After a year and a half as interim chair of the Department of Environmental Health, Jonathan Levy will become the department’s full chair on January 1, 2019.
Levy says he is humbled to be the department’s third chair in its 42-year history, joining David Ozonoff and Roberta White in leading “a department that is not afraid to take a stand,” he says. “I will be standing on the shoulders of these giants as we move the department into the next phase of its history.”
As a postdoctoral researcher and assistant professor, Levy worked on the Healthy Public Housing Initiative, a community-based participatory study on asthma among children in public housing. “This project really emphasized for me how vulnerable populations often face elevated exposures to numerous stressors, many of which were related to their home and neighborhood environments,” Levy says. “I also learned the power of community-engaged research, and of listening to affected communities.”