The research team consists of scientists from the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, and the University of Washington.

University of British Columbia Researchers (in alphabetical order by last name):

Michael Brauer (exposure assessment, epidemiology, GIS)
Dr. Michael Brauer is a Professor in the School of Environmental Health at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He has joint appointments in the Department of Medicine (Respiratory Division) and the Atmospheric Science Programme at UBC. He holds a B.A. in Biochemistry and Environmental Sciences (1986) from the University of California, Berkeley; and received his Sc.D. in Environmental Health (1990) from the Harvard University School of Public Health. Dr. Brauer’s research emphasis is on the assessment of exposure and health impacts of air pollution. He has participated in studies in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Asia, eastern and western Europe. Specific areas of research interest include: assessment of exposure to air pollution from mobile sources, air pollution in developing countries, particulate air pollution, indoor air pollution, and biomass air pollution.

Michael Buzzelli (GIS)
Assistant Professor, Queens University
Dr. Michael Buzzelli's research focuses on the conceptual and empirical modelling of urban environmental health and housing, particularly as this involves the use of spatial information systems and analysis. His current projects include environmental health implications of the residential migration process and long-term air pollution exposure and equity analyses, both in the Canadian urban context.

Ray Copes (exposure assessment, epidemiology, linked health database)
Clinical Professor, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia; Director of Environmental and Occupational Health, Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion
Dr. Ray Copes will provide input and expertise on health and GIS data issues. In addition to his duties at UBC and OAHPP, Dr. Copes maintains a close working relationship with the BC Ministry of Health and has familiarity with and access to health data held by the Ministry. Dr. Copes has previously used these data in spatial and temporal analyses of relationships between water turbidity and enteric illness in the Lower Mainland and elsewhere.

Hugh Davies
Dr. Hugh Davies specializes in occupational hygiene and exposure assessment and modeling. He led the largest cohort study of the impact of noise exposure on heart disease, and was the first to incorporate sophisticated exposure measurement and true heart disease outcomes rather than measures of hypertension. His work has received international recognition, and he is co-chair of the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Noise.

Paul Demers (epidemiology)
Dr. Paul Demers is a Professor and Director of the UBC School of Environmental Health with a cross-appointment in the School of Population and Public Health. He is also acting director of the Centre for Health and Environment research funded by the MSFHR and holds a Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) Scientist Award. He is both an epidemiologist and an occupational hygienist. He has been a
principal investigator on cohort studies funded by CIHR and the BC Lung Association that have used the BC Linked Health Database to study respiratory disease.

Sarah Henderson: Former PhD student at the School of Environmental Health, now Dr. Sarah Henderson.Currently completing a post-doc in Tasmania.

Brian Klinkenberg (GIS)
Associate Professor, UBC Department of Geography
Dr. Brian Klinkenberg’s research covers a wide range, from visualization studies of spatial information and the development of geospatial digital libraries through to uncertainty modeling and the integration of advanced statistical models (e.g., neural networks, cellular automata, multicriteria evaluation) within a GIS. He is a member of the International Geographical Union’s Commission on Geographic Information Sciences, and has been editor of the international journal Cartographica since 1999.

Mieke Koehoorn (epidemiology, linked health database)
Dr. Mieke Koehoorn is an Assistant Professor, School of Population and Public Health at UBC. Her research areas of expertise focus on occupational epidemiology and database linkage studies. Current work in this area includes seven database linkage studies utilizing the BC Linked Health Database (BCLHD) to extract and link medical services, hospitalization and workers’ compensation data for study populations. Dr. Koehoorn will provide input and advice on the data from the BCLHD.

Nhu Le (spatial statistics, epidemiology)
Senior Statistician, British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA) and Associate Faculty, UBC Department of Statistics.
Dr. Nhu Le is a senior biostatistician with extensive experience in environmental and occupational epidemiology. His areas of statistical research include spatial statistics, spatial interpolation and network design, and exposure assessment for health impact studies of environmental pollution. He is the director of the BCCA occupational oncology research program. He has conducted/participated in several large-scale epidemiological studies, particularly in the pulp and paper industry, along with population-based case-control studies for men and women.

