Program Update

STEEP Trainee Highlights

Congratulations to Jitka Becanova for receiving the SRP K.C. Donnelly Externship Award. Jitka is a STEEP postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Rainer Lohmann at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. For her externship, Jitka will work with Dr. Robert Hurt at the Brown University SRP Center in Providence, RI to study the sorption behavior of PFAS on advanced graphite-based nanomaterials. The aim of Dr. Becanova’s work is to develop and test different nanographenes as passive samplers for detecting PFAS.

Other Trainee News:

L-R: Dr. Laura Armstrong (Rutgers University), Emily Martell (STEEP Trainee), Marisa Pfohl (STEEP Trainee), and Dr. Ajay Donepudi (UCONN) at the SOT March 2018 meeting.

Emily Martell, a doctoral candidate in Dr. Angela Slitt’s lab at the URI College of Pharmacy, received the Northeast Society of Toxicology Travel Award, 3rd place ($500), to attend the 57^th Annual Meeting of the Society of Toxicology in San Antonio, TX, March 2018, She presented her research in “Perfluoroctanesulfonic Acid (PFOS) Worsens Hepatic Steatosis and Induces Fatty Acid Uptake in Mice Fed a High Fat Diet and High Fat to Low Fat Diet Switch.” Co-authors: Marisa Pfohl, Cameron Picard, Nicholas DaSilva, Firas Sammoura, Jasmine Ayala, and Angela Slitt.

Congratulations to Dr. Xindi Hu and Dr. Clifton Dassuncao for successfully defending their doctoral dissertations this past spring at Harvard University in Dr. Elsie Sunderland’s lab.

Xindi Hu, Dissertation “From Source to Dose: Modeling Human Exposure to Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances”
Clifton Dassuncao, Dissertation “Modeling Exposures to Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Aquatic Biota and Humans”

Meet the STEEP trainees.

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