DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH SCIENCES
PUBLIC HEALTH SEMINAR
Presented by: Kai Zhang, Ph.D., Empire Innovation Professor, University of Albany, SUNY
TITLE: “Air Pollution, Extreme Weather, and Urban Exposome: Evolution of Exposure Science in the Era of AI and Precision Health”
DATE: Thursday, Jan. 23
TIME: Noon to 1 p.m.
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Abstract
As urban populations continue to increase in the U.S. and globally, there is growing concern about the impact of urban environmental and social determinants on population health, ranging from traditional pollutants to emergent issues such as natural disasters. This talk will focus on modern exposure science approaches to characterize exposures to air pollution, natural disaster, social determinants and urban exposome as well as to incorporate them in health research to understand potential biological mechanisms. These approaches include advanced statistical models, GIS, and machine learning methods. The approaches highlighted throughout the talk are applicable to epidemiological studies, risk assessment and public health actions.
Kai Zhang, MS, MA, Ph.D., is an Empire Innovation Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY). Dr. Zhang is the awardee of the SUNY Empire Innovation Program in 2021. He received a Ph.D. in environmental health and a MA in statistics at the University of Michigan, and a MS in Environmental engineering from Tsinghua University in China, respectively.
Dr. Zhang’s research interest focuses on characterizing climate-related exposures, reducing the human health effects associated with disasters, and exploring the role of social and environmental stressors (air pollution, natural environment, built environment, and green space) in relation to chronic diseases. His expertise includes exposure science, air quality, epidemiology, GIS, statistics, and data science.
He currently serves as associate editor for Science of the Total Environment and Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology. He is the elected secretary of the International Society of Exposure Science. His research has been featured in prestigious international journals, including Nature Climate Change, Nature Communication, Science Advances, Circulation, Circulation Research, Environmental Health Perspectives, and Environmental Science & Technology, among others.
For more information, contact: Lisa Cook at lcook@uchc.edu