Ying MacNab (spatial statistics and spatial epidemiology)
Assistant Professor, School of Population and Public Health, UBC and Associate Member, Department of Statistics, UBC; Senior Statistician, Centre for Community Healthcare Innovation & Improvement, BC Research Institute for Children's and Women's Health
Dr. Ying MacNab is a Biostatistician who worked extensively the areas of statistics and related methods for spatial and multilevel data and, in particular, in the development of hierarchical Bayesian models for small area estimation and smooth mapping (1-6) and for multilevel analysis (7-8). She has worked to refine the existing and develop new statistical methods, with applications in spatial epidemiology, disease mapping and surveillance, health services and outcomes research, and population health research.

Sunny Mak (GIS Specialist),
Dr. Sunny Mak, a GIS specialist in Epidemiology Services at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and a Master’s student at UBC will also participate in the study. Mr. Mak has GIS experience with BC health and geographic data as applied to outbreak investigation and communicable disease control.

Julian Marshall
Dr. Marshall's research focuses on population exposure to air pollution, especially transportation emissions. Specific investigations have explored the role of urban planning in reducing exposures, environmental impacts of transportation in developing versus developed countries, and use of exposure analyses in setting environmental policy. His current air pollution exposure research is part of an epidemiological study on adverse birth outcomes in Vancouver, British Columbia. His graduate degrees (MS, PhD) are from the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, and his undergraduate degree (BSE) is in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. He has professional experience in air quality modeling and health risk assessment in the Bay Area, as a chemical engineering lecturer in Singapore, and in environmental development work in India.

Aleck Ostry (epidemiology, linked health database)
Dr. Aleck Ostry is the recipient of a Canadian Institute for Health Research scholar award and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Healthcare and Epidemiology and the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He has an MSc in Health Service Planning from UBC, an MA in history from Simon Fraser University (specializing in the history of public health), and a PhD. in epidemiology (UBC). He teaches courses on the social determinants of health and conducts research on work stress, and the impacts of change in work organisation, labour markets, and technology on health.

John Petkau (Biostatistics, statistics in air pollution epidemiology)
Professor, Department of Statistics, The University of British Columbia
Dr. John Petkau's current research interests are in three general areas: designs for sequential clinical experiments, statistical design and analysis for clinical trials in multiple sclerosis, and environmental epidemiological studies of the effects of air pollution on human health. Research in the third area is based on long-standing collaborations with Professors Sverre Vedal (until recently of the Respiratory Division, Medicine, UBC) and Michael Brauer on studies of the relationships between short-term changes in ambient and personal levels of air pollutants and measures of human health. For our population-level studies, outcome measures have included hospital admissions, emergency room visits, and mortality, while our panel-based studies have utilized lung function, respiratory symptoms and cardiac arrhythmias.

Douw Steyn (Atmospheric Sciences – meteorology)
Professor, Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences and Department of Geography, Associate Dean, of Research and Faculty Development, Faculty of Graduate Studies
Dr. Douw Steyn is internationally recognized for his work on urban and region air pollution, and the meteorological and chemical processes leading to degraded air quality in regions of complex coastline and topography. His research involves both field measurement and numerical modelling of air pollution and associated meteorological phenomena. He is also well known for his wide-ranging studies of the climatology and dynamics of sea breezes.

Jason Su (GIS, spatial & statistic modeling, urban environment and health, RS)
Dr. Jason Su has two PhDs, one is from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in GIS and land use and another from the University of Alberta in Remote Sensing and Rangeland Management. He has ten years of experiences in GIS/RS, statistic modeling, system devlopment and also a Microsoft Certified Application Developer in C#. Mr. Su works closely with Michael Buzzelli and Michael Brauer, responsible for innovative spatial & statistic modeling for the Border Air Quality Strategy Project, especially enhanced assessment of exposure to traffic and woodsmoke and incorporation of meteorology.

Kay Teschke (epidemiology, exposure assessment, linked health database)
Dr. Kay Teschke is a Professor in the School of Environmental Health and in the School of Population and Public Health at The University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on methods to improve exposure-response estimates in occupational and environmental epidemiology; the validity and reliability of these methods are critical to unbiased risk estimation.

