Dr. Costa has a strong commitment to the field of environmental health, toxicology and chemical carcinogenesis. He has been active in this area for over 25 years. Dr. Costa is also Chairman of the Department of Environmental Medicine. His role as Chairman of the Department of Environmental Medicine, combined with his leadership of the Center, which is largely based in the Department of Environmental Medicine, gives him clear authority in directing the Center. Dr. Costa is an active researcher with a lab consisting of several post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, and technicians. He has funded grants from NIEHS and continues to be very active in his research, which allows him to lead not only by authority but also by example.

Dr. Costa is also the Deputy Director of an NCI-funded Cancer Center for the five-year period (2001-2006). In that Center, Dr. Costa is the Program Director of the Environmental Carcinogenesis Program, which will also foster collaboration in this important area of environmental health. Many of the members of the Cancer Center are also members of the NIEHS Center.

Dr. Terry Gordon holds the rank of Professor of Environmental Medicine at the NYU School of Medicine. He has a Ph.D. degree in toxicology from MIT, and was appointed to the faculty of the Department of Environmental Medicine in 1989. Dr. Gordon currently is the Research Core Director of Systemic Toxicology; this research core integrates studies primarily in respiratory toxicology, including respiratory immunotoxicology. As a faculty member of the department, he has been primary research advisor to several predoctoral, Masters level, and postdoctoral students, has directed the Master degree research projects of three additional students in a collaborative effort with the University of Birmingham, UK, and has served on over ten other doctoral dissertation committees. (need to be "timeless")

Dr. Gordon has served as an ad hoc member of grant review panels and/or site visit teams for NIEHS, NCCR, DOD, Bureau of Mines, and the U.S. EPA. He currently serves as Vice-chair of the ACGIH Threshold Limit Value committee, a volunteer organization that publishes occupational exposure levels that are used as workplace safety guidelines throughout the world. Dr. Gordon is an active member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT), and has served on the Program Committee (2002-2005), the Placement Service (1998-2001), and as President of its Inhalation Specialty Section during 2002-2003. He has served as a consultant/author to the U.S. EPA on issues of pulmonary toxicology related to the development of various documents, including the Criteria Document on Particulate Matter.

Dr. Gordon's broad research interest is in inhalation toxicology. The major focus of his research lab is the identification and understanding of the role of genetic host factors in the pathogenesis of the adverse pulmonary effects produced by inhaled environmental and occupational agents. Because inter-individual responses to inhaled particles and gases varies so greatly in both human subjects and test animals, Dr. Gordon has hypothesized that genetic susceptibility factors play a major role in environmental and occupational lung disease. In collaboration with a number of investigators in the department, his laboratory uses classic murine genetics models, computational genomics, and DNA microarrays to identify genes involved in the acute response as well as in the development of tolerance to repeated exposure to inhaled toxicants.