Heehay Park is a PhD Candidate in University of California, Davis Pharmacology & Toxicology program, working on Alzheimer's disease and air pollution research with Dr. Laura Van Winkle of the Institute of the Environment's Center for Health and the Environment.

What led you to want to study and research environmental solutions?

Heehay Park: My primary research interest was in studying neurodegenerative diseases, specifically Alzheimer's disease-related dementia. When I first joined the Pharmacology and Toxicology graduate group as a PhD student, I was looking for professors who were doing Alzheimer's disease-related research projects. In my first year, Dr. Laura Van Winkle and Dr. Pamela Lein had a research project started, which aimed to study the effects of Traffic-Related Air Pollution on Alzheimer's disease in collaboration with Dr. Keith Bein from the Air Quality Research Center. This was a new perspective to me because I didn’t know that air pollution could influence later cognitive and brain health. I was instantly drawn into the project.

What are your most significant research accomplishments?

Heehay Park: The most significant research accomplishment is completing our chronic Traffic-Related Air Pollution inhalation exposure study, which took us more than 15 months to complete. Since this project not only looks at the respiratory impacts of air pollution, but also the neurotoxic impacts of air pollution, it was only possible through collaboration with people from different expertise and background. We chronically exposed transgenic rats susceptible to Alzheimer's disease to real-world Traffic-Related Air Pollution in our exposure facility at the Caldecott tunnel in Oakland. This unique Caldecott tunnel exposure facility was built and engineered by our air quality research collaborators, Dr. Keith Bein, Christopher Wallis, and Dr. Anthony Wexler, allowing rats to be exposed to real-world traffic emissions collected from the tunnel bores in real time. This study involved a lot of work from many different people. We had to breed and transport animals from UC Davis to the facility and manage animal husbandry during the 14-month exposure duration. This project involved a lot of collaboration, planning, and manpower. This exposure study is now complete, and I'm in the process of analyzing samples. Completing the exposure study was a big accomplishment. I went to the tunnel facility every week with my colleague, Mei-Yun Cheng - another PhD student leading this study, for weekly animal husbandry work. Through this project I really learned that you can't do the science alone and that collaboration is necessary for good science.

What are the short and long-term goals you hope to achieve with your research?

Heehay Park: My short-term goal is to successfully wrap up my dissertation work and publish manuscripts on findings from this study. I am passionate about my research, which I put a lot of time and effort into. We’re finding some interesting findings that I’m excited to report on manuscripts that I’m preparing. I’m hoping to communicate what I found with not only my scientist peers but with the regulatory field and the general public to raise awareness of the lasting impacts of air pollution. My long-term goals are always changing. I'm a toxicologist in training, and I'm passionate about neurodegenerative diseases, so I hope to continue my research on these topics. I want to contribute to improving the lives of people who struggle with these diseases because I witnessed what my grandmo went through when she had Alzheimer's disease-related dementia. My long-term goal is to improve the quality of life of those impacted by neurodegenerative diseases.

Are you researching a specific type of air pollution from cars?

Heehay Park: Yes, in our study, we're specifically looking at different emission types and components of Traffic-Related Air Pollution. People are aware of general levels of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5), but Traffic-Related Air Pollution is more complicated. Traffic-Related Air Pollution includes both PM and gaseous emissions, which vary depending on the types of fuel used by vehicles. There are diesel-powered heavy-duty trucks and gasoline-powered light-duty cars. The interesting thing about the Oakland Caldecott Tunnel is that it doesn't allow trucks to pass through a certain bore which only allows gasoline-powered cars to go through. I think it's just to facilitate the traffic volume and the speeding, but this allowed us to separate the emissions from trucks and cars. We separated groups of rats to be exposed to car emissions versus truck emissions, and we further fractionated emissions to PM only, gas only, or both combined to investigate toxic effects of different emission components and sources. These are the data gaps in the field, and I think this information can help the regulatory perspectives because we want to identify which ones are the driving factors that affect both respiratory and brain health.

How has your research influenced your thinking?

Heehay Park: I feel like I'm a different person when I compare myself to four years ago, even a month ago. PhD education and research definitely trained me to think critically. I have prior research experience, but I was more of the hands in the lab, generating data, and I didn’t know how to organize or plan research. Now, I am learning to plan, organize, and understand why certain parts of the experiments are necessary, and evaluate the value of our research in comparison to what's happening out in the field. I think that helped me to shape my priorities in life. I'm not just doing it, but I now kind of see the importance and significance of my work. It also expands to how I think about what I do when making daily choices, like should I drive or bike today? I now better understand the impact of what I do in terms of environmental exposure and health.

How do you stay motivated with the recent rollbacks in environmental research?

Heehay Park: It's sad to see, what's happening now. As I mentioned earlier, I now really understand the impact of my research and the impact of environmental health research. It's really important to not only do a single experiment, but multiple experiments to prove that there are negative health impacts at a population level with exposure to these different environmental contaminants. It's sad how what's happening now really minimizes this type of research. We won't see it immediately, but this will slow down environmental health research which will affect everyone’s life. It's directly impacting my lab too. I see people lose funding for environmental health research, and it's just really sad when we think about  a bigger picture. It's necessary to keep moving forward with research to minimize exposure to harmful environmental pollutants and improve people's lives and quality of life.