Applied Practice Experience (APEx)

Environmental Health Sciences Master's students are required to complete a three-month practicum. The practicum—essentially an internship in the field—is both a required component and highlight of the Master's experience. Our students work alongside public health professionals, experience the day-to-day realities of the field, and apply what they’ve learned in class to advance the cause of public health.

2023

• Catalent Pharma Solutions
  Completing hazardous waste inspections and conducting risk assessments on various processes and their potential hazards
• Civilience Company
  Developing questionnaires for the top 50 infectious diseases and creating a logic mapping for software development
• The Collaborative for Women's Environmental Health at Columbia
  Researching patient and clinician education for women's health and environmental exposures
• Columbia University
  Performing noise monitoring throughout Inwood and Washington Heights, then creating data visualizations
• Columbia University and Natural Resources Defense Council
  Using R to analyze exposomics and access the relationship between CBD oil products and common environmental contaminants through data analysis and visualization
• Environmental Health Sciences Department, Mailman School of Public Health
  • Translating questionnaires about arsenic exposure and rice consumption
  • Analyzing data to identify potential metabolomic signature related to exposure to metals and development of asthma
  • Studying the behavior and metal acclimation in the body of mice exposed to e-cigarettes
  • Geo-mapping environmental reparations cases using R, then developing a dashboard app
  • Analyzing the links between malnutrition and heat stress tolerance
  • Analyzing data and creating visualization using R for the Laboratory of Precision Environmental Health
  • Writing R code to create a tool that communicates lead concentration data in Public Water Systems to residents
  • Optimizing a protocol for urinary extracellular vesible isolation in order to study kidney disease biomarkers in samples from Sri Lankan children experiencing heat stress
• The Farmworker Association of Florida, Inc.
  Conducting research on culturally competent care for migrant farmworkers with a focus on environmental and occupational exposures
• Harvard University
  Interpreting data and writing a manuscript
• Maximon Behavioral Health
  Reporting on productivity data and daily incidents
• New York League of Conservation Voters
  Analyzing lead contamination reports for public school drinking water outlets
• New York Presbyterian
  Literature analysis to determine effects of hospital visitors on the patient's risk of malnutrition
• New York State Attorney General Office
  Aiding legal investigations by providing scientific expertise to lawyers and other professionals
• NGO Sustainability
  Maintaining a newsletter on climate change, sustainable development, renewable energy, and environmental health
• The Rockefeller Foundation
  Co-authored a paper and served as a content editor, focusing on biomolecules in food and their impact on nutrition and health
• TreePeople
  Geocoding spatial soil data from fine satellite imagery to create maps of social and impervious surface in urban LA
• WE ACT for Environmental Justice
  • Developing youth education modules to teach young people about environmental justice topics
  • Communicating about hazardous chemicals to avoid in cosmetic products
  • Coding for an R Shiny interface on air quality monitoring and wrote a policy paper on bioplastics and environmental justice
• Wellness Equity Alliance
  Environmental health research for a Community Health Needs Assessment