Class of 2023

Jason Golec

President

Jason is a first-year Industrial Hygiene MPH student from Royal Oak, Michigan. Jason earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan in Community and Global Health. Graduating in 2019, Jason was a part of the inaugural cohort of undergraduate students at the School of Public Health. Post-graduation, Jason worked at PM Environmental in Berkley, Michigan as an Industrial Hygienist. He administered asbestos and lead abatement oversight by collecting and analyzing environment samples for human exposure assessment. Jason also created and oversaw the radon measurement protocols and procedures at PM after becoming an NRPP certified Radon Measurement Specialist. With an advanced degree in Industrial Hygiene, Jason hopes to find a career in the private sector where he can foster safe working conditions, enhance the intersections between behavioral health and industrial hygiene, and eventually become a CIH and CSP. In his free time, Jason is an avid outdoorsman spending his time hiking, fishing, or bird watching. On Sundays, you can find Jason subjecting himself to the never-ending pain of being a diehard fan of the Detroit Lions.

Remy Mink

Vice President

Remy is a second-year MPH candidate from the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated from UC Los Angeles in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology and Physiology. Throughout her undergraduate career, Remy worked in various cadaver dissection laboratories as well as with UCLA’s Track and Field and Cross Country teams as a Student Athletic Trainer. Since graduating, she has worked in Tijuana, Mexico to deliver educational seminars about women’s reproductive health, Nassau, Bahamas to perform synchronized swimming, Madrid, Spain to develop an environmental science curriculum in English, and Maui, Hawaii to teach tourists the importance of sustainable organic agriculture. Over the summer, Remy worked as a research assistant at Mae Fah Luang University in Chiang Rai, Thailand to investigate the neurotoxic effects of organophosphate, carbamate, and organochlorine insecticides in Hill Tribe and Northern Thai farmers. Through industrial hygiene, Remy is working to better understand the nuanced social and environmental determinants of public health in the occupational sphere, as well as their global impact. In her down time, she enjoys cooking, road tripping, surfing, and discovering new music.

Kyra Villalon

Secretary

Kyra Villalon is a Philippines-born, Michigan-raised MPH Candidate in Industrial Hygiene. She completed her bachelor’s degree in 2020 at Wayne State University studying Public Health with a minor in Computer Science. Kyra initially pursued a career in healthcare before her experience at the Detroit Health Department made her realize that preventative medicine is the most effective method of achieving a higher quality of life. Her experience in tracking protective and factors for lead poisoning in Detroit piqued her interest in the field of Industrial Hygiene. With a degree in Industrial Hygiene, she seeks to limit adverse workplace exposures to promote safer working conditions and advance sustainable practices. Beyond the classroom, Kyra enjoys swimming, hiking, travelling, and attending festivals. During her summer internship, Kyra worked as an Environmental, Health, and Safety Intern at AbbVie Inc. where she gained experience with occupational exposure monitoring, air sampling, sound pressure level mapping, respirator fit testing, risk assessments, process contribution and wastewater assessments, training development, and presenting exposure monitoring results to site stakeholders.

Cristina Gomez

Treasurer

Cristina grew up in Mission Viejo, California. She received her Bachelors of Science in Environmental Science from the University of Redlands in 2020. She also minored in Biology. During her time at the University of Redlands, she worked as an assistant to the Director of Environmental Health and Safety at Redlands. She completed three summer internships at the University of California, Irvine in the Environmental Health and Safety Department. The three internships covered environmental health, biosafety, and industrial hygiene and lab safety. She worked on lab risk assessments, exposure monitoring, attending EH&S Energy Team meetings, surveys in Biosafety Level 2 and 3 labs to review the PI’s plans for their research, surveying animal testing labs and vivaria, reviewing IBC applications, a storm drain system mapping, planning, and improvement project to comply with NPDES and SWRCBR, identifying, verifying, and mapping locations and conditions of over 225 campus storm drains, storm drain locations by loading it onto the UCI GIS map, and lastly, making recommendations for the storm drain cleaning, stenciling, and infrastructure improvement. Her interests are chemical exposures, physical hazards, organic chemistry, and microbiology. In her free time, she enjoys going on hikes, working out, and spending time with family and friends.

David Caputo

Service Chair

David was born in Boston and grew up in Topsfield, Massachusetts. David completed his undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Michigan studying Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience in 2018. Since graduation, David has worked for a large pharmaceutical company on their Environmental Health and Safety team at their global headquarters in Boston. He has also worked as an Environmental Health and Safety Specialist for a large consulting company focusing on laboratory safety and the use of hazardous and radioactive materials. David’s passion for industrial hygiene stems from his past projects focusing on chemical exposure monitoring to laboratory scientists. He will look to pursue his CIH and CSP after graduating in 2023. David is also passionate about rugby having played at Michigan and currently volunteering on the universities coaching staff. He also is a diehard New England sports fan and enjoys spending time outdoors and in nature.

Abas Shkembi

Abas is an MS Candidate in Industrial Hygiene from Macomb, MI. Abas received his BS in Statistics, minoring in Environmental Science, from the University of Michigan in 2020. Abas worked in various research roles during his undergrad, primarily as a Research Assistant in Dr. Richard Neitzel's Exposure Research Lab. In the lab, Abas has examined heavy metal exposures and the health status of informal e-waste workers in Thailand and Chile; investigated noise exposure, hearing loss, and injuries among surface miners in the US Midwest; and created publicly-available websites for the lab's Noise Job Exposure Matrix (noiseJEM) and the Apple Hearing Study. Abas is also passionate about carbon neutrality and sustainability, having served on the UM President's Commission on Carbon Neutrality (PCCN) Commuting Internal Analysis Team. His current MS thesis examines the lasting legacy of historical residential segregation via redlining on occupational and environmental injustices in Michigan. Outside of research, Abas enjoys gardening, cooking, biking, drawing, and spending time with family and friends.

Xin Zhang

Xin is a first-year doctoral student in environmental health sciences with a focus on occupational health and industrial hygiene. She is an alumna of the MPH IH program at the University of Michigan (Class of 2020) and is excited to continue her research at the Exposure Research Lab with Dr. Rick Neitzel. Her area of interest is noise exposure and related health outcomes. She is interested in applying advanced models to find the dose-response relationship for noise using big data collected with novel sampling methods. She hopes to be able to interpret the statistics into meaningful information for the public, especially for the workers. Apart from her dissertation topics, Xin is also interested in risk assessment models and the concept of vulnerability applied in climate change studies. Outside of school, Xin likes to hang out with friends, play board games, exercise, travel, and explore good food.

Anupon Tadee

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Jie He

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