This award recognizes a scientist who, based on research, has made a recent (within the last five years), seminal scientific contribution/advance to understanding fundamental mechanisms of toxicity. The recipient should be a respected basic scientist whose research findings are likely to have a pervasive impact on the field of toxicology.
For groundbreaking work showing how transformed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and related pollutants influence human exposure and toxicity and for redefining health risk assessment of particulate air pollution and remediated soils, Staci L. Simonich, PhD, has received the 2026 SOT Leading Edge in Basic Science Award.
Dr. Simonich earned her BS in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay and her PhD in chemistry from Indiana University. She began her career as a scientist at Procter & Gamble before joining Oregon State University (OSU) in 2001 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology and the Department of Chemistry. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006 and Full Professor in 2011 and has served as a project leader in the OSU Superfund Research Program and as a member of the OSU Environmental Health Sciences Center. In 2022, she was appointed Dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Reub Long Professor and Director of the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station, while continuing her research at the interface of environmental chemistry and toxicology.
Over the past decade, Dr. Simonich has led a series of seminal investigations demonstrating that traditional risk assessment models for air pollution dramatically underestimate the health risks posed by complex mixtures of PAHs and their transformation products. By combining advanced analytical chemistry, atmospheric chemistry, and in vivo toxicology, her group has shown that PAHs attached to particulate matter are chemically “shielded,” increasing their persistence during long-range transport and resulting in higher concentrations at both urban and remote locations than previously predicted. This work, including studies showing a fourfold increase in estimated global lung cancer risk from shielded PAHs, has fundamentally altered how atmospheric particulate matter composition, bioavailability, and toxic potency are conceptualized and quantified.
Dr. Simonich’s research has also transformed understanding of how engineered remediation systems can unintentionally increase toxicity by generating hazardous transformation products. Through integrated field, laboratory, and bioassay studies at Superfund and other contaminated sites, her group has demonstrated that bioremediation, steam-enhanced extraction, and photocatalytic treatments can produce novel PAH derivatives with greater genotoxicity and developmental toxicity than the parent compounds. By pairing comprehensive chemical characterization with mechanistic toxicology, her work has exposed critical gaps in existing soil and sediment risk assessment frameworks and provided a scientific foundation for designing remediation strategies that minimize formation of toxic byproducts and better protect human health.
Dr. Simonich’s scholarly record reflects the influence of her work across disciplines. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, with an h-index of 62, an i10-index of 115, and over 12,000 citations. Her leadership and creativity have been recognized through numerous honors, including election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry/Roy F. Weston Environmental Chemistry Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and multiple institutional awards for outstanding scholarship and graduate mentoring at Oregon State University. She has also demonstrated a strong commitment to training the next generation of scientists, mentoring dozens of graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and undergraduates in toxicology, chemistry, and environmental health sciences.
Through her innovative, transdisciplinary research that has redefined how the field understands and evaluates the toxicological consequences of environmental transformations of organic pollutants, Dr. Simonich exemplifies the scientific excellence and impact recognized by the SOT Leading Edge in Basic Science Award.
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