Phil Brown
Co-Director
Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute
University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences
p.brown@northeastern.edu

Phil Brown is a University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Science at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute and co-directs its PFAS Project lab. He is the PI of the past NSF grant “Perfluorinated Chemicals: The Social Discovery of a Class of Emerging Contaminants” and of the current NSF grant “The New Chemical Class Activism: Mobilization Around Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances.” He is Multiple PI of the NIEHS grant “Health Assessment, Public Education, and Capacity-building in Communities Impacted by PFAS-contaminated Drinking Water,” which studies children’s immune responses to PFAS and community response to contamination, and to develop a nationwide report-back and information exchange. He directs an NIEHS T-32 training program, “Transdisciplinary Training at the Intersection of Environmental Health and Social Science,” heads the Community Outreach and Translation Core of Northeastern’s Children’s Environmental Health Center (Center for Research on Early Childhood Exposure and Development in Puerto Rico/CRECE) and serves as Research Translation Coordinator and Co-Director of the Community Engagement Core of Northeastern’s Superfund Research Program (Puerto Rico Testsite to Explore Contamination Threats (PROTECT).

In addition to PFAS, he studies biomonitoring and household exposure, social policy and regulation concerning flame retardants, reporting back data to participants, and health social movements. He received the 2012 Leo G. Reeder Award for Distinguished Contribution to Medical Sociology (American Sociological Association Medical Sociology Section) and the 2006 Fred Buttel Distinguished Contribution to Environmental Sociology Award and 2015 Environmental Sociology Practice and Outreach Award from the American Sociological Association Environmental Sociology Section. His books include No Safe Place:  Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action, Toxic Exposures: Contested Illnesses and the Environmental Health Movement, and Contested Illnesses: Citizens, Science and Health Social Movements.

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Alissa Cordner
Co-Director
Associate Professor of Sociology
Whitman College
cordneaa@whitman.edu

Alissa Cordner is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Paul Garrett Fellow at Whitman College, where she teaches Sociology and Environmental Studies courses. Her research interests include environmental sociology, environmental health and justice, risk and disasters, science and knowledge, social movements, and policy and participation. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Brown University.

Her 2016 book, Toxic Safety: Flame Retardants, Scientific Controversies, and Environmental Health (Columbia University Press), examines the sociological aspects of risk assessment in industry, regulation, research, and activism. Toxic Safety was awarded the 2018 Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Environmental Sociology. Her work has been published in leading sociology, environmental studies, and science and technology studies journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Science, Technology & Human Values, the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Social Science & Medicine, Environmental Science & Technology, and Sociological Forum.

Dr. Cordner has conducted extensive research on the regulation, research, and activism related to industrial chemicals. She also studies the sociological aspects of wildfire risk management in the Northwest with a focus on firefighter safety, public safety, and resource management.  

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Lauren Richter
Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology
University of Toronto Mississauga

Lauren Richter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where she teaches and does research on social inequality, health, and the environment. She uses qualitative interviews, ethnography, and archival approaches to broadly examine responses to adverse environmental health impacts. Currently she studies U.S. regulatory frameworks and scientific knowledge/ignorance production to understand how inequality shapes pollution exposure and recourse.

Prior to joining U of T Mississauga, Lauren was an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. She received a Leadership Grant from the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, spending a year as a research fellow at the Silent Spring Institute and Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University. Between M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, she worked at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment in California, and taught courses on Environmental Justice at the University of San Francisco. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northeastern University.

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Julia Varshavsky is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health at Northeastern University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Health Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences, and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering. She will be focusing on environmental exposures and maternal-child health outcomes and will continue to work on biomonitoring studies and advancing risk assessment in vulnerable communities. Before joining Northeastern, Julia served as a research scientist for the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA, Cal EPA) to conduct biomonitoring studies of health-related chemical exposures, and before that was a postdoctoral researcher in environmental epidemiology and biostatistics for the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE) at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where she conducted biologically-based population-level studies on exposure and health risks associated with endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), including polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), per- and poly-fluorinated alkyl substances (PFASs), and organophosphate flame retardants (OPFRs). Specifically, her recent work highlights maternal-fetal exposure to PBDEs, PFASs, and OPFRs during mid-gestation in relation to biomarkers of placental development and disease that are associated with maternal and fetal health complications. Julia earned her MPH and PhD in environmental health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. Her dissertation research focused on developing methods for; characterizing disparities in, and evaluating dietary sources of, cumulative phthalates exposure. Prior to graduate school, Julia facilitated scientific dialogue and research translation around developmental impacts of environmental contaminants as the Reproductive Health Working Group coordinator for the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE).

