Principal Investigator
Eileen McNeely, PhD, MS, RNC
While working as a family nurse practitioner in Appalachia in the early 1980’s, Dr. McNeely became increasingly aware of the central role of work in individual and family life and health. She became the first nurse practitioner hired by the U.S. Postal Service and later led the Occupational Health Nurse Practitioner program at Simmons College. She obtained a doctoral degree in Health Policy from the Brandeis Heller School in MA and was an Assistant Professor at Boston University School of Public Health where she studied the health impacts of organizational downsizing. In Washington DC, she completed an internship at the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) evaluating the impact of hazard communication regulations. Read more>
Research Team
Irina Mordukhovich, PhD, MSPH
Research Associate
Dr. Mordukhovich completed her doctorate in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from air pollution, cigarette smoke, and diet in relation to breast cancer. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she studies air pollution and heavy metal exposure in relation to cardiovascular and respiratory outcomes. Her training includes biostatistics, study design, epidemiology methods, geographic information systems, environmental health, and chronic disease epidemiology. Irina is excited to join the Flight Attendant Health Study as a research scientist.
Dorota Węziak-Białowolska, PhD
Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska works with the SHINE team at Harvard T. H. School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health. Her research interests are in methodology including psychometrics, composite scales, and indicators as well as impact assessment and evaluation. Her recent focus is also on applied well-being and health as well as the relationship between the two, especially in the workplace setting. Before joining the SHINE team, she worked for 5 years for the European Commission Joint Research Centre as a post-doctoral researcher and research fellow. She was responsible for constructing and assessing composite indicators in the field of poverty, well-being, quality of life, and cultural and creative industries. Read more>
Piotr Białowolski, PhD
Piotr Białowolski, Ph.D. works with the SHINE team at the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health. His research interest is in applied economist and quantitative methods for economic research. His research interests and publications focus on the following and sometimes overlapping research topics: (1) Application of micro-level data for the impact evaluation of financial and social behavior on well-being and health of populations, (2) market and consumer segmentations for accounting for biases and forecasting, (3) statistical indicators for management effectiveness, (4) survey design, biases and forecasting with survey data. Read more>
Heloisa Jardim, MPH MBA
Heloisa Jardim is a Research Manager for the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise (SHINE) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In her role, she leads the strategic planning and implementation of SHINE’s initiatives, by promoting business strategies to foster the well-being of populations. She believes in the catalytic power of evidence-based research as a basis for business action. Through her extensive experience in the private sector, Heloisa brings a passion for transforming corporations into strong social actors that nurture people’s well-being through its business culture and systemic approaches.
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Staff
Elizabeth Nolan, MS, MPH
Chief Administrator
As Chief Administrator, Liz Nolan oversees the research administration for the Flight Attendant Health Study, working closely with Drs. McNeely and Mordukhovich on project management and research strategy to meet study targets and milestones to ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget. Liz also assists with grant writing and reporting and her training includes occupational health policy and administration, environmental and occupational epidemiology and environmental sciences. She holds master’s degrees in occupational and environmental health and sustainability and environmental management from Harvard University.
