Lawrence S. Engel, PhD

Lawrence Engel is an associate professor in the UNC Department of Epidemiology, with more than 16 years of experience in environmental and occupational health research. He was a researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York before being appointed to the faculty of the Gillings School of Global Public Health in 2011. Dr. Engel also holds an appointment as associate scientist in the Epidemiology Branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Dr. Engel's current research is focused primarily on cancer and other health outcomes among persons exposed to oil spills, persistent organic pollutants and risk of cancer, and pesticides and risk of breast cancer and other chronic diseases. He teaches a graduate course and lectures on environmental and disaster epidemiology.

Honors and Awards

NIH Director’s Award for the Gulf Long-term Follow-up (GuLF) Study

2011, National Insitute of Environmental Health Sciences

Representative Courses

Environmental Epidemiology (EPID 785) | Syllabus

Teaching Interests

Dr. Engel has given invited lectures on the use of biomarkers in epidemiologic research, disaster epidemiology, environmental and occupational risk factors for cancer, and health effects associated with pesticides.

Research Activities

Dr. Engel is involved in a range of environmental and occupational epidemiology studies involving biomarkers and clinical, interview and administrative data.

Service Activities

Dr. Engel serves on the admissions committee of the UNC Department of Epidemiology. He is also a member of the External Advisory Board of the Center for Translational Environmental Health Research, which is an NIEHS-funded collaboration among Texas A&M, Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston.

Key Publications

Predictors and Variability of Repeat Measurements of Urinary Phenols and Parabens in a Cohort of Shanghai Women and Men. J Buckley, H Cai, Q Cai, A Calafat, W Chow, S Engel, L Engel, Y Gao, B Ji, L Liao, C Matthews, N Rothman, J Satagopan, X Shu, M Wolff, Y Xiang, G Yang, W Zheng (2014). Environmental health perspectives.

Exploration of the use of Bayesian modeling of gradients for censored spatiotemporal data from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Sudipto Banerjee, Bradley P. Carlin, Lawrence S. Engel, Caroline Groth, Richard K. Kwok, Harrison Quick, Dale P. Sandler, Mark R. Stenzel, Patricia A. Stewart (2014). Spatial Statistics.

Breast cancer subtypes and previously established genetic risk factors: A bayesian approach. Jeannette Bensen, Stephen Cole, Lawrence Engel, Amy Herring, Robert Millikan, Katie O'Brien, Charles Poole (2014). Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, 23(1), 84-97.

Exploration of the use of Bayesian modeling of gradients for censored spatiotemporal data from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Sudipto Banerjee, Bradley Carlin, Lawrence Engel, Caroline Groth, Richard Kwok, Harrison Quick, Dale Sandler, Mark Stenzel, Patricia Stewart (2014). Spatial Statistics.