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Jennifer Liss Ohayon
Research Scientist
Silent Spring Institute
Affiliate Research Associate
Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute
Northeastern University

Jennie Liss Ohayon is a Research Scientist at Silent Spring Institute and Affiliate Research Associate with SSEHRI, specializing in environmental policy, community-engaged research, and environmental justice. She researches the emergence of scientific and activist concerns around industrial chemicals with Northeastern’s PFAS lab and, in collaboration with co-investigators at the University of California, Berkeley, is evaluating the effectiveness of California-based legislation that aims to reduce or eliminate exposures to toxic substances. She is also working on projects to report back to study participants and community partners in the U.S. and Chile their exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals. 

Dr. Ohayon completed her PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz researching the remediation of toxic waste in military Superfund sites. With research support from the EPA’s Science to Achieve Results fellowship and the National Science Foundation, she did fieldwork to evaluate how policy around public participation and environmental justice is translated into cleanup programs. She also used data from all military Superfund sites for quantitative and spatial analyses of how factors such as the race and class demographics of surrounding neighborhoods contribute to how quickly sites are remediated. During this time, she created an interactive curriculum in environmental sciences for high school students that are disproportionately affected by environmental problems and who come from communities that are underrepresented in the field of environmental science.

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Rosie Mueller is an Assistant Professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. Her research focuses on environmental health and environmental justice issues related to natural resource extraction and exposure to environmental pollutants. She uses quantitative and spatial analysis techniques to document associations between exposure to environmental factors and demographic characteristics of exposed populations. Additionally, she has work documenting health disparities in coal mining communities in Appalachia. 

In the economics department at Whitman, she teaches core classes in microeconomic theory, applied econometrics, and environmental and natural resource economics. She received a Ph.D in Economics from the University of Oregon.

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Kim Garrett
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Northeastern University

Kim Garrett is a postdoctoral research associate with SSEHRI. She’s passionate about interdisciplinary research and is interested in interactions between chemical pollutants and gender, race, class, and labor. She completed her PhD in Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Pittsburgh where she studied environmental toxicology and risk assessment. Her dissertation focused on the chemical toxicology of the mitochondrial inhibitors phosphine, azide, and cyanide with the goal of identifying novel antidotes. She received her MPH with a certificate in Environmental Risk Assessment from the University of Pittsburgh while modeling environmentally mediated outbreaks of anthrax and Lyme disease with respect to climate change. She holds a BS in Environmental Science from Allegheny College and has worked on a variety of community health research projects focused on chemical exposures, childhood nutrition and exercise, and HIV prevention. Outside of the lab you can find her birdwatching, knitting, and biking.

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Grace Poudrier
Sociology PhD Student
Northeastern University

Grace Poudrier is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Northeastern University, a research assistant at the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute (SSEHRI), and a member of the Environmental Data Justice Initiative (EDGI). She studies mechanisms of knowledge production, ignorance, and agnotology in the field of environmental health, particularly in the contexts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and hydraulic fracturing. Her work draws from the sociology of the environment, medicine, and STS, and has been published in Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, Environmental Research and Public Health, and Sexual Medicine. Prior to graduate school, Grace worked in clinical research at NYU Langone Medical Center, where she coordinated mixed methods research on gender affirming surgery for the Hansjorg Wyss Department of Plastic Surgery. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 2011, where she studied the sociology of health, illness, and environmental health politics.

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Lindsay Tallon
Assistant Professor of Public Health
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Lindsay Tallon is an Assistant Professor of Public Health at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences where she teaches and conducts research with students on environmental and social determinants of health, climate change, emergency preparedness, and water quality. Before coming to MCPHS, she worked at the MA Department of Public Health as an epidemiologist in the Medical Marijuana program and as a planner in the Emergency Preparedness Bureau where she led statewide volunteer programs and coordinated emergency services during disasters. Prior to starting her doctoral program she worked as a Research Associate developing trainings and conducting applied research in emergency preparedness and environmental virology at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of North Carolina.

She received her PhD in Population Health from Northeastern where her dissertation focused on the impact of complex urban environments on the health of older adults. She also has a Master of Science in Public Health in Environmental Sciences and Engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Shir Sharon
Visiting Scholar

Dr. Shir Sharon is the former coordinator of the Israeli House of Parliament (Knesset) subcommittee for the Impact of Environment and Climate on Health. She helped formulate the decree to ban the use of PFAS in fire extinguishers used for practice and exercises in Israel. She has a background in Molecular Biology, specifically in the fields of Microbiology, Immunology and Plant Science.

