Mount Sinai Exposomics Leader Named to National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council
Robert Wright, MD, MPH, Ethel H. Wise Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, and Director of the Institute for Exposomic Research, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has been appointed by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar to serve on the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council.
The council reviews research grant applications assigned to scientific programs of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and advises the Secretary, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Director of the NIEHS on scientific program priorities related to environmental health research.
Dr Wright will serve a four-year term.
“I am excited and honored to serve on the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council. This is an opportunity to make a difference at the highest levels of research affecting environmental health and help NIH set the future agenda of exposomic research,” said Dr. Wright.
Dr Wright studies chemical mixtures, social stressors as a modifier of chemical toxicity, and the role of genetics and epigenetics in modifying or mediating chemical toxicity. He is an international expert and advocate for research on exposomics—the scientific field that measures all health-relevant exposure to environmental substances throughout a person’s lifespan. He has published more than 200 research studies, primarily on environmental health, and has served on numerous international and national committee and advisory boards. Dr. Wright founded and directs the Senator Frank R. Lautenberg Environmental Health Sciences Laboratory at Mount Sinai. He also established the Mount Sinai Transdisciplinary Center on Early Environmental Exposures, an NIH-funded Core Center grant program that provides infrastructure support to Mount Sinai environmental researchers.
He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School, and completed his residency in pediatrics at Northwestern University and fellowships in emergency medicine at Brown University and medical toxicology, environmental epidemiology and genetic epidemiology at Harvard University.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.
As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.
Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.
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