session featured case studies conducted by Superfund Research Program centers, thoughts on possibilities and challenges for the implementation of […]

On August 6-8, PROTECT Project 5 trainees and researchers attended the 15th International Symposium on Electrokinetic Remediation (EREM2017) organized by the Department of Building Civil and Environmental Engineering (BCEE) at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. PROTECT co-director and Project 5 leader Prof. Akram Alshawabkeh serves as a member of the scientific committee for EREM conferences, and […]

On July 24th, 2017, Project 5 researchers Dr. Lily Rajic and PhD student Kimberly Hetrick began a weeklong mentoring service for the girls summer program “Young Leaders in STEM” organized by Science Club for Girls’ (SCFG). The program serves girls from grades 8-12 and was created to help young women to develop interests in science, […]

This summer, two local high school seniors, Teppei (Cody) Kotake of Newton North High School and Robert Rampanis of Norwell High School, participated in  PROTECT Project 5 research as part of the Young Scholars Program (YSP) organized by Northeastern University’s Center for STEM Education.  The 6-week long program was created to provide opportunities for hands-on research to high […]

On June 12th and 13th, 2017, PROTECT team leaders from around the U.S. and Puerto Rico came together for a mini-retreat on the Northeastern University campus in Boston to discuss progress, integration and plans. On the first day, each executive committee member presented on progress made with their team, particularly focusing on instances of successful […]

On Tuesday, April 4th and Wednesday, April 5th, PROTECT hosted the annual Northeast Superfund Research Program (SRP) Meeting at Northeastern University. This event was co-sponsored by the Boston University SRP, the Brown University SRP, the Columbia University SRP, the Dartmouth Toxic Metals SRP, and the Penn Superfund Research and Training Program. The meeting began with […]

On February 17th and 18th, 2017, over 75 PROTECT and CRECE researchers, trainees, administrators, advisers, colleagues, and guests from across mainland U.S. and Puerto Rico gathered in San Juan, Puerto Rico for the PROTECT/CRECE Annual Retreat. The event was held at the Condado Plaza Hilton and featured presentations sharing team progress from the leaders of […]

PROTECT team members from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico attended the NIEHS FEST  held from December 5th through 8th, 2016 in Durham, North Carolina. The FEST was hosted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to commemorate the institute’s 50th year of working “to reduce the burden of human illness and disability […]

In late October, New Solutions, a journal known for its focus on Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, published a special issue on “Social Science-Environmental Health Collaborations.” Professor and PROTECT researcher Dr. Phil Brown and Silent Spring Institute Executive Director Dr. Julia Brody served as guest editors of this November installment which explores collaborations between environmental […]

On October 17th, 2016, PROTECT researchers Dr. Rita Loch-Caruso and Dr. José Cordero each presented during the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Superfund Research Program Webinar The Interplay between Environmental Exposures and Infectious Agents: Session I – Introduction to Infectious Agents and Their Interactions with Environmental Exposures.  The webinar seminar series works “to […]

On Monday, September 19th, The PROTECT team kicked off the 2016-2017 academic year with the annual Trainee Orientation. This multi-institutional meeting hosted by the Training Core is held every fall as a means of introducing new student trainees to PROTECT. The event also serves as an update for all attendees on the progress the PROTECT […]

On Thursday, August 25th, Dr. Gredia Huerta-Montañez (CEC, CRECE) spoke at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, Texas for the 2016 Children’s Environmental U.S.-MX Border Symposium, an event organized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This year’s theme for the forum was “Children’s Environmental Health on the Border: Protecting Children Where They Live, […]

As a spin-off of technology developed in the PROTECT program,  Roger Giese (Project 3 Leader) has received  funding from the Exploratory Grant Program of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), which is part of the Department of Agriculture.  The idea of the project is to expand and replace many tests for carcinogens in […]

Predicting hydraulic behavior of karst aquifers is difficult because of their high degree of heterogeneity and anisotropy. In a new study to address these challenges, PROTECT trainees Reza Ghasemizadeh and Xue Yu, implemented Equivalent Porous Media (EPM) Simulation of Groundwater Hydraulics and Contaminant Transport in Karst Aquifers. The work, published in PLOS ONE, focused on evaluation […]

In Manati, Puerto Rico, a legacy of pollution has an end in sight.  On October 1, 2015 the EPA proposed a plan of action to address the detrimental community impacts from the Pesticide Warehouse III Superfund Site. For years, pesticides and dioxins from the former pesticide facility have been contaminating the soil and groundwater of […]

