EPA Fellowship: Quantification and Modeling of Chemical Partitioning and Fate in High Throughpu

* Applications may be reviewed on a rolling-basis and this posting could close before the deadline.

EPA Office/Lab and

Location:

A research opportunity is currently available at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), located in Duluth, Minnesota.

The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment. EPA works to ensure that:
Americans have clean air, land and water; national efforts to reduce environmental risks are based on the best available scientific information; federal laws protecting human health and the environment are administered and enforced fairly, effectively and as Congress intended;
Environmental stewardship is integral to U.S. policies concerning natural resources, human health, economic growth, energy, transportation, agriculture, industry, and international trade, and these factors are similarly considered in establishing environmental policy;
All parts of society have access to accurate information sufficient to effectively participate in managing human health and environmental risks;
Contaminated lands and toxic sites are cleaned up; and chemicals in the marketplace are reviewed for safety.

Research Project: Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention is developing and evaluating alternative testing approaches (termed "new approach methodologies") for generating toxicity information in a more rapid and cost-effective manner, while still providing data that are equivalent to or better than those derived from traditional testing. EPA's Risk Assessment Support division is developing and applying high throughput test methods in which small aquatic organisms (e.g., embryo-larval fish, crustaceans, insect larva, aquatic plants and algae) are exposed to test chemicals in 96-well plate format.

Previous research has demonstrated that even over relatively short durations of exposure, chemical partitioning, volatility, and transformations can lead to exposure concentrations that vary substantially from the nominal test concentrations. Therefore, there is a need to anchor testing to analytical measurements of chemical concentrations in the test wells and develop computational models that can predict chemical partitioning and fate based on physico-chemical properties and structure.

Additionally, for chemicals with challenging properties, novel approaches for chemical delivery in these aqueous systems need to be designed and evaluated.

Projects associated with this ORISE post masters/post-bachelor's research opportunity will focus on quantification of chemical concentrations in these multi-well plate systems, evaluation of novel chemical delivery strategies, and/or development of computational models to predict partitioning and fate. With guidance from the mentor, you may be involved in any or all of the following training activities:

• Developing analytical methods for quantifying organic contaminants in water.
• Quantifying contaminants using gas or liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry.
• Developing and evaluating exposure strategies suitable for methodologically challenging chemicals such as highly non-polar substances (e.g., high octanol-water partitioning coefficients), volatile chemicals, reactive chemicals, etc.
• Developing and applying methods for extracting organic contaminants from environmental matrices including surface waters, effluents, animal and plant tissues, soil, sediment, etc.
• Performing data quality assurance and quality control in analytical chemistry software.
• Developing predictive fate and partitioning models based on chemical properties and structures.
• Conducting molecular, biochemical, physiological, and/or histological analyses on biofluids and tissue samples collected from aquatic organisms.
• Processing and analyzing large, high content, data sets using both existing and novel computational pipelines.
• Analyzing experimental data and generating tables, figures, and other summaries of results.
• Conducting statistical analyses including the use of hypothesis testing, regression-based approaches, multi-variate statistics, concordance analyses, etc.
• Presenting research results at scientific meetings and contributing to peer-reviewed publications.

Learning Objectives
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You will develop a diverse set of skills in environmental analytical chemistry and high-throughput toxicity testing. You will be trained to operate and maintain a range of scientific instruments and laboratory automation systems, and you will gain hands-on experience with aquatic organisms, analytical instrumentation, and associated software platforms.

You will learn to evaluate data quality, troubleshoot experimental results, and apply statistical methods for data analysis and interpretation. As part of a transdisciplinary research team, you will gain experience engaging in multiple aspects of project planning, communication, coordination, research implementation, and data analysis.

You will have opportunities to interact with internationally recognized scientific leaders, both within and outside…