The NYU/NIEHS Center (the Center) is a highly interdisciplinary research organization that has successfully applied a wide range of research talents and perspectives to the studies of environmental health issues. Because of its scope, the Center has created opportunities for collaborative and multidisciplinary research across diverse program areas, such as epidemiology with molecular biology, and human exposure assessment with basic toxicology, as well as integrating molecular biology into toxicology.
The primary mission of this broad-based Center is to focus a diversity of talent on the recognition, evaluation, prevention and control of the adverse impact of environmental factors on human health. This is achieved through the interactive programs of the research cores that provide intellectually stimulating foci for studies addressing the Center's goals, and is supported by centralized facilities that provide individual researchers with information, expertise and technical assistance in specific operations (e.g., analytical chemistry, inhalation exposure, histopathology, animal care and specialized animal exposure, gene expression and genotyping analyses, computational biology, biostatistics), and state-of-the-art equipment (e.g., DNA sequencer, atomic force microscopy, microarray technology). The broad goals of the Center are the identification, evaluation, prevention, and control of the adverse impact of environmental factors on human health, with a strong focus on ambient air pollution effects, environmental exposures to heavy metals, the role of dietary factors in the causation and prevention of human cancer, and hormonal, radiation, and occupational exposures in human carcinogenesis. Further, the Center reaches out to the community (local and regional) providing assistance and information on environmental issues, and training graduate and medical students for productive careers in research, teaching, and other professional services. The Center also guides its members into new research areas involving modern technology or into research areas that are timely and will have significant environmental impact (e.g., The World Trade Center disaster). The Center supports both investigator-initiated pilot projects, as well as encourages initiatives in new areas that the Center deems important for the future of our environmental health.
The Center's coordination and application of broad-based scientific talents and research techniques:
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facilitates research that relates environmental factors to human disease;
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identifies mechanisms responsible for the adverse health effects produced by environmental agents;
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develops methods for the detection, prevention and control of environmental exposures that cause or exacerbate human diseases; and
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studies the relationship between genes and environmental factors that activate or deactivate genes that contribute to differences in population and inter-individual susceptibilities to the development and progression of human diseases.
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