Dr. Maryam Karimi, PhD, MPA is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Science in School of Public Health UAB with a secondary appointment in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. She is an environmental health scientist whose work focuses on application of big data and sensing in developing data-driven models that predict environmental risk and social vulnerability associated with urban heat island (UHI) and air pollution.

She also has developed a suite of novel approaches for measuring and mapping the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of meteorological conditions and impact of air quality in the urban environment. Her work addressed issues of fundamental importance to the physical sciences—how and why temperature heterogeneities arise at the micro-scale—and public health—which populations are in greater peril for heat-related illness in the built environment.

Her work has strongly influenced the ways and scales at which heat exposure and air pollution are assessed. Dr. Karimi and her team have developed air quality exposure handheld sensors for COPD and Asthma patients to monitor their health and stay in contact with their health care providers.

Dr. Karimi has installed air quality monitors throughout Birmingham to access high resolution are quality data and help study the impact of air pollution on health.

She served as the lead advisor on a cooling and tree-planning project with Cooper’s Ferry Initiative and NJ Tree Foundation working to reduce the impact of UHI in impoverished neighborhoods of Camden, NJ and Birmingham.