Ellen Wei Receives the Rabb Environmental and Occupational Health Student Award.

Congratulations to Ellen Wei, MPH candidate in Environmental Health Science & Policy, on receiving the Fall 2026 Rabb Award. The award will support her trip to the AGU Annual Meeting in San Francisco this December. There she will present "Co-development Strategies for Leveraging NASA Earth Observations in Heat Hazard Resilience Planning," work from the NASA EarthRISE Developers Academy with the City of Philadelphia that was one of two projects, out of ten, selected for AGU. The award is made possible by EOH alumna Laura Rabb, MPH, REHS, CAPT, USPHS (ret.).

WHO Lab Co-Convenes a Session at AGU 2026.

Dr. Hu is co-convening the session "Connections Between Drinking Water Quality and Human Health: Understanding Contaminant Occurrence and Quantifying Health Impacts" at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, December 2026.

WHO Lab Launches a Lab Meeting Series.

The lab kicked off a recurring lab meeting series for the 2026-27 academic year, where lab members share and get feedback on their research.

Dr. Hu Receives an NIEHS K01 Career Development Award.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences funded Dr. Hu's K01 award, "A place-based framework to quantify drinking water PFAS mixtures and reproductive health risks" (K01ES039051).

WHO Lab Welcomes Jordan Fischbach, Abigail Schmitt, and Abigail Iseson.

Jordan is a PhD student in Environmental Health, Abigail Schmitt is an MPH candidate in Epidemiology, and Abigail Iseson is an MS candidate in Public Health Microbiology and Emerging Infectious Diseases.

ISEE North America Chapter Submits Comments to EPA on PFAS Drinking Water Rules.

Dr. Liddie and Dr. Hu, with colleagues on the ISEE North America Chapter policy committee, submitted public comments to EPA on its proposed changes to the national PFAS drinking water regulations: comment 1 and comment 2.

Dr. Liddie and Dr. Hu Give a Seminar at the Environmental Working Group.

Dr. Liddie and Dr. Hu presented the lab's drinking water research at a seminar for the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

WHO Lab Speaks at AMNH SciCafe.

Dr. Liddie and Dr. Hu gave the SciCafe talk "Forever and Ever" on PFAS and drinking water at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Read more in this LinkedIn post.

Dr. Liddie Presents at the ISEE North America Chapter Meeting.

Dr. Liddie presented "Transfer Multi-Task Machine Learning to Predict PFAS Concentrations in Groundwater throughout the Contiguous United States."

New Publication in GeoHealth.

Lin, J., Zhang, J., Wei, E., Shea, K., Wang, H., Apanasovich, T.V., Liddie, J.M., Hernandez, E., Norford, C., Hu, X.C. (2026). Hybrid Supervised-Unsupervised Modeling for Post-Hurricane Private Well Contamination Risk Score Using Empirical Validation and Community-Informed Assessment. GeoHealth, 10, e2026GH001858.

Kyndra Shea Receives the Rabb Environmental and Occupational Health Student Award.

Congratulations to Kyndra Shea on receiving the Rabb Award as she graduates with her MPH in Environmental Health Science & Policy. The award is made possible by EOH alumna Laura Rabb, MPH, REHS, CAPT, USPHS (ret.).

Two Best Poster Awards at GWSPH Research Day.

Congratulations to Dr. Jahred Liddie for his poster on PFAS in groundwater, and to Katherine O'Brien for "Examining Changes in the Incidence of Acute Gastrointestinal Illness in North Carolina Following Hurricane Helene".

WHO Lab Co-Convenes a Session at AGU 2025.

Dr. Hu and Dr. Liddie, with Drs. Sam Ying, Anuj Tiwari, and Bramha Vishwakarma, convened "One Health Strategies for Water Security and Environmental Resilience" (GH31D and GH34B) at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The poster and oral sessions brought together research on how environmental changes, from land use shifts to climate-driven stressors, affect water quality and human, animal, and ecosystem health.

WHO Lab Welcomes Dr. Jahred Liddie.

Dr. Jahred Liddie is an environmental health scientist and postdoctoral associate in the WHO lab passionate about drinking water quality, environmental justice, and public health. He came to us from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Hu gives a talk at ISES-ISEE 2025.

Dr. Hu gave a talk at the ISES-ISEE 2025 conference, focusing on national-scale machine learning models to predict concentrations of multiple trace elements in groundwater, with the goal of improving exposure assessment among private well users in rural and underserved communities.

Two New Publications for the WHO Lab.

Liddie, J. M., Dai, M. Q., Hu, X. C., & Sunderland, E. M. (2025). A Call for a Unified Database to Address Exposure Disparities in the United States. WIREs WATER, 12(4), e70033.

Dai, M. Q., Hu, X. C., Coull, B. A., ... & Sunderland, E. M.(2025). Sociodemographic Disparities in Exposures to Inorganic Contaminants in United States Public Water Systems. Environmental Health Perspectives, 133(6) 067003.

WHO Lab Receives Three more Grants.

Three new grants have been awarded to the WHO Lab to support ongoing research initiatives. We are grateful for the support from the Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness, Cross Discipline Research Fund, and Research Innovation Award at the George Washington University.

Dr. Hu Offers a Data Visualization Summer Course at GWSPH.

The course focuses on building practical data science skills, including design principles, version control, best practices for data visualization and hands-on experience with popular tools.

WHO Lab Welcomes Kyndra Shea, Ellen Wei, and Jennifer Zhang.

Kyndra, Ellen, and Jennifer will work on the pilot grant funded by the REACH Center to develop a predictive model for private well contamination risks after hurricanes.

Dr. Hu Offers a Data Visualization Workshop to the REACH Center.

Dr. Hu taught a data visualization workshop focusing on using R shiny and Shiny Assistant to create interactive data visualizations. This event was attended by close to 100 researchers and students across GWU, George Mason University, and Environmental Defense Fund.

Double Win for WHO Lab: New Grants Fuel Climate & Health Research!

WHO Lab receives two grant awards. One from the NIH-funded Research and Engagement for Action on Climate and Health Center (P20 ES036775), and another one from the George Washington University Alliance for a Sustainable Future.

WHO Lab Welcomes Yanhua Li Joining as a Graduate Student Research Assistant.

Yanhua is a first-year MS student in the Department of Statistics at GWU. She will contribute to the CAFÉ collection of the Harvard Dataverse.