Human Health and Community Resilience Track: Early-Career Research Fellowship

Cycle

2025 - Human Health and Community Resilience Track
2024 - Human Health and Community Resilience Track
2023 - Human Health and Community Resilience Track
2022 - Human Health and Community Resilience Track
2021 - Human Health and Community Resilience Track

Adrienne Katner

Dr. Adrienne Katner is an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health with the Louisiana State University School of Public Health. She conducts community-engaged research and citizen science campaigns to address the widespread issue of drinking water and infrastructure injustice in Louisiana. She also researches the impacts of climate change on potable water resources, assesses population preparedness for natural disasters, and evaluates cumulative risks faced by fence line communities. She aims to build the evidence base that stakeholders need to inform their interventions, policies, and practices. Her research was acknowledged as one of the top five “high-impact” papers among publications from 2016 by the Journal of Environmental Justice, and was selected for free open access “based on its broad-scale importance to the water community and its potential interest to researchers in the developing world.” Her outreach and ongoing assistance to low-income and minority communities was recognized by local non-profits with a “Katrina Hero Award for Environmental Justice” in 2015; a “Community Angel” award in 2017; and a “Community Hero” award in 2018. Her research has also been recognized by peer induction into the Delta Omega Public Health Honorary Society. Dr. Katner’s work has been highlighted in over 20 national media stories (including NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, and PBS) and more than 50 local news stories. Dr. Katner received a master's degree in Soil, Water and Environmental Science from the University of Arizona, and a doctoral degree in Environmental Science and Engineering from UCLA.

Alexis Merdjanoff

Dr. Alexis Merdjanoff is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Rutgers University. Her research explores how population health is affected by exposure to disasters, including hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. Dr. Merdjanoff is particularly interested in how social inequalities shape the impact of disasters and climate change on health, recovery, and resilience for socially vulnerable populations, such as older adults. To do so, she collects and analyzes qualitative and quantitative data to form a holistic understanding of how individuals and communities are affected by these events. As director of research for the Population Impact, Recovery and Resilience (PiR2) research program, she has worked on several studies, including the longitudinal Katrina@10 Program, the Sandy Child and Family Health Study (S-CAFH), and SCALE-UP East Boston to answer questions related to improving the health and well-being of populations exposed to disasters and climate change. Her recent work has explored how older adults can successfully age in high-risk coastal areas such as the Gulf Coast. Using mixed methods, she aims to identify the resources that older adults need to be resilient, including the social and physical infrastructures needed to successfully prepare for and recover from acute and chronic disasters. Her goal is to understand how older adults can successfully adapt to, and prepare for, coastal erosion, frequent flooding, heatwaves, and disasters.

Christopher Bolden

Dr. Christopher T. Bolden, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Xavier University of Louisiana. Dr. Bolden’s interdisciplinary research bridges neuropharmacology, environmental health, and translational neuroscience with a strong focus on the bloodbrain barrier, neuroinflammation, and the tumor microenvironment in glioblastoma. Dr. Bolden’s current work integrates data science, social determinants of health, and molecular biology to address complex health disparities in the Gulf Coast region, with the goal of advancing equitable health outcomes through translational and community engaged research. His work has been published in Scientific Reports, Microvascular Research, ACS Omega, and The FASEB Journal, among others. Dr. Bolden is an active mentor and educator, committed to expanding biomedical research training opportunities for underrepresented students. He has received multiple national awards and travel fellowships, including recognition from the Society for Neuroscience, FASEB, and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. He holds a Ph.D. in Clinical and Translational Science from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, an M.P.H. (in progress) in Epidemiology & Population Health from LSU Health Sciences Center, and a B.S. in Microbiology and Biochemistry from the University of Southern Mississippi. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, where he developed and validated an in vitro blood-brain barrier model for investigating traumatic brain injury and brain cancer.

Dongying Li

Dr. Dongying Li is an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research investigates the relationships between built environment characteristics and health outcomes, with a particular focus on the role of urban green infrastructure in enhancing human mental health, emotional regulation, cognitive functioning, and well-being. Her current research explores the extent to which green infrastructure can mitigate health disparities, especially for populations in underserved neighborhoods or at risk of environmental stressors.

Drew Capone

Dr. Drew Capone is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Indiana University. He uses engineering, epidemiology, and environmental microbiology tools to investigate the problems affecting low-income individuals and aims to improve public health in the communities where these people live. His research focuses on public health engineering, which includes public health surveillance using fecal waste streams, assessing the fate and transport of fecal contamination in the environment, and predicting public health outcomes using quantitative microbial risk assessment. Dr. Capone is currently involved in the Maputo Sanitation Trial, a health impact study of an onsite sanitation intervention, as well as developing new wastewater surveillance methods to track enteric pathogen flows at citywide scales. His lab is also building collaborations to study the compounding effects of co-infections on child health, applying modern molecular methods to study animal gut health through a One Health lens, and developing new tools for microbial risk assessment. He holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and previously served as a secondary school teacher with the United States Peace Corps in rural Mozambique.

