Michelle Bell appointed the Pinchot Professor of Environmental Health

Michelle L. Bell, newly named as the Mary E. Pinchot Professor of Environmental Health, addresses air pollution and human health by integrating several disciplines, such as environmental engineering and epidemiology.

The overall aim of Bell’s work is to answer scientific questions regarding how air pollution affects health and to perform policy-relevant research that contributes to well-informed decision-making and to greater public understanding of environmental health hazards. Much of her work uses mathematical modeling to examine the relationships among air pollution, weather, and human health endpoints such as mortality and hospital admissions. Other work addresses health impacts of weather, the exposure-response curve between concentrations of air pollution and health risks, and whether heterogeneity in pollution-health estimates can be explained by differences in socio-economic or other characteristics.

A graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bell holds master’s degrees from Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University, where she also earned her Ph.D. She joined the Yale faculty as assistant professor of environmental health in 2004, holding secondary appointments at the Yale School of Public Health and in the Yale Environmental Engineering Program. Prior to her new post, her primary appointment was as professor of environmental health.

Bell has contributed more than 100 research articles and chapters to edited volumes and professional journals. She is associate editor of Environmental Health Perspectives and is on the board of editors of Epidemiology and Environmental Research Letters. She has served in editorial capacities for Air Quality, Atmosphere, and Health.

The Yale professor has received numerous research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Centers for Disease Control, among other organizations. She serves on the EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and has been a member of several councils and working groups, including the EPA Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis, the American Statistical Association, and the International Collaboration on Air Pollution and Pregnancy Outcomes, among others.

Bell’s honors include the Prince Albert II of Monaco-Institut Pasteur Award, the Outstanding New Environmental Scientist Award from the NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Walter A. Rosenblith Young Investigator Award from the Health Effects Institute.