Meet the Fellows
Francesco Barone-Adesi, Ph.D., M.D. - Postdoctoral Fellow
Francesco Barone-Adesi, Ph.D., M.D., joined the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) as a visiting postdoctoral fellow in April 2010. He received an M.D. from the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Rome, Italy and a Ph.D. in Occupational Health from the University of Bari, Italy. His doctoral dissertation involved the use of biologically-based models for the study of temporal trends of lung cancer and mesothelioma in cohorts of asbestos workers. Since 2005, Dr. Barone-Adesi has worked as a research fellow in the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Turin, Italy, where he collaborated on projects of occupational and environmental epidemiology. He was the principal investigator for a study coordinated by the Italian Ministry of Health to evaluate the health effects of the introduction of smoking regulations in Italy.
His interests also include methodological research such as the use of Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) and dynamic systems modeling in cancer epidemiology. Under the mentorship of Debra Silverman, Sc.D., Sc.M., Chief and Senior Investigator, OEEB, Dr. Barone-Adesi will work on occupational risk factors for cancer and the temporal effects of occupational exposures such as benzene and formaldehyde on cancer risk.
Kathryn Hughes Barry,Ph.D., M.P.H. -Postdoctoral Fellow
Kathryn Hughes Barry is a postdoctoral fellow in OEEB through the Yale University/NCI Partnership Training Program. In her dissertation research, Kathryn is working with Michael Alavanja, Ph.D. (Senior Investigator, OEEB) and Jay Lubin, Ph.D, (Senior Investigator, Biostatistics Branch), along with other members of the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) team and her mentors from Yale, Drs. Tongzhang Zheng and Xiaomei Ma. Her projects will explore the association between pesticides and cancer risk and the role of genetic susceptibility. The latter effort will focus on prostate cancer, which is elevated in the AHS cohort.
Kathryn received a B.S. from Tufts University in 2003, with majors in Biology and Community Health, and an M.P.H. with a focus in Chronic Disease Epidemiology from Yale University in 2005. Her Master's thesis examined the relationships between carotenoid nutrients and the F2-Isoprostanes, stable and specific biomarkers of oxidative damage to lipids, in curatively-treated head and neck cancer patients. She then spent two years as a CDC/CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellow at the Washington State Department of Health. As part of her fellowship, Kathryn engaged in cluster investigations of non-infectious conditions, including childhood and breast cancers and aplastic anemia. She also utilized WA State Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data to explore predictors of cancer screening and conducted a literature review on tanning booth use and melanoma that was used to aid policy-making in WA regarding warning labels for tanning devices. Kathryn has presented the findings of her research at state, regional and national conferences, including the Washington State Joint Conference on Health, the Western Regional Epidemiology Network, and the 2006 Congress of Epidemiology. She is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research, the Society for Epidemiologic Research, and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.
Yu-Cheng Chen, Ph.D.- Postdoctoral Fellow
Yu-Cheng Chen, Ph.D. joined the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) as a postdoctoral fellow in December 2010. Dr. Chen received his both M.S. (2004) and Ph.D. (2010) in environmental and occupational health from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. His dissertation research was to develop techniques for the control of the process emissions of air pollutants and to identify the main exposure sources in the iron ore sintering plant. As a visiting scholar at the Division of Environmental Health Science, University of Minnesota from 2009 to 2010, his research interests focused on occupational epidemiology with an emphasis on exposure assessment and modeling for workers at the chemical facility. Dr. Chen’s research focused on applied exposure reconstruction and Bayesian modeling skills to assess occupational diseases. While in OEEB, under the mentorship of Melissa Friesen, Ph.D., Investigator, OEEB, Dr. Chen’s research goals are to focus on developing exposure estimates for occupational risk factors by using statistical models to predict historical exposure, examining the validity and/or reliability of the exposure estimates, and assessing the sensitivity of exposure-disease associations to exposure assessment approaches for the use of epidemiologic study designs.
Sarah Daugherty, Ph.D. -Postdoctoral Fellow
Sarah Daugherty, a post-doctoral fellow, received her B.A. from Carleton College, a dual Masters degree in Epidemiology and Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in genetic epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Dr. Daugherty's work has focused on urological cancers, including prostate and bladder cancer, with an emphasis on chemoprevention and personalized medicine. Dr. Daugherty has given multiple presentations at professional conferences such as the Society for Epidemiological Research, the Amercian Association of Cancer Research (AACR), and the AACR Frontiers in Prevention, and has published her researchs in journals such as Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention and the Prostate. Dr. Daugherty's current projects include establishing a pilot study to validate self-reports of prostate cancer progression among men diagnosed with clinically localized prostate cancer in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial, and a pooled analysis of the association between aspirin, non-aspirin NSAIDs, and risk of bladder cancer.
