Natural Disaster & Environmental Science
Chemical exposures, natural disasters, climate impacts, and occupational hazards are just a few of the factors that threaten health every day. We relentlessly investigate these challenges – uncovering insights and evidence-based solutions that lessen their impact. Working with affected communities, we co-create policies and practices that reduce the health risks and build resilience for a safer, healthier future.
Protecting Young Lungs
Partnering with early learning centers across Atlanta, Assistant Professor Abby Mutic works to identify the invisible pollutants affecting the city’s pre‑K children. By equipping children with silicone wristbands that measure airborne pollutants, she researches what they breathe each day, how those exposures affect their developing lungs, and if they can effectively communicate respiratory symptoms to their parents. Mutic’s work empowers families and schools with knowledge to protect children’s health during their most vulnerable years.
Our Faculty
Zahra A. Barandouzi
Sharon Vanairsdale Carrasco
Roxana Chicas
Vicki S Hertzberg
Nadine Matthie
Linda A. McCauley
Abby Mutic
Ashley Ruiz
Faces Behind the Findings
Zahra Barandouzi, PhD, RN
Assistant Profesor
What research questions are you trying to answer?
How do environmental exposures, such as indoor and outdoor pollution, affect the gut-brain axis, and does that biological disruption drive the debilitating symptoms that cancer patients experience during and after treatment?
What is the impact of your research?
By uncovering how the environment influences symptom burden in cancer patients, this work can inform more targeted, personalized interventions that improve quality of life, particularly for communities and neighborhoods that are disproportionately exposed to pollution.
What drives you as a researcher?
As a nurse, I’ve taken care of patients who have survived cancer but continue to deal with fatigue, sleep issues, and other ongoing symptoms. Even though they’re considered cancer-free, they’re not truly back to normal life. That gap in care is what drives me to pursue research and understand how we can better support them.
Join Us
Help us advance scholarship that works alongside communities to transform environmental challenges into pathways to health and resilience.