The EaRTH Center Mentored Innovation Awards support early-stage and innovative research, clinical, health education, and community outreach projects in environmental health. Awards are designed to help junior faculty, clinicians, and postdoctoral scholars generate preliminary data, develop new methods and approaches, and advance projects toward future external funding.
Innovation Awards are offered in three categories:
Mentored Scientist Award – Supports innovative environmental health research projects aimed at generating preliminary data, developing a new method, or integrating an environmental health component into existing research.
Mentored Clinician Award – Supports innovative clinical, health education, or community outreach projects in environmental health.
Mentored Postdoctoral Scholar Award – Supports postdoctoral scholars in advancing an independent environmental health research program through an innovative pilot project or novel extension of current research, with the goal of generating preliminary data for future external funding (e.g., a K99/R00 award).
Areas of Interest
Projects supported through the Mentored Innovation Awards should be broadly aligned with EaRTH’s mission to understand how exposure to environmental pollutants and chemicals during development influences disease and to identify opportunities to prevent or mitigate exposures and improve health across the lifespan, particularly among vulnerable and underserved populations.
Relevant exposures may include environmental chemicals and food additives, as well as factors that may modify biological responses to exposures, such as psychosocial stress.
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Adverse health outcomes associated with exposures during pregnancy and early development
- Mechanistic studies identifying pathways disrupted by environmental exposures
- Interactions between genetics and environmental exposures in disease, including cancer
- New technologies and approaches for monitoring exposures or their effects
- Interventions to prevent or mitigate the effects of environmental exposures
- Intersections among health, extreme weather, and environmental justice
- In vitro and computational approaches that advance hazard identification and chemical risk assessment
Hilary Ong, MD
Systematic Review of Direct Patient Health Impacts from Healthcare Plastic Exposure
Mentor: Arianne Teherani, PhD
Kimberly Badal, PhD
A pilot study of non-targeted chemical screening analysis in archived blood samples from participants in the Athena Breast Health Network
Mentor: Peggy Reynolds, PhD, MPH, MA
Susan Shen, MD, PhD
Combinatorial effects of smoking-related toxicants and antipsychotics on cellular health
Mentor: Lani Wu, PhD
Ethan Brown, MD
Risk of Parkinson’s disease after early life and developmental toxicant exposure
Mentor: Caroline M. Tanner, MD, PhD
Nadia Diamond-Smith, PhD, MSc
The association between extreme weather events and low birth weight in Nepal
Mentor: Marya Zlatnik, MD, MMS
Robin Cooper, MD
Mental Health and Changing Climate: An Educational, Outreach Project for Prevention and Advocacy
Mentor: Lisa Fortuna, MD
The application period for these awards are currently closed.
Types of Mentored Awards when offered:
Mentored Scientist Award, Mentored Clinician Award
Project Awards Amount $15,000, 1 year project period.
Questions? Please contact Dr. Diana Laird, Pilot Project Program Director via email.