About the Center

The Center for Health-Related Aerosol Studies (CHRAS) was established at the University of Cincinnati in February 2000 by a group of faculty from the College of Medicine and College of Engineering. This collaborative, interdisciplinary effort was initially supported by a one-year research challenge grant through the University of Cincinnati Biomedical Engineering Initiative. The Center is directed by Dr. Sergey Grinshpun and currently includes core faculty members of the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences, research associates and postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students. In addition, nationally and internationally recognized scientists from several departments of the University of Cincinnati and other institutions worldwide extensively collaborate with the Center representing various research expertises.

Prior to the creation of the CHRAS the three core faculty collaborated with each other as members of the Aerosol Research and Exposure Assessment Laboratory which Professor Klaus Willeke had founded in the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences in 1976. Since that time, about 60 postdoctoral fellows, visiting scientists and research associates from many countries have worked with Dr. Willeke, Dr. Grinshpun (since 1991) and Dr. Reponen (since 1995). Together they have graduated about 70 Ph.D. and M.S. students. These core faculty have conducted numerous collaborative research projects involving the following University of Cincinnati programs: Environmental and Occupational Hygiene, Toxicology, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Internal Medicine, Occupational Nursing, Pediatrics, Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Environmental Engineering, and Chemical Engineering. They have also collaborated with research institutions in the US and worldwide: US EPA (Cincinnati, Ohio, and RTP, North Carolina), US Army Chemical Biological Center (Edgewood, Maryland), Naval Office of Research, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (Washington D.C.), Battelle National Biodefense Institute, US Department of Housing and Urban Development (Washington D.C.), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta, Georgia), National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (Bethesda, Maryland), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Cincinnati, Ohio, Morgantown, West Virginia, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Research Triangle Institute (RTP, North Carolina), Children’s Hospital Medical Center (Cincinnati, Ohio), Ben Gurion University (Beer Sheva, Israel), Technion (Haifa, Israel), Finnish National Public Health Institute (Kuopio, Finland), French Institute for Nuclear Safety and Protection (Saclay, France), Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology (both in Brisbane, Australia), Institute of Physics (Vilnius, Lithuania), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Daejeon, Korea), Kyiv University (Kyiv, Ukraine), Kazan Federal University (Kazan, Russia), Peking University (Beijing, China), and others.