People

Vasilis Vasiliou, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. He received his BSc in Chemistry (1983) and PhD in Biochemical Pharmacology (1988) from the University of Ioannina, Greece. He then trained in gene-environment interactions, molecular toxicology and pharmacogenetics at the Department of Environmental Health in the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (1991-1995). In 1996, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy where he rose through the ranks to become Professor and Director of the Toxicology Graduate Program. Since 2008, he was also Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. In July 2014, he joined the faculty of Yale University in his new position.Professor Vasiliou has established an internationally-recognized research program that has been...

Nicholas Apostolopoulos is a medical student at Yale School of Medicine, currently completing his medical school thesis in Dr. Vasilis Vasiliou’s lab since the summer of 2016. His research focuses on understanding the role of corneal crystallins ALDH3A1 and ALDH1A1 in ocular physiology and pathophysiology during oxidative stress. His current project aims to address the biological role of crytallin proteins as metabolic enzymes in cornea, lens and retina by utilizing both Aldh3a1/Aldh1a1 knockout and knock-in mouse models. In addition, he studies the role of glutathione (GSH) in the eye development using a mouse strain in which GSH biosynthesis is selectively abolished in surface ectoderm-derived ocular structures. The results so far suggest that GSH plays a critical role in ocular development, and further studies are underway to identify molecular details involved in this...

Georgia Charkoftaki received her pharmacy degree from the University of Athens, Greece, where she also earned a MSc in drug delivery and a PhD in biopharmaceutics-pharmacokinetics. In August 2013 she moved to UC Denver to start a postdoc in clinical and translational science, focusing on kidney related diseases. Charkoftaki studied the pharmacokinetics of cyclophosphamide in patients undergoing dialysis and how Vitamin D affects drug metabolism in the kidneys, among other projects. At Yale, she has focused on bile acids and their mechanisms, acting as neuromodulators in alcoholism and neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as studying the role of aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDHs) in neurodevelopmental disorders. She is leveraging her expertise in mass spectrometry-based omics approaches including metabolomics, lipidomics, and utilizing tissue imaging mass...

Dr. Chen has a broad background in environmental genetics and molecular toxicology, with specific training and expertise in redox biology, oxidative stress related diseases, and transgenic mouse models of redox dysregulation. Her research over the past ten years utilizes unique animal models and applies the system biology approach integrating multi-omics data and histopathology to understand the mechanistic roles of redox homeostasis in disease conditions related to environmental and dietary exposures. How does redox-elicited modifications of the liver proteome tune cellular response to protect against alcohol-associated fatty liver disease?Does oxidative stress play a mutagenic role in emerging water contaminant 1,4-dioxane-induced liver cancerWhat is the functional crosstalk between antioxidants in the central nervous system as they relate to neuronal health and disease?What is...

Brian Thompson is a second-year doctoral student in Environmental Health Sciences at Yale University where he has gained experience from his teaching fellowship roles in both the Introductory Biostatistics and Introductory Toxicology courses. His research interests include understanding how cells of the central nervous system respond to both endogenous and exogenous stressors. His interest in climate change grew from a belief that climate change is the most consequential problem facing the world in the 21st century. Prior to his doctoral studies, Brian obtained a BS in Biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.Ocular development is composed of a carefully orchestrated set of events that are easily perturbed, which results in a syndrome of diseases termed MAC (microphthalmia, anophthalmia and coloboma). For decades, previous research has largely been...