Dr. Kari Fitzmorris Brisolara is the interim Program Director of EHCS and also the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs within the School of Public Health. Her research centers on the development of innovative reuse options for agricultural and municipal waste. Specific areas of research interest include the use of indicator organisms in the evaluation of process efficacy for municipal biosolids and stabilization assessment of biosolids. She serves on the board of the Louisiana Environmental Health Association and as Vice Chair of the Community Leadership Council of the Water Environment Federation. She has consulted with several private companies regarding approval of waste treatment processes with USEPA’s Pathogen Equivalency Committee. In addition to developing multiple continuing education courses for the on-site sewage industry in both traditional and online formats including Safety and On-Site Sewage Management, Pathogens of Concern in On-Site Sewage, and Wastewater Characteristics, she served as the PI and Director of the ÉCOLE collaborative under the funded NIEHS SRP R25. Additionally, Dr. Brisolara is collaborating with LSU-Baton Rouge and the Louisiana Department of Health to provide scholarship opportunities and funded internships for MPH students.
Dr. Tewodros Godebo is an Associate Professor who conducts research on how environmental contaminants affect human health, with a focus on fluoride and toxic metal exposures. His work examines contaminants in drinking water, soil, food, air, and biological samples, with an emphasis on children’s neurodevelopment and health risk assessment across the life course. He also uses honey and hive products as environmental bioindicators to detect contamination and trace pollution sources, with an interest in extending this approach to cancer research in Louisiana’s industrial corridor. Overall, his research integrates environmental chemistry, biomonitoring, epidemiology, and GIS to advance understanding of environmental exposures and their impacts on health.
Dr. Chih-yang Hu also serves as the Program Director of the Bachelor of Science in Public Health. His research interests include water quality and resource management, wetland restoration, water source conservation, biological water treatment, environmental sciences and impact of climate change, community-based participatory research, and health risk assessment.
Dr. Daniel Harrington’s research interests are primarily in air pollution and exposure assessment. He has worked on air quality issues such as second-hand tobacco smoke in places of work (bars and casinos) and air quality in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Dr. Scott Hemmerling is an applied cultural geographer whose research focuses on climate adaptation, community resilience, and the impacts of environmental change on coastal populations. Utilizing transdisciplinary, community-based methods, Dr. Hemmerling specializes in integrating local and traditional knowledge with scientific data and environmental models. His mixed-methods approach blends qualitative, quantitative, and geospatial techniques, including participatory modeling, local knowledge mapping, and spatial video geonarratives. Using this integrated framework, he works directly alongside community members to co-produce equitable, community-driven solutions that address socioeconomic vulnerabilities and coastal hazards.
His current work on several major regional initiatives is focused on connecting coastal science with actionable decision-making. Dr. Hemmerling is collaborating with Louisiana’s Southeast Asian shrimping community to develop a comprehensive climate adaptation plan addressing environmental change, economic challenges, and community health and well-being. He also leads knowledge co-production efforts for the Mississippi River Delta Transition Initiative (MissDelta), a five-year National Academies project, and serves as a co-PI on the Use-inspired Ecological-economic Collaboratory for Advancing Coastal Wetland REstoration and Resilience (EcoCARE), a National Science Foundation collaborative linking wetland restoration research across Louisiana and Rhode Island. The EcoCARE project integrates coastal modeling, wetland ecology, economic valuation, and community and stakeholder knowledge to develop generalizable, community-informed restoration frameworks.
Dr. Adrienne Katner conducts community-engaged research to inform policies, interventions and public health practices. She has evaluated community exposures to air, soil and water pollutants associated with corroding drinking water infrastructure, industrial sites, highways, and seafood.
Dr. Katner’s Lead Exposure Assessment for Drinking Water (LEAD) study began in 2015. This study was triggered by the spikes of water lead levels in New Orleans homes after Hurricane Katrina, due to prolonged water stagnation. The study initially aimed to see if flushing taps helped reduce lead levels in water. Along the way, Dr. Katner identified additional issues. Her work revealed that lead levels in water peak during routine water line repairs and replacements, activities which had begun ramping up throughout the City of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. This work spurred the New Orleans General Inspector’s Office to issue a warning about this widespread risk. She also found that while flushing taps helps reduce lead in water levels, results varied and the length of time needed to flush water lines far exceeded the 30 second and 1 minute recommendations used by most water utilities and public health officials (levels did not significantly decline until after 5-6 minutes of high flow rate flushing). Research done in collaboration with her partners at VA Tech indicated that the best exposure reduction measures for lead in water are low-cost faucet mount filters and water pitchers that are NSF-53 certified to remove lead. Such filters can remove >95% of lead in water if properly maintained. However, these filters will not be a cost-effective solution for towns with high levels of particulates like iron in their water, a condition which many rural towns throughout LA face. More details on Dr. Katner’s Lead Exposure Assessment for Drinking Water can be found here. More details on Dr. Katner’s Claiborne Corridor study can be found here.
Dr. Barry Keim served as the state climatologist for the state of Louisiana from 2002-2023. He was previously on the faculty of the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, the University of New Hampshire, and was the New Hampshire state climatologist, from 1994 to 2003. He is known for researching extreme weather, such as hurricanes and heavy rainfall. Is interested in climate extremes, including heavy rainfall and hurricanes. He also works on issues involving climate datasets, detection of climate change and its impacts, statistical analysis of extremes, and Probable Maximum Precipitation.
Dr. Md Shahinoor Rahman uses geographic information systems and remote sensing to explore spatiotemporal trends of hazards, exposures and health impacts. He leverages novel approaches and applications in his research, like sensors and networks, the internet of things, big data technologies, data mining, machine learning, and spatial analytics approaches. He has received several grants from NASA, USAID, and World Bank for multi-disciplinary collaborative research projects.