This week, PROTECT is pleased to announce that recruitment figures for the PROTECT study have reached over 1,000 women! Thanks to the hard work on behalf of the nursing, administrative and medical staff in the Human Subjects and Sampling Core, 1,012 women have currently enrolled in PROTECT, where they are followed throughout their pregnancy until […]

Puerto Rico continues to face many challenges including a severe water drought, a crisis in health care, and worsening financial conditions. The recent record-breaking drought has affected 2.5 million residents living on the eastern side of the island, where water rationing has resulted in island-wide business closings and a damaged tourist industry. The drought has […]

PROTECT is excited to announce the incorporation of former cohort participants Abril Burgos, Jayrin Rosa and Joanabeth Maisonet as support staff in Core C. Abril, Joana and Jayrin live in the northern karst area of Puerto Rico and participated in PROTECT during their previous pregnancies. They are mothers of three beautiful children, one of whom […]

The “Research Opportunities for Undergraduates: Training in Environmental Health Sciences”(ROUTES) is a new program at Northeastern University designed to increase the number of underrepresented minority undergraduate students participating in environmental health (EH) research, which studies the effects of environmental contaminants on human health and communities. ROUTES scholars will receive training in interdisciplinary settings to enable […]

PROTECT Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Xue Yu published a paper on “Sociodemographic patterns of household water-use costs in Puerto Rico” in Science of The Total Environment.  The variability of household water-use costs across different sociodemographic groups in Puerto Rico was evaluated using census microdata from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Through multivariate analyses such as […]

This 4:15 video of “One Mom’s Story of Delivering a Preemie” chronicles first time mom Kelsey Nixon’s journey through the birth of her son Oliver at 28 weeks gestation.  In this video, Kelsey describes the “pure shock” of learning that she would be delivering her baby 3 months early due to complications from liver pain […]

PhD students Reza Ghasemizadeh, Shirin Hojabri and Roya Nazari together with Postdoctoral Fellow Xue Yu and Associate Research Scientist Lily Rajic attended the TCE Vapor Intrusion: State of the Science, Regulations, & Technical Options workshop on Tuesday, April 14, 2015 at UMass Lowell in Lowell, MA. The workshop was organized by the Northeast Waste Management […]

Dr. Akram Alshawabkeh (PROTECT PI/PD and Project 5 Leader) together with Dr. Helen Suh of Bouvé College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University received a prestigious National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) R25 program training grant to enhance diversity in research in the environmental health sciences. The project “Research Opportunities for Undergraduates: Training in Environmental Health Sciences” (ROUTES) is focused […]

  Kristin Hicks, Executive Director of the PROTECT Training Core, received the 2014 Northeastern University College of Engineering Outstanding Staff Award. Kristin’s responsibilities have included the coordination and implementation of educational initiatives, student activities and outreach efforts for PROTECT and a few NEU programs which involves managing the administration of trainees activities.  Kristin works closely […]

PROTECT is seeking candidates for a new position, Director of Research Communication and Development. The successful candidate will work within the center to provide leadership and oversee activities in 3 key areas: 1. Research Translation: The applicant will use a broad variety of vehicles (web, social media, email, in-person meetings, etc) to communicate with government, the […]

Northeastern University’s Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute, in collaboration with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Department of Health Sciences, seeks a postdoctoral research associate to help shape the new Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute (SSEHRI), which began in July 2012. This is a one-year postdoctoral position. SSEHRI has many funded […]

Monica Ramirez-Andreotta, M.P.A., Ph.D. (former trainee with UA SRP Center, who had joined Northeastern as a postdoc with the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute) is now Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Northeastern. Dr. Ramirez-Andreotta has been a great addition to our PROTECT team in the renewal for Community Engagement Core and Research Translation […]

We would like to welcome the newest members of the PROTECT community! Dr. Matias Mudarra, a Postdoc Associate and karst hydrogeologist, Victor Vargas, a graduate student in Environmental and Water Resource Engineering, and Maraida Balager, an undergraduate in Chemical Engineering, are new trainees working with PROTECT Project 4 leader, Dr. Ingrid Padilla at the University […]

Core E Leader Prof. Thomas Sheahan has been announced as the new Northeastern College of Engineering Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. In his new role, Tom is working closely with the College leadership team on faculty hiring, college and departmental academic plans and budgeting, space utilization, tracking our progress as a college, faculty merit […]

Northeastern graduate student Dogus Meric was recently cited in an article published in The Nation entitled “Sapping the Superfund’s Strength”, available here.  Dogus is working with Prof. Tom Sheahan on a related project also funded by the SRP.