HAPPENINGS
Iowa Superfund Research Program Receives $11.4M to Continue Study of PCBs
CPH Names Outstanding Alumni Award Recipients The University of Iowa College of Public Health has named Ty Borders and Kari Harland the recipients of its 2020 Outstanding Alumni Awards. Borders earned a Master of Arts degree (1995) and a doctoral degree (1999) in hospital and health administration, and a Master of Science degree (2001) in epidemiology. He is currently a professor and the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky Endowed Chair in Rural Health Policy and director of the Rural and Underserved Health Research Center at the University of Kentucky. Harland earned a Master of Public Health degree (2004) and a doctoral degree (2010) in epidemiology, and is now director of research operations in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the UI Carver College of Medicine and adjunct assistant professor with the Department of Epidemiology at the UI College of Public Health. The award recognizes College of Public Health alumni who have made distinguished contributions to the field of public health and demonstrated a strong interest and commitment to the mission, vision, and values of the college. Read more about this year’s recipients at: cph.uiowa.edu/alumni/.
20 INSIGHT SPRING 2020
The Iowa Superfund Research Program (ISRP), a University of Iowa research group started in 2006 that is a leader in the study of human exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), has received a highly competitive five-year, $11.4 million grant renewal from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced in March 2020. ISRP will receive $2.4 million for the first year of the renewal. “Airborne PCBs: Sources, Exposures, Toxicities, Remediation” is the latest phase of the project, which focuses on the airborne threats posed by PCBs by identifying the ways in which people are exposed, analyzing measurable levels of toxicity, and developing efforts to remediate PCBs already present in natural environments and manufactured structures. “The Iowa Superfund Research Program is the only program funded by the NIH that focuses on airborne PCBs,” says Keri Hornbuckle, the Donald E. Bently Professor of Engineering in the UI Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the project’s principal investigator. “Our research is the result of interdisciplinary collaborations that cover the breadth of the PCB problem— toxicologists and pharmacologists who study exposure; engineers who focus on identifying PCB sources and stopping continued release; and chemists who develop the compounds that can be used to remediate spaces and surfaces.” The research team includes CPH faculty members Brandi Janssen, Michael Jones, Hans Lehmler, Gabriele Ludewig, Peter Thorne, and Kai Wang.
