Jan Chambers

Janice E. Chambers is the Director of the Center for Environmental Health Sciences, and is a William L. Giles Distinguished Professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Mississippi State University. She is originally from Berkeley, California. She holds an undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of San Francisco, and a Ph.D. in Animal Physiology from Mississippi State University. She held post-doctoral positions at Mississippi State University.

Dr. Chambers has been the Principal Investigator of over $20 million in federally-funded competitive grants in the field of toxicology, with current or previous support from NIH, EPA, NSF and the American Chemistry Council. She has served on a number of advisory boards and committees, including the National Research Council Board of Toxicology, the International Life Sciences Institute/Health and Environmental Sciences Institute, the Society of Toxicology and the American Chemistry Council. She is or has been a peer review panel member for NIH and NIOSH, and a member of journal editorial boards. She has received the International Award for Research in Agrochemicals from the American Chemical Society, Agrochemicals Division. She has received a Burroughs Wellcome Toxicology Scholar Award and a SmithKline Beecham award for Research Excellence, along with the Ralph E. Powe Research Award and the Alumni Association's Faculty Achievement Award in Research at MSU. She is board certified in general toxicology by the American Board of Toxicology and she is a Fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences. She has held a number of committee positions in the Society of Toxicology. She is serving as a member of EPA's permanent Scientific Advisory Panel for FIFRA, and is also a member of EPA's Human Studies Review Board, and is a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Center of Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Center for Environmental Health Sciences at MSU, which she directs, is an interdisciplinary research center specializing in pesticide toxicology and is supported primarily by the National Institutes of Health. This center has about 30-40 faculty, staff and students associated with it. Its research areas are neurotoxicology, biochemical toxicology, cardiovascular toxicology, analytical chemistry, biostatistics, epidemiology, computational chemistry, computational simulation, biochemistry and endocrinology. Dr. Chanmbers directs a mechanistic research program specializing in pesticide toxicology with a major emphasis on organophosphorus insecticides, and she has been involved in the training of about 40 graduate students and post-docs. She directs several research projects on the effects of pesticides in mammalian systems to identify the potential human health effects of pesticide exposures, and is primarily interested in the biochemical determinants of toxicity levels in adult and developing animals; her research addresses a number of Food Quality Protection Act issues. Her program emphasizes a consideration of the dose-response relationships, and for making predictions of toxicity based on realistic levels of pesticide exposure. Specifically there are projects related to the neurochemical and behavioral effects of pesticides in developing organisms; the metabolism of pesticides in developing organisms; the role of esterases, oxidative stress and pesticides in cardiovascular disease; effects of chemical mixtures and the development of data related to cumulative risk assessment; mathematical predictions of the effects of mixtures; and exposure assessment of children and adults from contact with a pet dog which has been treated with flea control insecticides.