Paloma Beamer (center) with her lab group and Dean Iman Hakim (right). From left, Yoshira Ornelas Van Horne, Melissa Furlong, Rietta Wagoner, Nathan Lothrop, Elgin Avila, and Nicolas Lopez-Galvez.
Paloma I. Beamer, PhD, associate professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, recently was named president-elect of the International Society of Exposure Science. She began her term Jan. 1.
The society promotes and advances exposure science as it relates to the complex inter-relationships between human populations, communities, ecosystems, wildlife, and chemical, biological, and physical agents, and non-chemical stressors. Society members have diverse expertise and training in biological, physical, environmental, social sciences and various engineering disciplines.
As president, Dr. Beamer hopes to increase the visibility and prominence of exposure science as an essential discipline within environmental health, diversify the society’s membership and perspectives in addition to enhancing student and new researcher programs to help develop the future exposure science leaders of tomorrow for this growing field.
Dr. Beamer holds joint appointments as an associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the UA College of Engineering and the UA BIO5 Institute. She is a research scientist at the UA Health Sciences Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center, the UA Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center, the UA Institute of the Environment and the UA Center for Indigenous Environmental Health Research.
Dr. Beamer’s research focuses on understanding how individuals are exposed to environmental contaminants and the health risks of these exposures with a special focus on vulnerable populations, including children, low-wage immigrant workers, Native Americans and individuals living in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Dr. Beamer also is an expert in the collection and quantification of key exposure factors aimed at improving risk assessment. The ultimate goal of her work is to develop more effective interventions and policies for prevention of avoidable cases of certain diseases such as asthma.
Dr. Beamer’s current research involves assessing exposures and risk perceptions of the Diné (Navajo) following the Gold King Mine Spill. She also is conducting the Tucson Air Pollution Study and working with the California Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a risk assessment for children playing soccer on artificial turf. Dr. Beamer recently was awarded a grant from National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct a clinical trial with promotoras (community health workers), to reduce workplace exposures in small businesses.
Dr. Beamer is the recipient of an NIH Mentored Quantitative Research Development Award, a Scientific Technological Achievement Award (Level I) from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and a Young Investigator Award from Yuma Friends of the University of Arizona Health Sciences. She was selected as one of Tucson’s “40 under 40” and as an Emerging Investigator for the international journal, Environmental Science: Processes & Impact.
She is a lifetime member of the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.
She is an environmental engineer by training and earned her Bachelor of Science from the University of California Berkeley and her master’s degree and doctorate from Stanford University.
About the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health
Established in 2000, the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona Health Sciences is the first nationally accredited college of public health in the Southwest. Today the college remains the only accredited college of public health in the state of Arizona with campuses in Tucson and Phoenix. The college enrolls more than 1,100 students per year across degree programs at the bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctoral levels. Through research, education and community engagement, the UA Zuckerman College of Public Health continues to find solutions to public health problems in Arizona, the Southwest and globally. For more information: publichealth.arizona.edu (Follow us: Facebook | Twitter)