Jim Zidek (spatial statistics)
Dr. Jim Zidek is a Professor of Statistics, in the Department of Statistics, University of British Columbia. His areas of expertise include: environmetrics; mapping spatial pollution fields; designing environmental monitoring networks; environmental health risk
analysis. Dr. Zidek received his B.Sc. (with honors) and M.Sc. from the University of Alberta in 1961 and 1963, respectively. He was awarded his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1967.His research interests have focused on the development of methods for designing and mapping environmental fields including air pollution and acid rain. As well, he with his co-investigators has completed studies for Health Canada on the estimation of human exposure to air pollution as well as its impact on health.

University of Victoria (in alphabetical order by last name):

Denise Cloutier-Fisher (GIS, epidemiology)
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Centre on Aging, University of Victoria.
Prior to coming to the University of Victoria in 2001, Dr. Denise Cloutier-Fisher worked as the National Research System Coordinator for the College of Family Physicians of Canada, as a Data Analyst for the Waterloo-Wellington Dufferin District Health Council and most recently, as a Senior Population Health Consultant for Central West Health Planning Information Network in Ontario. Her areas of research expertise include population health approaches for health promotion and prevention (healthy environments for successful aging, environmental exposures, and healthy child development) and complementary research methods, particularly multivariate analyses and qualitative techniques. Dr. Cloutier-Fisher will provide input and advice on health data issues.

Peter Keller (GIS)
Professor of Geography, University of Victoria
Dr. Keller’s research program concentrates on geographic information and decision-making. Publications focus on innovative ways of analysing, visualizing and using geographic information in planning, conflict resolution, consensus building and optimisation. He founded and now co-directs the University of Victoria’s Spatial Sciences Laboratories. He has been President of the Canadian Cartographic Association and recently served two consecutive terms as Chair of Canada’s National Committee to the International Cartographic Association and as Councillor on the Canadian Institute of Geomatics (1995-2003). Dr. Keller will act as the project lead, and provide advice on GIS design and data.

Eleanor Setton (GIS Specialist)
Dr. Setton has been working with Drs. Keller and Cloutier-Fisher on health and GIS projects. As a private industry consultant (1996 – 2003), Eleanor has gained extensive experience with GIS data acquisition (environmental and socioeconomic) and standardization in both British Columbia and the northwestern United States. Her primary research interest is in finding methods for incorporating high resolution spatial data in exposure assessments, primarily through the use of GIS.

University of Washington (in alphabetical order by last name):

Catherine Karr (pediatrics, epidemiology)
Dr. Catherine Karr is a board certified pediatrician with extensive background in environmental health. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Washington Department of Pediatrics and a candidate for a doctoral degree in Epidemiology. Her current (dissertation) research activities involve a large population based case control study of infant bronchiolitis and ambient air pollution in the South Coast Air Basin of Southern California. Dr. Karr will provide input on the design, conduct, and analysis of the children’s cohort.

Joel Kaufman (air pollution epidemiology)
Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Associate Professor of Medicine, Director, Occupational & Environmental Medicine Program, Adjunct Associate Professor of Epidemiology, University of Washington
Dr. Joel Kaufman is an occupational health physician-epidemiologist, board-certified in internal medicine and occupational medicine. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Washington, he was the Associate Medical Director for Research in the Department of Labor and Industries SHARP Program. He is the Director of the Epidemiology projects and Health Effects Core of the UW-EPA Northwest Research Center for Particulate Air Pollution and Health, and directs the Diesel Exhaust Controlled Exposure Facility.

Jane Koenig (exposure assessment, epidemiology)
Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Toxicology Program Director, EPA Northwest Research Center for Particulate Air Pollution and Health, University of Washington.
Dr. Jane Koenig's main research interest is the respiratory and cardiac health effects of air pollution and especially the responses of individuals judged to be susceptible, such as persons with asthma or other chronic respiratory diseases. She has studied associations between wood smoke and lung function in young children and associations between emergency room visits for asthma and particulate matter air pollution in Seattle.

Timothy Larson, (exposure assessment)
Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington
Dr. Timothy Larson received a B.S.ChE. in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA in 1968 and his PhD degree from the University of Washington in 1976. He was a research associate in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the Department of Environmental Health until September 1983 when he joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington as a senior research associate. He was hired as an assistant professor in the same department in 1983, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1986 and then to Full Professor in 1991. He holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences. His research interests include characterization of atmospheric aerosols, exposure assessment of airborne particles and gases, and source/receptor relationships of ambient air pollutants.