Karoline Barwinski, MA
Karoline Barwinski is a Program Manager for the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise (SHINE) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In her role she leads SHINE’s communications and strategy, and manages projects across the program. Karoline is helping integrate a greater focus on worker health and well-being in the workplace through evidence-based research. Read more>
Study Collaborators
Mehrdad Arjomandi, MD
Professor of Medicine
University of California San Francisco
Dr. Arjomandi is Professor of Medicine in the Divisions of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Allergy, and Sleep Medicine and Occupational and Environmental Medicine at UCSF with a joint appointment at San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He is Director of the UCSF Human Exposure Laboratory at San Francisco General Hospital, Director of Environmental Medicine Clinic at San Francisco VA Medical Center, Site Director for the VA Airborne Hazard Exposure Study Center of Excellence at San Francisco VA, and an investigator at the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. Read more>
Brent Andrew Coull, PhD
Professor of Biostatistics
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Coull’s current research interests fall into the broad areas of categorical data analysis and semiparametric regression modeling. Recent topics in the analysis of categorical data include capture-recapture mixture models, random effect models for multiple discrete binary outcomes, confidence intervals for a binomial proportion, and order-restricted methods for stratified contingency tables. In the area of semiparametric regression modeling, he has focused on the development of such models for complex data structures often encountered in public health settings, such as cross-over and longitudinal settings. Read more>
Mark J. Meyer, PhD
Assistant Professor of Statistics
Georgetown University
Mark J. Meyer, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Georgetown University. He is also affiliate faculty in the Center for Global Health Science and Security and part of the Global Infectious Disease Program, both at Georgetown as well. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Bucknell University where he also taught statistics. He completed his doctorate at Harvard University in the Department of Biostatistics under Dr. Brent A. Coull. Read more>
Zachary Nagel, PhD
Assistant Professor of Radiation Biology Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
My research is focused on the underlying mechanisms by which cells resist killing by DNA damaging agents. This work draws from my graduate training in chemistry under Prof. Judith Klinman, which focused on the structural, chemical and biophysical underpinnings of enzyme catalysis at UC Berkeley. My graduate work resulted in several high-profile publications and two reviews that have been cited > 100 times, and my background in chemistry continues to inform current research into the mechanisms of DNA damage and repair. As a postdoctoral research associate at MIT in the Department of Biological Engineering, I worked with Prof. Leona Samson to study the role of DNA repair capacity in multiple pathways in determining how cells respond to DNA damaging agents. Read more>
Christopher Scheibler, MD, MPH, Major USAF
Chief, Occupational Medicine | Senior Flight Surgeon
United States Air Force
Christopher is Chief, Occupational Medicine and Senior Flight Surgeon for the United States US Air Force at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Alaska. He recently completed the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency (OEMR) program for physicians at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. At Harvard, his research focused on a comprehensive review of current research on the health impacts of commercial flight—such as circadian rhythm disruption, decreased cardiopulmonary function, and flight anxiety—on both aircrew and passengers. In a separate project, he helped evaluate the hazards of cosmic ionizing radiation and its effects on the health of aircrew and passengers, specifically looking at cancer risk and reproductive health outcomes.
Steven Staffa, MS
Biostatistician III
Boston Children’s Hospital
Steven completed his Master’s in Biostatistics from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where his master’s thesis was a study of health effects of textile chemicals after the introduction of new work uniforms in a flight attendant population. Steven is a Biostatistician at Boston Children’s Hospital in the Departments of Anesthesia and Surgery, and he has continued to collaborate on the Flight Attendant Health Study and the SHINE team as a Statistical Research Assistant in performing statistical analyses of health outcomes data, including investigating long-term effects of occupational second hand tobacco smoke exposure.
Sneh Manishi Toprani, PhD
Research Fellow
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. (Miss) Sneh Manishi Toprani is a post-doctoral fellow at John B Little Center for Radiation Science, Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health. As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Toprani is responsible for leading a project that is focused on lung cancer. The major goals of this project are to understand the basis for lung cancer susceptibility and to identify new personalized strategies for radiation therapy in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. She is also a principal investigator for the project “Assessing DNA damage and repair capacity in airline flight crew” supported by Harvard-NIEHS Center for Environmental Health pilot project to test the hypothesis whether compromised genomic integrity due to air travel exposures might play a role in elevated health risk observed in flight crew. Read more>
Gerard M Turino, MD
Professor, Medicine, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine
Mount Sinai Hospital
Dr. Turino came to St. Luke’s Roosevelt in 1983 as the first chairman of the newly merged St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Department of Medicine from Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons where he was a Professor of Medicine. After his chairmanship he became the Founding Director of the James P. Mara Center for Lung Disease at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital. The center has focused on lung matrix structure and cellular enzyme injury in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) including alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) emphysema. Studies have evolved to develop a useful biomarker for COPD and a potential therapy which is under clinical trial. Read more>
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