School of Public Health and Community Medicine - University of Washington - Spr/Sum 2008

Elaine Faustman

Janessa Graves, an MPH student in Environmental and Occupational Health, won the School of Public Health and Community Medicine's Gilbert S. Omenn award as the School's outstanding Master's student. Misti Deanna Rashelle Smith was named the department's outstanding undergraduate student and Diana Ceballos the outstanding graduate student.

Professor Elaine Faustman won the School's outstanding teacher award. Sung Woo Hong, a research scientist in her laboratory, won the department's outstanding staff award and the School's Kenneth J. Anderson award. In addition to Hong, the nominees for our department's outstanding staff award were Catherine Alexander, Diane Botta, Russell Dills, Sarah Fischer, Lynn Fritzen, Monica Leibrant, Rory Murphy, Rick Neitzel, Venetia Runnion, Robin Russell, Jeff Shirai, Bert Stover, Jennifer Zadikow, and two work groups, Sally Liu's Diesel Bus Team (Nichole Real, Tom Malamakal, Chris Warner, Margaret Coburn, Melissa Symon), and the Environmental Health Lab (Jacqui Ahmad, Maureen Cornell Endres, Russell Dills, Jianbo Yu).

Undergraduate student Kazuhiro Okumura was our 2008 Jack Hatlen scholarship winner.

Sung Woo Hong

Assistant Professor J. Scott Meschke was named the outstanding faculty mentor of the year by the department's graduate students. Other nominees were Janice Camp, Bill Daniell, Jordan Firestone, Terry Kavanagh, John Kissell, Noah Seixas, and Chris Simpson.

Loren Kaehn, a master's student in the Exposure Sciences program, received a Veterans of Safety scholarship in December and became a Certified Safety Professional in February. In June, he became the department's first MS student to complete a portfolio instead of a thesis under a new degree option.

Undergraduate student Stephanie Wong won a Mary Gates Scholarship in March, based on her internship work on exhaled nitric oxide with Sally Liu's Diesel Bus Study team. She will continue her studies in our MS program.

Doctoral student Clarita Lefthand was awarded a three-year Science to Achieve Results (STAR) fellowship from the Environmental Protection Agency, which supports some of the nation's most promising masters and doctoral candidates. She studies with microbiologist J. Scott Meschke.

One of Meschke's incoming master's students, Kelly Jones, has earned a Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Affiliate Professor Steve Gilbert continues to develop Toxipedia, http://www.toxipedia.org, a free toxicology encyclopedia and resource center, and is actively recruiting authors. Gilbert has also created Healthy World Theater, http://www.HealthyWorldTheater . org, to couple art and science and forge a more healthy and peaceful world, and is seeking contributions of poems, songs, plays, and other artistic material.

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LIFETIME ARCHIEVEMENT AWARD

Michael Morgan. Photo by Gavin Sisk

Professor Michael Morgan is this year's recipient of the Meritorious Achievement Award from the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH). The award, presented at this year's American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Expo (see page 6), recognizes Morgan's outstanding, long-term contributions to the field of occupational health and industrial hygiene.

Morgan earned his doctoral degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and completed post-doctoral training in respiratory physiology at Harvard University's School of Public Health.

He joined our faculty in 1974. His research topics focus on human responses to the inhalation of air contaminants, including combustion products (sulfur dioxide and sulfate particles), ozone, and volatile solvents.

His research program in pharmacokinetics and biological monitoring of organic solvents is funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Morgan has won several teaching awards and has supervised the graduate research projects of 65 students in industrial hygiene and toxicology.

He is editor in chief of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene and author of more than 65 peer-reviewed publications.

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