Curt DellaValle, M.P.H.,Ph.D.-Postdoctoral Fellow
Curt DellaValle joined the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) as a postdoctoral fellow in July 2010. He earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Connecticut in 2000 and received his M.P.H., in 2005 and Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences in 2010, both from Yale University. The focus of Dr. DellaValle’s dissertation research was the development and evaluation of exposure modeling techniques for ambient allergens. The primary purpose of this research was to assess ambient allergen exposure at the individual level. In particular, he investigated the association between ambient allergen exposures and daily respiratory symptoms among a cohort of asthmatic children. At OEEB, under the direction of mentor Mary Ward, Ph.D., Senior Investigator, OEEB, Dr. DellaValle’s research goals are to focus on improvement and validation of methods for assessing environmental exposures in epidemiological studies of cancer. Research projects include developing estimates of nitrate levels in groundwater aquifers for the Agricultural Health Study cohort to evaluate risk of gastrointestinal cancers and estimating the geographic extent of pesticide drift from agricultural pesticide applications for evaluation of lymphohematopoietic cancers. He is a member of the International Society of Exposure Science.
Nicole Cardello Deziel, Ph.D., M.H.S. -Postdoctoral Fellow
Nicole Cardello Deziel received her Masters in Industrial Hygiene in 2000 and her doctorate in Environmental Health Sciences in 2008, both from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her Masters research involved the evaluation of the performance of a personal particulate sampler. Her Ph.D. work compared standard methods for assessing exposure to dietary carcinogens, including diet diaries, questionnaires, and biological markers. At Johns Hopkins, Dr. Deziel also worked with the Environmental Protection Agency comparing inhalation and dermal exposure measurements with biomonitoring measures in pesticide handlers. In November 2007 Dr. Deziel joined the National Children’s Study Coordinating Center, as a Senior Environmental Health Scientist to develop environmental sampling protocols. This work included conducting a methods study comparing surface wipe methods for pesticide sampling.
Dr. Deziel joined the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) in February 2010, as a postdoctoral fellow and has been awarded a Sallie Rosen Kaplan Fellowship. Under the mentorship of Drs. Mary Ward, Senior Investigator, OEEB and Melissa Friesen, Investigator, OEEB, Dr. Deziel will continue her research on improving and validating methods for assessing environmental and occupational exposures in epidemiological studies of cancer. Dr. Deziel is involved in several OEEB projects, including examining factors influencing pesticide exposure in the California Childhood Leukemia Study and dioxin exposure in the non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Study. In collaboration with the Nutritional Epidemiology Branch, Dr. Deziel is also examining factors influencing urine levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in Linxian, China.
Linda Liao, Ph.D., M.P.H. -Research Fellow
Linda Dong joined the OEEB as a Sallie Rosen Kaplan post-doctoral fellow. She has a long-standing interest in nutrition. She first merged her interests in nutrition and physical activity with the field of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley where she obtained her B.S. and M.P.H. In her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Washington, she evaluated the interplay between nutrition and genetics in relation to cancer risk: "Genetic variation in calcium and vitamin D related genes and colon cancer."
She currently works with Wong-Ho Chow, Ph.D. (Senior Investigator, OEEB) and Lee Moore, Ph.D. (Investigator, OEEB) evaluating genetic and lifestyle risk factors from two large case-control studies of renal cancer in the U.S. and Europe. She is also involved in studies of esophageal and gastric cancers within several consortia. She has received a DCEG Molecular Epidemiology Research Award and an NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence. Dr. Dong has published in JAMA, Lancet Oncology, the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, Nutrition and Cancer, and Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention. She performs peer-review services for the journal Nutrition and Cancer and the International Journal of Cancer. Linda has membership in professional organizations such as the American Association for Cancer Research and the Society for Epidemiologic Research.
Alexander Fischer, B.S. -Post-baccalaureate Fellow
Alexander Fischer joined the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) as a post-baccalaureate CRTA fellow in September, 2010. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry, B.A. in Spanish, and minor in Statistics from the University of Maryland in May 2010. Mr. Fischer first began conducting research in a lab of the Genetics Branch of the Center for Cancer Research (CCR), looking at gene expression analysis in colorectal cancer cell lines. As an undergraduate, he worked on research projects involving the epidemiology of minority health, health disparities, and culturally competent care at the University of Maryland, School of Public Health. These experiences in cancer and epidemiological research inspired Mr. Fischer to join the Division of Cancer Epidemiology Research as a CRTA summer fellow in the OEEB for two years. He will continue to work on the New England Bladder Cancer Study, focusing on biological markers in relation to bladder cancer, under the mentorship of Dalsu Baris, M.D., Ph.D., Staff Scientist,OEEB.