Ebrahim Ahmadisharaf

Dr. Ebrahim Ahmadisharaf is currently an Assistant Research Professor in the Center for Resilient Infrastructure and Disaster Response Center and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Florida State University (FSU). His work primarily focuses on predicting floods and nonpoint source pollution under a changing climate and land cover to support decisions related to civil infrastructure design, flood mitigation, and water pollution control. Prior to joining FSU, he was a Hydrologic Scientist at DHI and a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. He has worked in industry as an engineer on issues related to flood mitigation, hydrologic analyses, and urban stormwater. His research has been published in more than 30 peer-reviewed journals, and he has delivered multiple presentations at national and international conferences. Since 2016, he has been a reviewer for various funding agencies, peer-reviewed journals, and as an elected member of the ASCE-EWRITMDL Analysis and Modeling Task Committee and Surface Water and Watershed Management Technical Committees. He has also been an Associate Editor of ASCE’s Journal of Hydrologic Engineering since 2023. Dr. Ahmadisharaf’s research has led to approximately $3.5 million of grants supported by federal (EPA, USDA, NSF) and state (Florida Department of Environmental Protection) agencies as well as private foundations. He has been supervising seven doctoral students, two master’s students, and three postdocs. He holds an MSc and a BSc in Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology and a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Tennessee Technological University.

Eric Sarmiento

Dr. Eric Sarmiento is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Texas State University. As a cultural geographer and political ecologist, he uses qualitative methods to understand how the benefits and burdens of urban change are unevenly distributed among different groups, both reflecting and producing varied forms of knowledge about the city. His central question is, how different forms of knowledge and understanding of urban and environmental change might be mobilized to create more just and sustainable urban transitions. Dr. Sarmiento's previous work has examined drought, food systems, segregation, and gentrification. Each of these cases highlights how dominant narratives of development and environmental change obscure longstanding inequities that constrain life opportunities and negatively impact the health and well-being of less privileged urbanites, who in turn often possess invaluable but overlooked insights about urban environmental, social, and economic transitions. Building on these findings, his current research examines chronic flooding in Houston, emphasizing a methodology designed to not only increase understanding of the perspectives of groups underrepresented in policy and the production of expert knowledge, but also to draw together expert and local knowledge in a longitudinal co-production process.

Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Dr. Fabio Capra-Ribeiro is an Assistant Professor at the Louisiana State University School of Architecture, where he founded and co-directs the Caribbean Spatial Justice Lab. His research engages interdisciplinary teams to develop spatial justice and environmental planning projects focusing on bridging the gap between scientific knowledge and community needs. Since 2021, he has also been a member of the Green Infrastructure for Urban Sustainability(GREENIUS) research group based at the International University of Valencia in Spain, contributing to advancing innovation in green infrastructure. Before collaborating with academics, governments, and communities in Louisiana, he held similar roles in Spain and Venezuela. Prior to his appointment at LSU, he was faculty and Academic Coordinator for the Master of Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in Spain and collaborated with three master's programs at the International University of Valencia, focusing on education, elearning, and circular economy. Dr. Capra-Ribeiro is the author of the book "Uncertain Regional Urbanism in Venezuela: Government, Infrastructure, and Environment," which explores territorial foresight strategies for cities in the Global South. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture and a Master of Science in Architectural Design from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, where he began teaching in 2009 and later served as Coordinator of the Master of Urban Design program and Director of the School of Architecture. He earned his Ph.D. in Urbanism from the Università IUAV di Venezia in Italy and completed a Master’s Degree in Technology Applied to Education.

Francisca Santana

Dr. Francisca Santana is an Assistant Professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. She studies the social and psychological processes underpinning conservation and adaptation behavior in a climate changing world. Dr. Santana draws on theories and approaches from environmental sociology, social psychology, and human geography, while using multiple methods including surveys, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups. Her research investigates topics such as the social nature of wildfire smoke protective-health decisions in the U.S. West, coral reef conservation behavior in Hawai?i, and coastal community resilience and climate adaptation in southeastern Louisiana. Much of her work is community-engaged and aims to co-produce science in partnership with local and Indigenous communities. Most recently she conducted a multi-site case study analysis of communities in Northern California facing compound wildfire hazards (wildfire risk, wildfire smoke, and power disruption) to understand barriers to community response and individual action. Dr. Santana is also co-leading a project partnered with the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe and Louisiana SeaGrant to design a network of living shorelines for climate resilience. She also has a background working on air quality, coastal pollution, and marine policy issues from nonprofits and government agencies, including the Energy Foundation, Earthjustice, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Dr. Santana received her BA in History from Yale University, master’s degree in Coastal Marine Science and Management from University of California, Santa Barbara, and PhD in Environment and Resources from Stanford University.

