Media Relations

Dr. Adgate is a professor in the Colorado School of Public Health Department of Environmental & Occupational Health and an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Health, Work & Environment at the school. Dr. Adgate is also an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Environmental & Radiological Health Science at Colorado State University and the University of Colorado Cancer Center.

He served as the chair of the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health from August 2009 until July 2021. His research on exposure science, risk analysis, and children’s environmental health has focused on improving exposure estimation in epidemiologic studies by documenting the magnitude and variability of human exposures to chemical and biological stressors. His current research focuses on the risks, health, and community impacts of oil and gas development; the impact of heat and air pollution on the development of chronic kidney disease in Guatemalan sugarcane workers; and exposure and health effects stemming from perfluoroalkyl chemical (PFAS) exposure. He is one of the principal investigators in the national multi-site PFAS exposure and health effects study funded by ATSDR/CDC.

Dr. Adgate has served on multiple science advisory panels for the U.S. EPA and the National Academies of Science committees exploring technical and policy issues related to PFAS exposure and remediation, residential exposure to pesticides and air pollutants, impacts of energy development on human health, lead-exposure interventions, and the impacts of climate change on indoor air quality. He received an MSPH in Environmental Science and Engineering from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a PhD in Environmental Health from Rutgers University.

Elizabeth Carlton is a professor in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health at the Colorado School of Public Health. She is an environmental epidemiologist who studies how infectious diseases spread and why, at times, they persist despite control efforts. Her research focuses on improving surveillance tools for infectious diseases including COVID-19 and schistosomiasis. She values transdisciplinary approaches and working with her collaborative research group that includes masters and doctoral students, as well as postdoctoral fellows. Dr. Carlton currently leads a research program using next generation genomics, epidemiology and ecology to understand barriers to schistosomiasis elimination in residual transmission hotspots. Since the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, she has been a core member of the Colorado COVID-19 modeling group, providing rapid analysis and evidence synthesis to Colorado leadership. She leads a program working to improve surveillance tools for SARS-CoV-2 in the Rocky Mountain West, using rapid literature review, data analysis and mathematical modeling.

Dr. Carlton teaches courses on environmental and occupational epidemiology, the health impacts of climate change, and the emergence and control of infectious diseases. She leads the Doctor of Public Health program in Environmental and Occupational Health. She received her PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California Berkeley, her MPH from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and her BS in biology from Yale University. Prior to graduate school, she was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras.

Learn more about Dr. Carlton’s Research Group >

Dr. Chu received her PhD degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with specialties in tropical medicine and medical microbiology. Dr. Chu’s public health career was with the CDC where she served in multiple roles including being the Director of the CDC’s system-wide laboratory enterprise. After leaving CDC, she returned to Colorado and now holds a clinical professor appointment at the Colorado School of Public Health. Concurrently, she works as senior technical consultant for USAID and WHO. Among her multiple roles for CDC, Dr. Chu was assigned to the WHO participating in the Global Outbreak and Response team, deploying for multiple outbreak responses to SARS, viral hemorrhagic fevers, pandemic influenza and natural disasters. She also led the biosafety and laboratory network activities for the WHO International Health Regulations team. She was assigned as the assistant director for public health to the White House during 2014-2015 where she was an integral part of the President’s Ebola Task Force and coordinated the national reform on the Select Agent Rule. Currently, she is working with UNICEF/USAID on the delivery of Zika virus point of care diagnostics and with WHO on improving protection for healthcare workers fighting high threat pathogens (Ebola, influenza and respiratory diseases). Since February 12, 2020, Dr. Chu has joined the WHO experts group for infection control and prevention for the COVID-19 epidemic.

Dr. Colborn is the chair of the Data, Informatics, and Statistics Core of the Palliative Care Research Cooperative Group. Her expertise is in applications of statistical models to global infectious disease data, especially complex modeling of vector-borne diseases, statistical models for clustered longitudinal data and machine learning methods for prediction of health outcomes. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Colorado, she lived in Mozambique for two years and worked as a contractor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. During that time, she also collaborated with researchers from the University of Barcelona, the Mozambique Ministry of Health and the Manhica Health Research Center on developing strategies for malaria elimination. The primary focus of her PhD dissertation was development of statistical models for longitudinal mixed species malaria infections in Papua New Guineans. She received her PhD in biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Masters of Science in Public Health in biostatistics from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She is passionate about reducing the burden of infectious diseases that plague people living in low resource countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is her goal to make major contributions to the eventual elimination of malaria and HIV.

Dr. Jaenisch is an Infectious Disease Epidemiologist and Clinical Scientist. For the last 15 years, he has coordinated multicentric observational clinical research projects on arbovirus infections like Dengue or Zika.

His research was instrumental to provide key evidence for the WHO Dengue classification of 2009. After that, he focused on warning signs for severe Dengue and on standardized severe disease endpoints in Dengue. When the Zika epidemic hit Latin America in 2016, he was able to use the existing network of partners to mount a research response against Zika.

Dr. Jaenisch is involved in large multicentric pregnant women and children cohorts in Latin America as well as in Data Sharing and Harmonization of Infectious Disease cohorts, building on the ongoing Zika birth cohorts.

Dr Jaenisch was trained as a Medical Doctor in Germany, has obtained a PhD in International Health at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and has worked in Tropical Medicine and Global Health at Heidelberg University Hospital from 2005-2019. He was recently recruited as the Director of the new Arbovirus Research Consortium (ARC), located at the Center for Global Health at the Colorado School of Public Health.

