UA SRC Represents at the 2022 Superfund Research Program (SRP) Annual Meeting

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The NIEHS Superfund Research Program (SRP) marked its 35th anniversary at its first in-person annual meeting since 2019 from Dec. 14-17, 2022. Researchers, trainees, and community partners from across the U.S. gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina, to learn about select SRP-funded projects through workshops and presentations.

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The University of Arizona Superfund Research Center (UA SRC) was well represented with 16 members of the UA SRC attending the event!

Following is a list of presentations from our trainees:

• Ma'in Alghzawi (Project 4) presented: “Climate-induced variation in toxic metal(loid)s concentration and speciation in weathered mine tailings”.
• Alma Anides Morales (RT) presented: “Building an Environmental Health Mapping Tool for Arizona Communities Through Data Integration and Community Science”
• Hui Li (Project 2) presented: “Arsenic exposure in drinking water alters intestinal microsomal epoxide hydrolase expression in mice”
• Kamila Murawska-Wlodarczyk (Project 5) shared results from her K.C. Donnelly Externship at UC San Diego where she learned new strategies to help plants that accumulate and remove chemicals from the environment to thrive in harsh conditions. Her presentation was titled: “Phytoremediation potential and metal tolerance of Atriplex lentiformis - linking plant stress gene expression and plant-microbe interactions in metal-contaminated mine tailing”.
• Susan Perez (Project 5) presented: “Conditional Stability Constants for Synthetically Derived Glycolipids”.
• Boyoung Song (Project 4) presented: “Parent material weathering drives arsenic bioavailability”.
• Anthony Vicenti (DMAC) presented: “UA SRC Olympus – Streamlined Data Exploration”.
• Tomasz Wlodarczyk (Project 5) presented: “In search of native metal-accumulating plants to improve remediation of mine tailings in arid ecosystems”.
• Michelle Yung (DMAC) presented: “Automating a Leaf Segmentation Workflow using Machine Learning and CyVerse”.
• Kira Zeider (RT and Project 5) presented: “Foliar surfaces as aerosol pollution monitors: Methodological validation, enrichment, and factors influencing foliar retention”.

The 2022 annual SRP meeting was an excellent opportunity for members of each Superfund program from around the nation to network and share lessons learned in the areas of basic environmental science and toxicology, as well as research translation and community outreach.

On behalf of the UA SRC, we were delighted that many of our team members were able to attend the SRP 35th Anniversary Annual Meeting!