Guanyu Huang

Dr. Guanyu Huang is an Assistant Professor of Environmental and Health Sciences at Spelman College. His research focuses on exploring the mechanisms that control air pollution under a changing climate and understanding the impacts and consequences of air pollution and climate change on public health and social justice. Dr. Huang is an expert in satellite remote sensing and has been involved in multiple NASA satellite missions for air quality and atmospheric chemistry research. His research methods and tools also include ground-based remote sensing, numerical modeling, and machine learning/AI techniques. Dr. Huang is also interested in leveraging citizen science and community engagement for climate resilience, environmental health, and environmental justice research. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Dr. Huang is committed to promoting the participation of underrepresented students in STEM fields. Dr. Huang holds a B.Eng. degree in Remote Sensing Science and Technology from Wuhan University, China, and an M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Atmospheric Science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Heng Cai

Dr. Heng Cai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University, where she leads the GIScience for Resilience Research Group. She leverages geospatial data science approaches to study the social and geographic determinants of disaster and health vulnerability. Her research aims to achieve a deep understanding of the geospatial aspect of the interactions between people and their environments and how the interactions shape social-environmental vulnerability and resilience to extreme disaster events and climate changes, primarily for the Gulf of Mexico communities. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and Texas A&M University. She has published over 30 articles in flagship geography and environmental science journals, including Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Remote Sensing of Environment, Computers, Environment, and Urban Systems, and International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. Dr. Cai holds a BE from the China University of Geosciences and an MS in Cartography and Geographic Information Science from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She earned her PhD in Environmental Sciences from Louisiana State University.

Ishi Keenum

Dr. Ishi M. Keenum is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at Michigan Technological University, where she leads research on designing resilient water and wastewater systems that account for microbial contaminants of concern. Dr. Keenum's research focuses on developing climate-resilient interventions for antibiotic resistance monitoring and wastewater surveillance in underserved communities, particularly rural areas affected by extreme weather events. Her work combines molecular biotechnology, metagenomics, and community-engaged research to address critical public health challenges at the intersection of water quality, climate resilience, and health equity. Prior to her current position, Dr. Keenum served as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where she developed reference materials for pathogen detection and contributed to rapid response efforts during the monkeypox outbreak. Her community-engaged research includes postHurricane Maria drinking water resilience assessments in rural Puerto Rico and ongoing wastewater surveillance initiatives in rural Michigan. Dr. Keenum has previously received a 2023 Department of Commerce Gold Medal and was selected as a 2025 National Academies of Engineering Gilbreth Lecturer. She has authored over 25 peer-reviewed publications and serves on multiple national committees for water quality standards. Her interdisciplinary research bridges fundamental science with practical applications for protecting public health in climate-vulnerable communities through improved water management systems. Dr. Keenum received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a B.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Janille Smith-Colin

Dr. Janille Smith-Colin is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Southern Methodist University. She earned her Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an M.S. in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a B.A. in engineering studies from Lafayette College. During her graduate studies, she was supported by awards from the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship and the Southern Region Educational Board. Dr. Smith-Colin’s research advances sustainability and resilience goals through infrastructure systems planning and analysis, decision making, and governance. She specifically integrates qualitative and quantitative dimensions of socio-technical systems to develop novel approaches to studying the human dimensions of infrastructure and the built environment. Recent research utilized a comprehensive set of spatial and temporal measures to examine transportation equity across geographies with a focus on underserved populations. Her work with Gulf communities examines equity issues and policies associated with infrastructure that create transportation-related barriers to health, and resulting implications for community resilience. Dr. Smith-Colin is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Resilience Division and a member of the Transportation Research Board Standing Committee on Transportation Planning Applications.