Jonathan Hofmann, Ph.D., M.P.H. -Research Fellow
Jonathan Hofmann joined the OEEB as a post-doctoral fellow in May 2009. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington, where his dissertation research focused on occupational and genetic determinants of serum cholinesterase inhibition among organophosphate-exposed agricultural pesticide handlers. Dr. Hofmann's research interests include occupational and environmental determinants of cancer, with a particular emphasis on biomarkers of exposure, susceptibility, and early biologic effects related to cancer etiology. His work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals including Occupational Medicine, the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, and the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health. He has served as a peer reviewer for Environmental Health Perspectives and the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health.
H. Dean Hosgood, III, Ph.D. -Research Fellow
Dr. Hosgood, a post-doctoral fellow, has focused his research on inter-individual variation of cancer susceptibility associated with environmental exposures, specifically in Asia. Working with Qing Lan, Ph.D. (Senior Investigator, OEEB), Nathaniel Rothman. M.D. (Senior Investigator, OEEB), and Drs. Tongzhang Zheng and Yong Zhu (Yale University), his research has expanded on experimental and epidemiological evidence suggesting that genetic variation and other intermediate endpoint biomarkers influence lung cancer susceptibility in populations with indoor air pollution exposures from coal and wood combustion. Additional work with Drs. Lan and Rothman has focused on genetic susceptibility to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, as well as genetic variation and intermediate endpoint biomarkers among individuals exposed to benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene. Dr. Hosgood also investigates genetic variation and multiple myeloma susceptibility with Dalsu Baris, Ph.D. (Investigator, OEEB). He is involved in the Asian Cohort Consortium, the International Lung Cancer Consortium, the Molecular Epidemiology Group of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and the Genomics Forum of the American Public Health Association. He is also a member of The New York Academy of Sciences and has been awarded the Scholar-in-Training Award from AACR's Molecular Epidemiology Group, the Highly Rated Abstract Award from AACR, the Molecular Epidemiology Research Funding Award from DCEG, and the DCEG Fellows Award for Research Excellence. Dr. Hosgood's work has been published in the British Journal of Cancer, the International Journal of Cancer, Carcinogenesis, Lung Cancer, Hematological Oncology, Cancer Causes and Control, Leukemia Research, and Mutation Research, among others. He received his Ph.D. in Cancer Epidemiology, and an M.P.H. in Environmental Health Sciences, from Yale University. He is originally from Pennsylvania, where he earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University.
Wei Hu, Ph.D., -Postdoctoral Fellow
Wei Hu, Ph.D., joined the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) as a post-doctoral fellow in 2010. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, China in 2005. His Ph.D. thesis, Interactive effects on respiratory health between outdoor air pollutants and other factors, studied the effect of particulate matter, SO2, and NOx pollution on respiratory symptoms in four Chinese cities. As a doctoral student, Dr. Hu also worked with investigators from the University of California, Los Angeles as a field team leader on a project that measured inhalation and dietary exposure to boron in workers from boric acid industries in Northeast China in order to study the effects of boric exposure on human reproductive health. After obtaining his Ph.D., he worked for the China National Environmental Monitoring Center in Beijing where he played a key role in the development of study instruments, training, and managing the OEEB hospital-based case-control study of lung cancer among non-smoking women in Xuan and Fuyuan and its exposure assessment component. As a post-doctoral fellow in OEEB, Dr. Hu will be involved in several projects including a series of studies on lung cancer in China, -the AsiaLymph study (a hospital-based case-control study of lymphoma in Asia), and molecular epidemiology studies of known or suspected occupational carcinogens, under the mentorship of Qing Lan,Ph.D., M.P.H., Senior Investigator.
