How could low-emission vehicles affect the national rates of common respiratory illnesses? Marsha Wills-Karp, the Anna M. Baetjer Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, is bringing engineers and public health researchers together to tackle this problem and many more. The collaboration under Wills-Karp is starting strong, thanks to a $1 million gift from two Hopkins alumni to support seven research projects, including two air-quality-sensor studies around the city of Baltimore.
“The simplest way to put it,” Wills-Karp says, “is that public health scientists can identify problems, and engineers are the solution arm. Engineers and public health folks don’t necessarily speak the same language, but when they work together on concrete problems, they can have a huge impact on areas of the environment that we’re all concerned with: air, water, soil.”
Wills-Karp’s professorship is named for Anna M. Baetjer, a pioneer in the fields of occupational health and industrial hygiene whose career included discovering the relationship between occupation and lung cancer. During her time at Hopkins, which spanned over six decades, she established one of the nation’s first research and training programs in environmental toxicology. Baetjer’s trailblazing legacy lives on through Wills-Karp, a pioneer in her own right. One of the country’s leading asthma scholars, her research has made significant contributions to how we understand the molecular mechanisms of asthma.
The Department of Environmental Health and Engineering is the latest development in a long-standing collaboration between the Whiting School of Engineering and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Abel Wolman, a Hopkins alumnus and professor, formed a relationship between the two schools as he conducted his groundbreaking work in water purification in the early 20th century.
Learn more about this new department in the summer 2017 issues of JHU Engineering and Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health.
Topics: Bloomberg School of Public Health, Whiting School of Engineering, Fuel Discovery, Support Scholars