WASHINGTON — Five scientists have been selected for the Human Health and Community Resilience track of the Early-Career Research Fellowship (ECRF), the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine announced today.

During the two-year program, which begins this month, the fellows will contribute to the advancement of health equity in the Gulf of Mexico region or Alaska by considering the effects of climate change on social determinants of health. These social determinants include issues such as air and water quality, housing, food security, transportation access, public safety, and employment.

The Gulf Coast region and Alaska are vulnerable both to acute shocks, such as hurricanes or oil spills, as well as to being at the forefront of the climate crisis, facing rising sea levels and increasing storm intensity. These vulnerabilities result in unique challenges as communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.

“The goal of the ECRF’s Human Health and Community Resilience track is to address the unique health needs of communities in the Gulf region and Alaska. Many of these communities are vulnerable to natural disasters. We have an opportunity to help them build a healthier future, and preserve the areas where they live, work, and play,” said Karena Mary Mothershed, program head and senior program officer for the GRP’s Board on Gulf Education and Engagement.

The Gulf Research Program’s Early-Career Research Fellowship helps early-career researchers during the critical pre-tenure phase of their careers. Fellows receive a $76,000 financial award along with mentoring to provide them with independence, flexibility, and built-in support as they take risks on untested research ideas, pursue unique collaborations, and build a network of colleagues.

The 2022-2024 cohort of Human Health and Community Resiliency Early-Career Research Fellows are:

Ruijie “Rebecca” Bian
Bian is a research assistant professor at the Louisiana Transportation Research Center. As the Center’s planning and multimodal research manager, she focuses on supporting multimodal transportation planning, design, and operation through research with the knowledge of transportation engineering and data science. She is also well recognized for her research analyzing and modeling hurricane evacuation behavior and human mobility in extreme weather.

Renato Molina
Molina is an assistant professor in environmental and resource economics at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami; a faculty scholar at the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami; and a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Natural Resources at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso in Chile. His work informs policies aimed at decreasing the negative social impacts of environmental hazards, pursuing environmentally sustainable adaptation strategies, and diminishing environmental injustice issues in disadvantaged communities.

Kristin Nielsen
Nielsen is an assistant professor of aquatic toxicology in the Department of Marine Science at the University of Texas at Austin. She uses a One Health approach to investigate the interactive effects of environmental contamination and climate change mediated environmental stressors on the health of subsistence and sportfish populations in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, including downstream implications for dietary contaminant exposure in remote subsistence communities.

Jennifer Scott
Scott is an assistant professor at Louisiana State University School of Social Work. Her research seeks to understand how economic and political exclusion affect well-being and health, focusing specifically on questions that consider environmental context, immigration status, and access to economic resources (e.g., income, employment, and socio-environmental conditions) as social determinants of health.

Xilei Zhao
Zhao is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering at the University of Florida, where she leads the Smart, Equitable, Resilient Mobility Systems (SERMOS) Lab. Her work focuses on developing and applying data and computational science methods to tackle challenging problems in resilience and transportation. She specializes in modeling human behavior in disasters, quantifying resilience for critical infrastructure systems, societal systems, communities, and modeling and planning for emerging travel modes (e.g., ride-hailing and micromobility).

The National Academies’ Gulf Research Program is an independent, science-based program founded in 2013 as part of legal settlements with the companies involved in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. It seeks to enhance offshore energy system safety and protect human health and the environment by catalyzing advances in science, practice, and capacity to generate long-term benefits for the Gulf of Mexico region and the nation. The program has $500 million for use over 30 years to fund grants, fellowships, and other activities in the areas of research and development, education and training, and monitoring and synthesis.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.

Contact:
Pete Nelson, Director of Communications
Gulf Research Program
PNelson@nas.edu