STEEP welcomed two guest speakers to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in August 2018 to engage with faculty and trainees.

Esben Budtz-Jørgensen, PhD, Chair of biostatistics at the University of Copenhagen, gave a seminar on benchmark dose calculations for risk assessment, using PFAS as an example. The benchmark approach is widely used by regulatory agencies as a statistical solution when thresholds cannot be observed. This technique can be applied to epidemiological data, but this is far from simple. Esben is a pioneer in the field and helped answering questions at the STEEP seminar held jointly with the Harvard NIEHS Center in collaboration with STEEP.  Benchmark dose calculations are anticipated in some of the STEEP studies.

Chris Higgins, PhD, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines joined Dr. Elsie Sunderland and STEEP trainees in a seminar on August 27, 2018.  Dr. Higgins’ research focuses on the fate, transport, and bioaccumulation of emerging contaminants in aquatic and terrestrial systems. This includes project examining the potential for bioaccumulation of organic contaminants (including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and perfluorochemicals) into food crops from reclaimed water; the fate of perfluorochemicals in groundwater systems, particularly in the presence of co-contaminants; the development of analytical methods for the detection and quantification of inorganic nanoparticles in environmental and biological media; and the fate of organic contaminants in wastewater treatment plants.  Dr. Higgins is also a member of STEEP’s External Advisory Committee.