WILLIAM A. SUK, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Dr. Suk is Director, Center for Risk and Integrated Sciences and Director, Superfund Basic Research Program, Division of Extramural Research and Training, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH). A primary aspect of his position has been the assessment and evaluation of national and international efforts in biomedical research and its applications in determining adverse effects on human health resulting from exposure to environmental agents. He is responsible for conceptualizing, designing, developing, initiating, and managing national and international programs that focus on those areas of research pertinent to the Institute's mission. Dr. Suk has served since its inception, as Director of the NIEHS Superfund Hazardous Substances Basic Research and Training Program, a program established by Congress as part of the reauthorization of Superfund in 1986. Through this Program, NIEHS supports coordinated multicomponent, interdisciplinary research linking basic biomedical research with related ecologic, hydrogeologic, and engineering studies. The Program has advanced the science of identifying, assessing, evaluating and remediating hazardous substances, and in so doing, it has enhanced the infrastructure of the environmental health sciences. A unique Program, addressing the problems associated with potentially hazardous environmental exposures and improving the health and well-being of vulnerable populations.

Dr. Suk received his Ph.D. in microbiology from the George Washington University Medical School, and his Masters in Public Health in health policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published extensively on issues linking exposures with disease etiologies and in developing research and prevention strategies to reduce risk to environmentally induced diseases and disorders. In so doing, he has worked to initiate and implement environmental health science programs with related policy issues in the United States, in Central and Eastern Europe, in South America as well as along the U.S.-Mexico border, and in Asia, especially SE Asia and including Central Asia. For example, Dr. Suk was the honorary chair of the first “International Conference on Environmental Threats to the Health of Children,” held in Bangkok, Thailand; he has recently co-chaired two conferences that strengthened the cooperation between health and environmental scientists from Central and Eastern European and other countries, held in Prague, Czech Republic and in Bratislava, Slovakia; and he facilitated the establishment of the children’s environmental health network in Central Asia and Middle East. Dr. Suk helped to conceptualize and implement the NIEHS/EPA Centers in Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research, helping to better understand environmental exposures and resultant health consequences in children and to develop more effective prevention and intervention strategies.

Dr. Suk is a member of a number of trans-NIH committees and consortia, most notably the Bioengineering Consortium (BECON) which is established within the Office of the Director, NIH, to promote and develop the bioengineering activities at NIH; he is a member of the BECON Subcommittee on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology; and he is a member of the Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative (BISTI) at NIH. He sits on the editorial advisory boards of a number of international journals, including Nanomedicine, Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry, Central European Journal of Public Health, and the International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health. Dr. Suk is a member of a number of scientific societies, and has been a National Science Foundation fellow.

Dr. Suk has received numerous NIEHS and NIH Director and Merit awards; the Roy Albert Award for translational research from the University of Cincinnati; and the DHHS Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service for dedicated support for the health and safety of victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast. Dr. Suk is a Fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini, an international society of scholars in occupational and environmental health.