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YSPH Graduate Wins Prestigious Award from American College of Epidemiology
A recent Yale School of Public Health graduate has been honored by the American College of Epidemiology (ACE) for her research paper on the link between pesticides and cancer. Stella Koutros, who received her Ph.D. last spring for her work in the Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, received ACE’s Student Prize Paper for 2008 at their annual meeting in Tucson, Ariz., in September. Her research focused on pesticide exposure and cancer risk among farmers enrolled in the Agricultural Health Study, drawn from a cohort in Iowa and North Carolina. One particular pesticide known as imazethapyr held a particular interest, she said, because of its common usage and chemical structure. It is a heterocyclic aromatic amine, a type of chemical class that has been linked to several cancer types. Koutros and her research team found an association between imazethapyr exposure and cancers of the bladder and colon. As a student at the School of Public Health, Koutros received a fellowship to train at the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, a program unique to Yale University that introduces students to modern methodologies for evaluating lifestyle determinants of human cancer risk. As a postdoctoral fellow at the NCI, she will continue to work in the areas of occupational and environmental cancer epidemiology, including data in the Agricultural Health Study. Koutros hopes to explore several gene–environment interactions that might explain the increased risk of prostate cancer in the study’s cohort. Koutros credits Susan Mayne, Ph.D., professor in the Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, and Tongzhang Zheng, head of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences and her thesis adviser. “Both of them provided me with critical and valuable guidance throughout my doctoral training,” Koutros said. ~Story by Melissa Pheterson |
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