Environmental exposure monitoring, air pollution modeling, health impacts of environmental exposures.
Meng Wang, PhD, joined the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences as an assistant professor in June 2018. Previously, Wang was a senior fellow at the University of Washington, School of Public Health, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Seattle, WA.
Wang is also associated with the UB Research and Education in eNergy, Environment and Water (RENEW) Institute. The Institute is university-wide and interdisciplinary, focusing on complex energy and environmental issues, including their social and economic ramifications. The institute helps develop and coordinate innovative research, education and outreach programs.
Wang's research focuses on environmental exposure monitoring, air pollution modeling, and health impacts of environmental exposures. Specifically, he is interested in producing the most accurate human exposure estimates for health studies using advanced exposure technologies (e.g. fixed and mobile monitoring, remote sensing and low-cost sensors) and analytic approaches based on complex big data resources (e.g. a GIS-based environmental model). His research also involves investigating whether exposure to air pollution and other environmental contaminants are associated with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Furthermore, he does research to understand the mechanistic pathways underlying these associations, including genetic and environmental interactions.
In the past twelve years, Wang has been intensively involved in several large epidemiological research projects on air pollution in the United States (MESA-Air), Europe (ESCAPE and TRANSPHORM) and China (CAREBEIJING). His main contributions included developing high-quality exposure models for air pollutants, assessing effectiveness of air pollution control policies, and understanding the biological and subclinical processes of air pollution on disease progression.