Jennifer Lawrence

Dr. Jennifer Lawrence is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban + Environmental Planning at University of Virginia. Her research explores systems-change for disaster resilience and health equity by examining contradictions within environmental governance, particularly in extractive geographies. Through critical and creative methods, Jennifer’s scholarship provides insight into interconnected systems of power and decision-making that impact people and place from frontline communities to global ecosystems. Her first co-edited project, Biopolitical Disaster, analyzes the ecological, community, and social health consequences of chronic and sudden disasters. At the Global Forum for Urban and Regional Resilience, where she worked with the research group on Socio-Political Dimensions of Resilience, her research is reflected in The Resilience Machine, a project that calls for resilience-interventions to move beyond adaptation to transform the root causes of risk, vulnerability, and inequity. She is co-founder of FERN: The Feminist Environmental Research Network and works as a Professor of Practice with the Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability at Virginia Tech where she teaches courses on resource management and sustainability strategies. Dr. Lawrence is currently working on a manuscript that illustrates how socio-political imaginaries of the environment and economy shape energy regulation, produce protracted health effects, and also critically hold the possibility for prefiguration to advance just, equitable, and flourishing futures. Dr. Lawrence holds dual BAs in Political Science and Modern Languages and Literature from Christopher Newport University, an MS in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and she earned her PhD in Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought at Virginia Tech where her research addressed the production of and response to disaster through a study of Deepwater Horizon.

Jennifer Scott

Dr. Jennifer (Jen) Scott is an Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University School of Social Work. Her research seeks to understand how economic and political exclusion affect wellbeing and health, focusing specifically on questions that consider environmental context, immigration status, and access to economic resources (i.e., income, employment and its socioenvironmental conditions), as social determinants. Dr. Scott completed her PhD in Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin where she was a Graduate Student Fellow in the Urban Ethnography Lab and spent a quarter as a Graduate Student Fellow in the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis. She holds a Master of International Affairs and a Master of Science in Social Work from Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Philosophy from Trinity University. Jen has also had the privilege of working with and learning from people across the globe, in China, Peru, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, and many places in between. She speaks Spanish and has been working with the immigrant, in particular the Latino immigrant, community in the United States for more than a decade. Dr. Scott's current primary project examines the interrelationship between the health of the workforce (both permanent and temporary immigrant) in the fishing and seafood industries and employment conditions, in the specific socioenvironmental context of coastal Louisiana in effort to inform policy and interventions that advance health equity for these workers and the coastal communities in which they reside.

Kelsey Pieper

Dr. Kelsey Pieper is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on reducing disparities in access to safe drinking water in the US. Her group explores the fate and transport of drinking water contaminants in the built and natural environments, and the adoption of accessible, affordable, and effective remediation solutions. Dr. Pieper was also a core member of the Flint Water Study Team at Virginia Tech, conducting in-depth corrosion assessments and analyzing data collected during the citizen-led sampling campaigns. She received her Ph.D. in Biological Systems Engineering and M.S. in Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech, and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Binghamton University.

Khalid Osman

Dr. Khalid K. Osman is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and a Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Khalid also holds faculty affiliations at the King Center for Global Development and the Center for the Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. His research focuses on the operationalization of equity and justice in the provision of infrastructure services. Specifically, employing qualitative and quantitative methods to develop novel frameworks at the intersection of the natural, built, and social environment. Currently, he is concentrated on water sector infrastructure, working to develop consistent and measurable definitions of water equity, frameworks for equity in the adoption of new water technologies, and exploring socio-technical solutions to sanitation justice challenges in rural communities. He has a passion for impact driven community-engaged research, highlighted by multiple collaborations with local community-based organizations. He leads Osman Lab to develop new approaches to equitable and just infrastructure in a world where climate change challenges vulnerable communities every day. He earned his BS from the University of Portland and his MS and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholars Graduate Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.

Kristin Nielsen

Dr. Kristin Nielsen is an assistant professor of aquatic toxicology in the Department of Marine Science at the University of Texas at Austin. She uses a One Health approach to investigate the interactive effects of environmental contamination and climate change mediated environmental stressors on the health of subsistence and sportfish populations in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, including downstream implications for dietary contaminant exposure in remote subsistence communities. She began conducting research in this area while serving as the State Toxicologist and Environmental Public Health Program Manager for the Alaska Division of Public Health. During her time with the State of Alaska, Dr. Nielsen worked to develop novel, multiple-lines-of-evidence relative risk prediction frameworks to inform and refine fish consumption recommendations for rural and Alaska Native subsistence communities. Her approach to risk evaluation integrates data from multiple regional biomonitoring programs with understudied qualitative determinants of risk, including socio-economic, demographic, cultural and site-specific factors. She also has specific expertise in the photo-induced toxicity of oil spills to early life stage marine biota, as well as the developmental toxicity of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pharmaceutical compounds and their metabolically active degradation products, and other emerging contaminants to ecologically and economically valuable fisheries species in the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Nielsen received a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of North Texas, following which she completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in aquatic toxicology.

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Human Health and Community Resilience Track: Early-Career Research Fellowship

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