About Us
LEADERs in Environmental Public Health
We are a combined academic research laboratory that undertakes both field- and laboratory-based research with a focus on biomarkers of exposure and clinical disease. While we employ many MPH and PhD students, we are comprised of 4 permanent staff members and 4 faculty members at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health.
Our Story
LEADER was founded in 2010 when Drs. Dana Boyd Barr and P. Barry Ryan decided to merge their analytical laboratories and complementary experience to create a premiere laboratory for environmental health research. By combining efforts, we were facilitating a laboratory with capabilities in both exposure biomarker and environmental chemical analysis. Since then, we have expanded our capabilities to include clinical biomarkers as well. Our laboratory measures a wide array of environmental chemicals in multiple matrices including non-persistent and persistent organic and inorganic chemicals. These chemicals include, but are not limited to, PFAS, pesticides, PCBs, PBDEs, OP flame retardants, smoke markers, PAHs, phthalates, environmental phenols, parabens, Pb, Hg, and As. While most of our work is quantitative targeted analysis, we also perform semi-targeted analyses enabling the analysis of a broad array of chemicals in a single analysis. LEADER is a part of Emory's P30 HERCULES Exposome Center's Integrated Health Sciences and Facilities Core and the Biomarker Core for Emory's Household Air Pollution Intervention Network Trial.
