Environmental Health Sciences

Andrea De Vizcaya-Ruiz, DVM, Ph.D., Graduate Program Director
856 Medical Sciences Quad
https://publichealth.uci.edu/departments/environmental-occupational-health/

The Department of Environmental and Occupational Health provides graduate training in environmental health sciences and offers the Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences. The Ph.D. program offers tracks in Environmental Toxicology and in Environmental Epidemiology. The program in Environmental Health Sciences provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary and appropriate to teach and/or conduct basic and applied research programs in inhalation/pulmonary toxicology, neurotoxicology, reproductive and developmental toxicology, chemical pathology, toxicokinetics, radiation toxicology, molecular carcinogenesis, exposure sciences, risk assessment, environmental and occupational epidemiology, injury and violence prevention, social and environmental justice, and community-based participatory research.

Environmental Toxicology involves the scientific study of the entry, distribution, biotransformation, and mechanism of the action of chemical and physical agents that are harmful to the body. The graduate program interprets environmental toxicology as the study of the effects and mechanisms of action of hazardous chemical and physical agents in food, air, water, and soil in the home, the workplace, and the community. It considers experimentally and theoretically such diverse research problems as:

• new scientific approaches to toxicological evaluation of environmental chemicals (e.g. air and water pollutants, food additives, industrial wastes, and agricultural adjuvants) and physical agents (e.g., radiation, extreme temperature) at the molecular, cellular, and organism levels

• mechanisms of action in the toxicity of chemical and physical environmental agents

• the molecular pathology of tissue injury in acute and chronic toxicity

Environmental Epidemiology examines the effects of exposure to environmental agents and other non-chemical factors on health outcomes. These factors include environmental or occupational contaminants in different media such as air, water, food, and soil and via multiple routes including inhalation, ingestion, and dermal absorption, as well as exposures to physical and social environmental agents such as radiation, temperature, noise, violence, segregation, location, and other environment factors. Research areas include:

• assessing individual and population level exposures to social, behavioral, chemical and/or physical factors in environmental and occupational settings and examining associations of these exposures with health and disease outcomes

• new approaches to the evaluation of human exposures to environmental chemicals, including exposure measurement, modeling, and biomonitoring

• social and environmental justice and community-based participatory research to improve health equity

• intervention studies focusing on environmental health equity

Students entering the program have varied backgrounds, including chemistry, biology, physiology, environmental science/engineering/health, epidemiology, intervention, health disparities, exposome, and public health. The curriculum is based on a foundation of basic and health sciences with applications of scientific principles to environmental exposures and their potential health effects. Formal course work is enriched by a strong commitment to student-professor interaction throughout the program. An important and integral part of the learning process is an early and intensive involvement of the student in ongoing original research projects in environmental health sciences, especially inhalation/pulmonary toxicology, reproductive and developmental toxicology, neurotoxicology, exposure sciences, risk assessment, environmental/occupational epidemiology, injury and violence prevention, social and environmental justice, and community-based participatory research.

Admission

In addition to meeting the general admission requirements set by the Graduate Division, applicants must be admitted by an Admissions Committee composed of faculty members of the graduate program. Candidates will be selected on the basis of a balanced evaluation of the following criteria, with no one factor having more influence (1) prior scholastic performance, including a consideration of grades, course load, nature of courses taken, and college attended; (2) recommendations by professors and others; (3) experience in undergraduate and/or post-baccalaureate research; (4) an interview by members of the Admissions Committee and other faculty members, when feasible; and (5) scores for the general Graduate Record Examination test (GRE), which is temporarily waived for Fall 2025 and Fall 2026 enrollments.

Undergraduate preparation of applicants should include one year of biology (one quarter of molecular biology or biochemistry is strongly recommended), one year of chemistry for the Environmental Toxicology track, and one year of mathematics (calculus and/or statistics) for both tracks. Outstanding applicants who lack one or two of these prerequisites may be given an opportunity to take the required course(s) either before admission or during the first year in the graduate program; in such circumstances, none of these required undergraduate courses may be used to satisfy the program elective or core course requirements. Upper-division or graduate science courses may be considered as substitutes for the above prerequisites by the Admissions Committee.

Requirements

Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Health Sciences

All courses must be passed with an average grade of B or better.

1. All graduate students in the program will be required to take EHS 298 every academic quarter they are enrolled in the graduate program.
2. Enroll during research rotations and dissertation research.
3. Track-specific core courses for either track may be taken as electives.

The normative time for advancement to candidacy is three years. The normative time for completion of the Ph.D. is five years, and the maximum time permitted is seven years.

Please refer to our website for updated information about course offerings, and pre-approved electives for this degree.