Sara Karami,Ph.D., M.P.H. -Postdoctoral Fellow
Sara Karami, a post-doctoral fellow in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB), received her M.P.H. in 2003 in epidemiology and biostatistics and in 2009 completed her Ph.D. in epidemiology, both from George Washington University. For Dr. Karami’s dissertation she worked with her mentor, Lee Moore, Ph.D., M.P.H., Investigator, OEEB on investigating the association between vitamin D exposure (via occupational sunlight, dietary intake and genetic variations in vitamin D pathway genes) and renal cancer risk among participants in the Central and European Renal Cell Carcinoma (CEERCC) study. Currently, Dr. Karami is working on replicating her dissertational results in the US Renal Cell Carcinoma (USRCC) study. As a post-doctoral fellow in OEEB, Dr. Karami is continuing her studying of occupational, environmental, and genetic risk factors for different cancers, such as the bladder, kidney, and prostate. She is working with Mark Purdue, Ph.D., Investigator, OEEB on the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial & American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) cohort analysis of reproductive factors in relation to renal cancer and an USRCC analysis of occupational and industrial categories in relation to renal cancer risk. For another project, Dr. Karami is collaborating with OEEB researchers, Michael Alavanja, Ph.D., Senior Investigator and Gabriella Andreotti, Ph.D., Staff Scientist on the Agricultural Health Study, looking at gene-environment interaction in relation to prostate cancer, specifically to explore whether vitamin D pathway genes modify the association between pesticide exposure and prostate cancer risk. Dr. Karami is continuing to work with her primary mentor, Dr. Moore on the USRCC and CEERCC studies analyzing occupational exposure in relation to renal cancer risk, analysis of gene-environment interactions to see if risk factors modify renal cancer risk, in order to replicate her dissertation results in the USRCC study population.
Dong-Hee Koh, Ph.D., M.D. -Postdoctoral Fellow
Dong-Hee Koh, Ph.D., M.D., joined the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) as a visiting postdoctoral fellow in October 2010. He received his medical training, and a Ph.D. in public health from Yonsei University in Korea 2007. His doctoral research was a study of cancer risk in petrochemical workers. Since 2006, he has performed epidemiologic investigations and researches at Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute (OSHRI in KOSHA). Most of epidemiologic investigations have dealt with occupational respiratory diseases such as occupational asthma and lung cancer. He conducted research projects dealing with cancer risk of maintenance workers in a refinery/petrochemical complex, cement industry workers, and workers exposed to ionizing radiation. Under the mentorship of Melissa Friesen, Ph.D., Tenure- Track Investigator, OEEB, Dr. Koh will work on projects developing exposure estimates for occupational risk factors in a wide variety of epidemiologic study designs, including statistical models to predict historical exposure.
Christopher Kim, -Predoctoral Fellow
Christopher Kim joined the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) as a predoctoral fellow in August 2011. Dr. Kim received his M.P.H. in Epidemiology and Environmental Health from Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts and is currently matriculated in the Yale University-National Cancer Institute Partnership Training Program cancer epidemiology. Under the mentorship of OEEB investigators Drs. Qing Lan, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., Nathaniel Rothman, M.D., M.P.H., M.H.S., and H. Dean Hosgood III, Ph.D., and Yale investigator Dr. Yawei Zhang, Dr. Kim will investigate interactions between molecular markers, genetic variation, and air toxins and their associations with lung cancer.
Stella Koutros, Ph.D. -Research Fellow
Dr. Koutros, a post-doctoral fellow, began her education with a B.A. from Tufts University with a focus in epidemiology and public health. She received her M.P.H. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from Yale University. As part of her doctoral studies, she participated in the Yale-NCI partnership training program in cancer epidemiology and conducted her dissertation research in OEEB. After receiving her doctorate in 2008, Dr. Koutros became a post-doctoral fellow in OEEB where she is studying a variety of occupational, environmental, and genetic risk factors for cancer. She is involved in and leading several projects within the Agricultural Health Study (PI: Michael Alavanja, Ph.D., Senior Investigator, OEEB) under the mentorship of Laura Beane Freeman, Ph.D. (Investigator, OEEB). For example, she is looking for gene-environment interactions associated with prostate cancer as well as the impact of pesticide exposure on cancer risk. Dr. Koutros is also investigating genetic risk factors for prostate cancer in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening trial and the Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium. She is also conducting research on occupational and environmental risk factors for bladder cancer in the Spanish and New England bladder cancer case-control studies.
Her experiences before coming to NCI were in various aspects of the public health field including two Yale/NCI grants for epidemiology training, and working at the Connecticut Tumor Registry focusing on cancer epidemiology. In 2008, she was awarded the American College of Epidemiology Student Prize for her work on "Aromatic amine pesticide use and human cancer risk: results from the U.S. Agricultural Health Study."
Qian Xiao, Ph.D., M.P.H. - Cancer Prevention Fellow
Dr. Qian Xiao joined the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) as a Cancer Prevention Fellow on October of 2011. Dr. Xiao received her B.S. in life sciences from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2003, and her Ph.D. in biological sciences from the University of California at San Diego in 2009. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the role of muscle- derived molecules on neuronal differentiation. She received her M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of Michigan, where she investigated environmental exposure to xenoestrogen and risk of inflammatory breast cancer in Egypt. She also studied cooking fat consumption and childhood growth in Colombian school children. She will be working with Dr. Wong-Ho Chow and others in OEEB and the Division on a variety of projects examining lifestyle, environmental, and host determinants of cancer risks.