Sabrina Balmaseda
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

Sabrina Balmaseda is a second-year student from San Francisco pursing a BA in Public Health. She also plans on obtaining a Master’s in Public Health once graduating from Northeastern University. Sabrina will be a research assistant for the PFAS Project Lab and will be working with Dr. Julia Varshavsky on updating the PFAS-Tox Database. She first became interested in environmental health in high school after interning for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission as a Project Pull Intern. She looks forward to applying what she learned during this internship and from her Public Health coursework at Northeastern to her role as a research assistant for the PFAS Project Lab. 

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Sam Ciaranca
MPH Student
Northeastern University

Sam Ciaranca (he/him) is a 2024 master’s in public health graduate from Northeastern University. Sam received his bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in economics from Northeastern in 2018. He has experience in environmental health as a natural resources technician and currently works as a project manager at a Boston-based academic research organization associated with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He would like to continue contributing to PFAS research with a career in environmental health.

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Vic Say
Sociology PhD Student
Northeastern University

Vic Say (she/her) is a PhD student in Sociology at Northeastern University and a member of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute (SSEHRI). Vic received her Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Bryn Mawr College where she was also a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a research assistant at AccessMatters, a Philadelphia-based sexual and reproductive health non-profit. She worked on several projects and programs related to HIV, health equity, and family planning. Vic’s research interests lie at the intersection of environmental and reproductive health, and her work aims to examine inequality through the lens of racial capitalism and settler colonialism.

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Lauren Ellis
Population Health PhD Student
Northeastern University

Lauren Ellis is a first-year Population Health PhD student at Northeastern University and a graduate research assistant in the PFAS Project Lab. She is passionate about studying the impacts of toxic chemicals, including PFAS, on human health and reducing exposures to those most vulnerable. Prior to starting her PhD program, Lauren worked as an Environmental Health Research Analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), where she advocated for health-protective implementation of the reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Before EDF, Lauren earned her MPH in Environmental Health Science & Policy at The George Washington University, where she led a systematic review and meta-analysis on the effects of organophosphate and carbamate insecticides on sperm concentration. During her MPH studies, Lauren gained professional experience in systematic review and chemical risk assessment as a part-time federal contractor, and policy experience as a Health Policy intern for the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

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Julia Logan
Population Health PhD Student
Northeastern University

Julia Logan (she/her) is a first year Population Health PhD student at Northeastern and works as a graduate research assistant in the PFAS Project Lab. Prior to joining the lab, she attended The George Washington University, where she received her Bachelor of Science in Public Health and her Master of Public Health in Environmental Health Science & Policy. Julia has professional experiences with the U.S. EPA where she worked on projects involving wastewater management and environmental justice in tribal communities, and Breast Cancer Prevention Partners where she explored social and environmental risk factors for breast cancer. During her undergraduate studies, she also worked as a research assistant on a project investigating smoking and health in Washington, D.C. public housing. During her MPH, she conducted a systematic review on phthalate exposure and endometriosis risk. Julia is currently interested in exploring the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals on maternal and child health outcomes. She seeks to inform regulation of toxic chemicals through research and advocacy.

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Emily Haberlack
Sociology PhD Student
Northeastern University

Emily Haberlack (she/her) is a first-year Sociology PhD student in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Northeastern University and a researcher at the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute in The PFAS Lab. She earned an MA in sociology from Colorado State University (CSU), where her research focused on the interactions between military, state, and community responses to military-created PFAS water contamination. While at CSU, Emily received a fellowship position and a grant from the Colorado Water Center (CWC) in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey. Her ongoing research with the CWC investigates the role of equity programming in water districts across Colorado. Broadly, Emily is interested in the intersections of environmental justice, resource, and medical sociology. While completing her BS in environmental science, environmental studies, and sociology at Iowa State University, Emily developed a systemic literature review on empathic skills development in environment, health, science, and risk communication. Her previous research on disaster management, spatial thinking, and game design is published in the International Journal of Geo-Information. Emily’s undergraduate work was funded through National Science Fountain and Iowa State University grants.

