Our Team

Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering in 2016 from Nanjing University in China. During 2014-2015, he served as a Visiting Scholar at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to joining the Yale School of Public Health faculty in July 2019, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoc Fellow at Helmholtz Zentrum München-German Center for Environmental Health.Dr. Chen’s research focuses on the intersection of climate change, air pollution, and human health. His work involves applying multidisciplinary approaches in climate and air pollution sciences, exposure assessment, and environmental epidemiology to investigate how climate change may impact human health. Much of this work has been done in China, Europe, and the U.S.

Dr. Riyang Liu received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Nanjing University in China in 2024. Dr. Liu’s research focuses on modeling and assessing the population exposure to air pollutants and climate stressors with multidisciplinary approaches.

Pargoal is an MPH student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health. Her research interests include climate change, air pollution, energy transition, and heat impacts. Pargoal was a Climate Equity Associate at the Clean Air Task Force for two years. She researched the role of conventional air pollutants and their impacts on communities in the just clean energy transition context. She received a master's in Climate Science and Policy from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). At UCSD, she completed a capstone on how COVID-19 policies impacted particulate matter (PM2.5) levels with environmental justice implications. She graduated in 2020 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in atmospheric and oceanic sciences. At UCLA, Pargoal's project included researching the impact of wildfire smoke plumes on PM2.5.

Lingzhi Chu is a postdoc associate in the Environmental Health Sciences Department at the Yale School of Public Health. Her research interests include characterizing risks to human health from weather exposure (e.g. temperature and humidity) with climate change. Lingzhi has a background in environmental science and engineering, climate change modeling and epidemiology, and she is also broadly interested in causal inference methods in climate change epidemiology.

Rhea is a junior at Yale College, majoring in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Human Health and the Environment. She is interested in how climate change affects various populations' health, and policies that can be implemented to improve public health. Her current project involves investigating the relationship between wildfire air pollution data and other demographic data. She previously analyzed environmental data for the 2022 Environmental Performance Index.

Francisco is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Francisco has a background in Ecology, studying climate through the use of tree rings. His research interests meet in the health effects of climate variability, particularly extreme weather events.

Riena is an MPH candidate in the Environmental Health Sciences department. Her academic interests include climate change, air pollution, clean energy, and building electrification. She is currently studying the impacts of wildfire smoke on human health, and plans to use her MPH to drive health benefits through clean energy and equitable electrification. Riena graduated in 2020 from Bowdoin College, where she studied Biology and Government & Legal Studies.

Jiajianghui Li is a Ph.D candidate in Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Peking University. She is currently a visiting Postgraduate Associate in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health.Her research lies in the following areas: (1) Assessing the effects of climate and air-related environmental mixtures (i.e.,fire-sourced PM2.5) on mortality and morbidities,particularly on children under 5 years; (2) Identifying environmental and societal factors that ameliorate or exacerbate the mixture effects; (3) Calculating the disease burden of air-related environmental factors. Long term, her research goal is to generate robust evidence of how the combined effect of climate change impact population health and susceptibility by using large-scale datasets, including highly spatiotemporally resolved air and climate data, geocoded health records, and contextual risk factors.

Chengyi Lin is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health. She is interested in the health effects of air pollution. Her current project evaluates the association between ozone and mortality.

Yiqun Ma is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. She is interested in the intersection of climate change, air pollution, and human health, such as heat-related cause-specific mortality and the effects of air pollution on mental health. She also hopes to learn more about the exposure assessment of air pollution and air temperature. Yiqun holds a Bachelor of Management Sciences from Zhejiang University, China.

Aline is a first-year MPH student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health. She developed an interest in environmental health after witnessing the effects of the 2021 British Columbian heatwave and forest fires on her community. Aline's primary research interests include the effect of wildfire smoke on air quality and human health outcomes, and community health equity, and climate change mitigation methods. Aline received an Honours Bachelor of Science in Medical and Environmental Sciences from Dalhousie University in 2023, and has pursued research projects in Canada, the United States, and Japan.

Caroline is a first-year MPH student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health. She is interested in how climate-related exposures and environmental inequalities influence the health outcomes of populations, and how mitigation and adaptation strategies can be used to protect and enhance the health of communities most vulnerable to climate impacts. Caroline developed an interest in public health research while working in women’s population health promotion and in drowning prevention. She received a Bachelor of Science in Integrated Sciences from the University of British Columbia in 2020, and worked at a mental health nonprofit prior to pursuing her graduate studies.

Pin Wang earned his Ph.D. degree in Public Health from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2016. Prior to joining the Yale School of Public Health, Dr.Wang served as a post-doctoral fellow at the School of Public Health and Primary Care, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He participated in several projects on environmental epidemiology, such as short-term associations between weather variations and certain enteric infectious diseases, the long-term impact of urban built environment on mortality in a densely populated setting, and projecting future temperature-related mortality in the 21st century using annual data under different climate change scenarios. His primary research interests include the impact of both short-term weather variations and long-term climate change on population health, the interaction of human adaptation, statistical methodology in environmental epidemiology modeling, the interplay between climate change and air pollution and its impact on health, and climate justice.

Dr. Zhang received her Ph.D. in Human Biology from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany in 2021. Prior to joining the Yale School of Public Health faculty in January 2024, she was a post-doctoral fellow at Helmholtz Munich-German Research Center for Environmental Health. Dr. Zhang’s research focuses on the impact of air pollution and climate change on human health. She also engages in assessing the joint effect of environmental exposures, including air pollution, temperature, noise, and greenspace.