Dr. Panos G. Georgopoulos, Director — Brief Biographical Note

Dr. Georgopoulos is Professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He is also a member of the Graduate Faculties of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, and of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI), which is a joint project of UMDNJ-RWJMS and Rutgers. Dr. Georgopoulos received his M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and his Dipl. Ing. Degree from the National Technical University of Athens. At EOHSI he established and directs the Computational Chemodynamics Laboratory (CCL), a state-of-the-art facility for Informatics and Modeling of Complex Environmental and Biological Systems. Furthermore, he directs the State-funded Ozone Research Center at EOHSI; co-directs the USEPA-funded Center for Exposure and Risk Modeling (CERM) at EOHSI and he is Associate Director of the USEPA-funded environmental bioinformatics and Computational Toxicology Center (ebCTC), a research consortium of UMDNJ-RWJMS, Princeton University, Rutgers University and USFDA's Center for Toxicoinformatics, and is Co-Director of the Bioinformatics, Biostatistics and Computational Toxicology Core for the NIEHS Center for Environmental Exposures and Disease (CEED) at EOHSI. He was Director of the USDOE-funded Center of Expertise in Exposure Assessment of the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP).

Dr. Georgopoulos has participated in both research and teaching in the graduate programs of Rutgers and UMDNJ-RWJMS and has developed innovative course materials in modeling and informatics related to environmental health applications. He has been the primary doctoral thesis advisor to 18 students, with 11 Ph.D. degrees awarded since 1997, and mentor to 23 post-doctoral fellows. His research interests involve the development and application of novel mathematical and computational methods for diagnostic and mechanistic studies of multipathway physicochemical transport and fate processes taking place in environmental and biological systems. Aim of this research is to improve the understanding and quantification of human exposure, biological mechanism-based dosimetry, and risk assessment, for environmental toxics; and to develop a consistent mechanistic computational framework for source-to-dose modeling of toxicant dynamics. Outcomes of this research include quantitative estimates of delivered/metabolized target tissue doses from inhalation, dietary and non-dietary ingestion, and dermal absorption of multi-pollutant mixtures.

Dr. Georgopoulos has received research funding, as Principal or co-Principal Investigator, from various federal, state, and private sector agencies and organizations, including among others the USEPA, USDOE, NJDEP, NJDHSS, NIEHS, ATSDR/CDC, API, ACC, etc. He has lectured as an invited speaker at various universities, such as the Harvard School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Minnesota, and others. He has published research articles in several scientific journals, including Aerosol Science and Technology, AIChE Journal, American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Atmospheric Environment, Bioinformatics, Chemical Engineering Science, Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Environmental Health Perspectives, Environmental Science & Technology, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, International Archives of Environmental Health, J. Air & Waste Management Association, J. American Water Resources Association, J. Chemical Physics, J. Colloid and Interface Science, J. Computational Chemistry, J. Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology, J. Physical Chemistry, J. Toxicology and Environmental Health, J. Toxicology and Industrial Health, Marine Environmental Research, Physical Review E, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Risk Analysis, Tellus, and Water Resources Research (see a list of publications from the past 5 years). He is also the author or co-author of a number of State and Federal Government Documents and of numerous technical reports. He has received various awards and honors including the National Award of the Society of Toxicology for Best Presentation in Risk Assessment; the DuPont Education and Research Award for his work on air pollution; and USEPA's Certificate of Appreciation. He served as Associate Editor of JAWMA, the scientific journal of the International Air and Waste Management Association, from 1995 to 2001, and as Guest Editor of special supplement issues of Epidemiology and of Environmental Health Perspectives. From 2001-2004 he was a member of the Editorial Board of Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment. He was Co-Chair of the 1999 Joint Conference of the International Society of Exposure Analysis (ISEA) and the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE). He currently serves as member of various national scientific and technical committees on environmental issues.