CEHS Welcomes Troester as New Director
Dr. Melissa Troester
The UNC Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (CEHS) announces that Dr. Melissa Troester assumed the role of Director effective on April 1. Troester is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and a Research Professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She is leader of the Cancer Epidemiology program in the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and has held leadership roles in the CEHS since 2010, including Director of the Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core, Pilot Projects Director, and most recently, Deputy Director.
Following undergraduate and graduate studies in chemistry, Troester’s research interests in cancer and the environment led her to pursue a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences, with a focus on identifying biomarkers for exposure to cancer-causing chemicals. She then pursued postdoctoral training to evaluate biomarkers of early biological effects, linking toxic exposures to genetic profiles in breast cancer. In 2006, Troester joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts and began studying normal breast responses to environmental exposure, which she continued in the UNC Department of Epidemiology beginning in 2008. She initiated the University of North Carolina Normal Breast Study, and led an NIEHS-funded Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Program (BCERP) from 2010-2015. In leading the BCERP, Troester collaborated with Nutrition Department faculty Liza Makowski to use a research design that links laboratory studies and human studies to community engagement. This approach is central to the theme of the Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility. Today, Troester’s research continues to focus on environmental causes of breast and other cancers, and uses an interdisciplinary, collaborative model to advance understanding of how mechanisms of carcinogenesis affect breast cancer risk and survivorship.
Advances in the research laboratory depend upon collaborations between experts, but are also accelerated and made more impactful by multidirectional communication with community members. Throughout Troester’s research career, she has valued engaged scholarship including teaching opportunities with breast cancer advocates, participating in University outreach opportunities such as Science Café and Morehead Science Expo and she also has valued stakeholder feedback, and led an advisory board in collaboration with Community Outreach and Engagement Core Director Kathleen Gray for the five years of the BCERP program. This board provided fundamental feedback that altered research priorities and improved communication outcomes. In the CEHS Directorship, Troester looks forward to linking UNC investigators with community engagement opportunities. “I am very excited about building new opportunities and support for innovative, interdisciplinary research that results in understanding environmental health threats affecting the North Carolina public and beyond.”
Dr. Troester is grateful to Dr. Jim Swenberg for his many years of leadership of the Center, and looks forward to working with him during the transition. Dr. Swenberg noted, “The Center has contributed many important environmental health research findings over the past 16 years. I look forward to observing the Center’s continued growth under Dr. Troester’s leadership.” Troester and Swenberg are working together to plan a Symposium for the fall of 2017 that will bring together the CEHS research and community engagement activity to continue strategic planning for the Center’s future.