Dr. Lamb's research and public health practice are focused on improving the health of children living both in the United States and in resource-poor countries. Before joining the faculty at the Colorado School of Public Health at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus in 2011, she was an epidemic intelligence service officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stationed at the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, MD, where she investigated infectious disease outbreaks and conducted research on childhood obesity. She currently is an clinical teaching associate professor in the department of epidemiology as well as an epidemiologist at the Center for Global Health, where she works on research and public health projects in Guatemala and India, and serves as the director of educational experiences, linking students with global health projects and mentoring junior global health researchers. She is also the director of the DrPH in Epidemiology program at the Colorado School of Public Health.

Dr. Jenn Leiferman has spent the last 20 years working in the area of mental health. Her research focuses on developing and testing prevention and treatment strategies for perinatal and child mental health. Recently, her work has also focused on improving access to care for perinatal mood disorders. She is also the director of the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center and the founding director of the Population Mental Health & Wellbeing Program at ColoradoSPH.

Glen P. Mays, PhD, is the chair and a professor in the Department of Health Systems, Management & Policy in the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz. On a national level, Dr. Mays is the Director of the Systems for Action Research program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Systems for Action tests strategies for aligning delivery and financing systems for medical care, public health, and social services in ways that improve population health. 

Dr. Mays created and maintains the National Longitudinal Survey of Public Health Systems that has followed a nationally-representative cohort of U.S. communities since 1998 to examine inter-organizational and inter-governmental approaches to public health delivery and financing. 

He is also founding director of the national Public Health Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRN) program, which brings together more than 2,000 state and local public health organizations from across the U.S. to conduct applied research on innovations in public health practice. 

In the area of preparedness, Dr. Mays directs the National Program Office for the National Health Security Preparedness Index (NHSPI), created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Index identifies strengths as well as gaps in the protections needed to keep people safe and healthy in the face of large-scale public health threats, and tracks how these protections vary across the United States.

Dr. Newman is a physician-scientist, public health practitioner, and educator. He is a distinguished university professor in the Departments of Environmental & Occupational Health and Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health and the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at CU School of Medicine. He is the founding director of two national centers supported by the CDC/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH): the Center for Health, Work & Environment, and the Mountain & Plains Education and Research Center. He co-founded Health Links™, the ColoradoSPH Certificate in Total Worker Health®, and the University of Colorado Consortium for Climate Change & Health. Dr. Newman’s research program is largely supported by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Energy, the CDC, the Department of Labor, and the EPA, among other agencies and institutions.

He is recognized for his scientific and practical contributions to occupational health and safety, applying the concepts of Total Worker Health, and his prevention efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change on workers in the U.S., Mexico, and Latin America. In an academic career spanning four decades, he has contributed to our understanding of how heat stress and nephrotoxins contribute to acute kidney disease, chronic kidney disease of unknown cause, and other health consequences of climate change. Other contributions include research on the mechanisms and prevention of occupational lung disorders, including transdisciplinary work in immunotoxicology, biomarker development, medical surveillance, and health informatics. He is known for pioneering work on the health effects, prevention, and treatment of dust-induced lung disorders, including chronic beryllium disease and other granulomatous diseases such as sarcoidosis. He has authored over 250 scientific papers and over 150 books, chapters, and monographs.

Dr. Newman consults for government agencies, businesses, labor groups, and community organizations. An avid educator, Dr. Newman is a founding faculty member of the ColoradoSPH and continues to teach and mentor master’s and doctoral students and junior faculty members. His favorite role is as a mentor, second only to husband and father. He is hopeful and, at times, irrationally optimistic.

Dr. Pastula is a board-certified neurologist, CDC-trained medical epidemiologist (EIS), veteran of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS), policy maker, scientist, and teacher. He has cross-disciplinary experience and interests in neurohospitalist medicine, neuro-infectious and emerging infectious diseases, public health and epidemiology, outbreak investigation and control, emergency preparedness and response, environmental health and toxicology, meteorology and climatology, public policy, communication, and education. 

Jonathan M. Samet, MD, MS, a pulmonary physician and epidemiologist, is the past dean of the Colorado School of Public Health and Professor of Epidemiology and Occupational and Environmental Health. Previously, Dr. Samet held leadership positions at the University of Southern California, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the University of New Mexico.  

Dr. Samet received a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College, an MD degree from the University of Rochester's School of Medicine and Dentistry, and a Master of Science degree in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.  

His research focuses on the health risks of inhaled pollutants—particles and ozone in outdoor air and indoor pollutants including secondhand smoke and radon. He has also investigated the occurrence and causes of cancer and respiratory diseases, emphasizing the risks of active and passive smoking. For several decades, he has been involved in global health, focusing on tobacco control, air pollution, and chronic disease prevention.  

Dr. Samet has served on and chaired numerous committees of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, also chairing the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee of the U.S. EPA and the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee. Dr. Samet has served as editor and author for Reports of the Surgeon General on Smoking and Health since 1984, receiving the Surgeon General’s Medallion in 1990 and 2006 for these contributions. He was the Senior Scientific Editor for the 50th Anniversary 2014 report. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (Institute of Medicine) of the National Academies of Sciences in 1997 and received the David M. Rall Medal for his contributions in 2015.

Dr. Van Dyke is an industrial hygienist, researcher, public health practitioner, and educator. He is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and the Center for Work, Health & Environment at the Colorado School of Public Health. His over 20 years of experience has been spent at the academic, community, clinical, and government levels in professional practice, research, education, and policy. Dr. Van Dyke is a Certified Industrial Hygienist and is recognized for his contributions related to exposure assessment, occupational beryllium exposure, first responder exposures in clandestine methamphetamine laboratories, indoor air quality, public health aspects of legalized marijuana, and community exposures related to oil and gas extraction. He has given over 50 scientific presentations at local and national conferences and contributed on over 40 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Van Dyke is passionate about evidence-based decision-making and risk communication.