ICAST Faculty Fellow to Advance Environmental Health Research

Changjie Cai, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health at the Hudson College of Public Health, has been selected as a Faculty Fellow of the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for Community and Society Transformation (ICAST). The fellowship program offers support for two faculty members this fiscal year to strengthen interdisciplinary research and scholarship. Through the program, ICAST helps faculty build collaborations and advance work that addresses complex societal challenges in partnership with communities.

That mission closely reflects Cai’s commitment to using environmental health research to improve people’s lives. His work brings together air-quality measurement, atmospheric modeling and artificial intelligence to better understand environmental exposures and identify practical ways to reduce them. Community partnerships help connect that scientific expertise with the needs of the people the research is intended to serve.

Cai serves as founding director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center in the U.S. Southern Great Plains, which focuses on environmental and social stressors affecting young children, particularly in rural and agricultural communities. Working alongside researchers, educators, families and community partners, the center seeks to translate scientific findings into affordable, practical approaches that reduce harmful exposures and support healthier childhood environments. One example is Cai’s collaborative research on indoor air quality in early childhood classrooms. The work evaluates air-cleaning strategies and examines their potential to improve classroom environments and support children’s health and attendance. It also considers whether those strategies are practical for educators and early childhood programs to use.

As an ICAST Faculty Fellow, Cai will have new opportunities to strengthen interdisciplinary collaborations, develop research proposals and share findings with broader audiences. The fellowship will support connections that bring public health expertise together with other disciplines to address community priorities. The fellowship builds on a principle at the heart of Cai’s work: Research can make a lasting difference when it is developed with communities and translated into approaches they can use. For Cai, that means connecting scientific discovery with practical steps toward healthier places for children and families to learn, work and live.