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Alina McIntyre
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Northeastern University and Silent Spring Institute

Alina joined SSEHRI/PFAS Project Lab in September 2024. She has a dual appointment with Silent Spring Institute as a trainee in the “Transdisciplinary Training at the Intersection of Environmental Health and Social Science” program. She received her PhD in Environmental Health from the Boston University School of Public Health, with concentrations in exposure assessment, environmental epidemiology, and biostatistics. Her research, part of the Chelsea and East Boston Heat Study (C-HEAT), used mixed-methods and community-engaged approaches to assess extreme heat and air pollution exposure among residents. Alina also holds a MHS in Environmental Health and Engineering from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a BA in both Community Heath and Spanish from Tufts University. 

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Michael Lengefeld
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Northeastern University

Michael Lengefeld is a postdoctoral research associate with SSEHRI. He holds a BSAS and MA in Sociology from Texas State University and a PhD in environmental and political sociology from Washington State University, where his primary research interests were concerned with violence and environmental change. His previous research on war and environmental issues has focused on the human rights and environmental harms associated with nuclear weapons production, the war on drugs in Latin America, the public and environmental health “blowback” from the callous treatment of immigrants in ICE facilities, and social movement mobilizations around environmental harms stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He has also published research on public health issues related to zoonotic spillover and the youth sports concussion crisis. More information about his research, teaching, and community engagement can be found at https://www.mlengefeld.com/

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Amelia Landess
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

Amelia Landess is a fourth-year Health Science and Psychology student at Northeastern University. She joined the PFAS Project Lab in July 2024. She first developed an interest in environmental health after witnessing the impacts of drought and wildfires in her home state of California. Amelia previously completed a co-op in case management and behavioral health at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, an experience that solidified her commitment to addressing health disparities in vulnerable populations. She hopes to further explore this commitment in relation to environmental health and PFAS through her contributions to the Lab.

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Meghan Walker
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

Meghan Walker is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Political Science and Sociology with minors in Environmental Studies and French. She joined the PFAS Project Lab in August 2024. Meghan developed an interest in environmental sociology through research into agricultural pollution stemming from CAFOs in her home state of North Carolina and has since been interested in the intersection of environmental health and rural sociology. She previously completed a co-op at the Global Center for Climate Justice where she worked on creating resources for public comprehension of federal funding sources for environmental justice based projects. She hopes to gain further experience in addressing environmental health crises and expanding the public’s access to comprehensible information about what is being done to protect their local environments and health.

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Caroline Hopkins
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

Caroline Hopkins is a third year Political Science student at Northeastern University. She joined the PFAS Project Lab in January 2025. She developed an interest in environmental justice and urban sustainability after growing up in Singapore and witnessing the country’s innovative approaches to environmental challenges. Caroline previously completed a co-op at a youth development non-profit called SquashBusters where she coordinated program activities, organized community events, and conducted data analysis. Throughout her time at the PFAS Project Lab, she hopes to further her knowledge of the policy implications of PFAS contamination and contribute to research that informs equitable environmental policies.

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Emily Maez
Undergraduate Research Co-op
Northeastern University

Emily Maez is a third year Environmental Studies student at Northeastern University with a minor in Architecture. She joined the PFAS Project Lab in July 2025. Emily discovered an interest in the environment growing up climbing and hiking in the mountains of Northern Nevada and California and started researching methods of sustainability starting in high school where she investigated methods of regenerative architecture. She has pursued this interest into the community and public health realm with her internship on a regenerative farm in Costa Rica called Verde Energía and hopes to investigate further into how we can aid our social and political spheres by modeling our approach off of natural processes at the PFAS Project Lab.

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Past Members

Ainsley Derosier
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

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Gabe Wasserman
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Whitman College

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Kira Mok
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

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Antonella Caratini
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

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Saniya Shah
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

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Esmé Getto
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

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Arianna Castellanos Calderon
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Whitman College

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Eliza Daigle
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Whitman College

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Marina Atlas
MPH Student
Northeastern University

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Daniel Bloor
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Whitman College

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Miranda Dotson
Sociology and Anthropology PhD Student
Northeastern University

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Mya Heard
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

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Bertine Lakjohn
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Whitman College

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Ricky Salvatore
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

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Maddy Poehlein
Postgraduate Research Assistant

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Lilyana Ibañez
Undergraduate Research Assistant 
Northeastern University 

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Anna Allgeyer
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Whitman College

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Bella Raponi
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Northeastern University

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Cole Alder
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute
Northeastern University

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Elicia Cousins
Visiting Assistant Professor
Clark University

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Tibrine Da Fonseca
Sociology PhD Student
Northeastern University

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Helena Zindel
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Whitman College

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Abigail Bline
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Harvard School of Public Health