Chunrong Jia, PhD

Headshot of Fellow Chunrong JiaProfessor of Environmental Health Science
Division of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Environmental Health
School of Public Health
University of Memphis
cjia@memphis.edu

Fellowship Projects: Energy, Environment and Health in Affordable Housing Development / Indoor VOC Exposure and Home Energy Insecurity in an Environmental Justice Community / The Role of Environmental Exposure Reduction (REER) in a Multicomponent Asthma Intervention

Dr. Chunrong Jia is Professor of Environmental Health (EH) in University of Memphis School of Public Health. His research interests are in human exposure to air pollutants and the associated health effects. The air pollutants he has studied include volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbonyls, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), particulate matters (PM), brominated flame retardants (BFRs), and heavy metals. His research has addressed many priority EH areas, such as air toxics, indoor air quality (IAQ), environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), pollutant mixtures, environmental epidemiology, and environmental health disparities.

Dr. Jia received his B.S. in Environmental Science and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Nankai University, Tianjin, China, and Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. He joined the University of Memphis in 2009 as the first and only EH faculty. He helped establish a new EH program by designing EH curriculum, building an environmental laboratory, conducting air pollution research, and training EH concentration students.

Dr. Jia has worked on a number of projects funded by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Health Effects Institute, Benjamin Hooks Institute, FedEx Institute of Technology, and private companies since his appointment in Memphis. He characterized exposures, sources, and risks of air toxics in various indoor and outdoor environments. He applied advanced statistical and spatial analyses to understand uncertainty, variability, and joint distributions of airborne VOCs. He has systematically evaluated the effectiveness of 2,5-dimehtylfuran as a tobacco smoke tracer using laboratory experiments, field sampling, and population data. Currently he is conducting a community-scale air toxics monitoring project, funded by EPA, to evaluate health risks and environmental disparities in the Greater Memphis area.

Dr. Jia expects to extend his current research, develop new research areas, and establish wide collaborations through the JPB Environmental Health Fellowship Program. He plans to put his air pollution research into the social context, and to work with other fellow scientists to address new complex environmental health challenges.

Last Update: Spring 2024