Linda S. Birnbaum, PhD, DABT, ATS, is the recipient of the 2017 Society of Toxicology (SOT) Distinguished Toxicology Scholar Award. Throughout her career, Dr. Birnbaum has made significant contributions in the area of the disposition and metabolism of environmental chemicals, including highly cited papers on dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls, and brominated flame retardants. She was an early advocate of Toxic Equivalency Factors as a means to estimate the toxicity of mixtures and the use of body burdens as the dose metric. She also is a key international leader who helped drive an understanding of the risk of persistent environmental chemicals.
Furthermore, Dr. Birnbaum was an early proponent for considering the role life stages play in health outcomes. She has authored a broad number of papers related to life-stage susceptibility of subpopulations with a focus on women of childbearing age and children. Her paper titled “Cancer and development exposure to endocrine disruptors” was among the most highly cited manuscripts in the early 2000s. Due in part to her influence, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) now promotes research related to windows of susceptibility.
Dr. Birnbaum has authored more than 430 publications, which have been cited more than 18,000 times in 11,000-plus articles. She is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine and has held leadership roles in the International Union of Toxicology (IUTOX), the Academy of Toxicological Sciences (ATS), and the American Aging Association.
Since becoming an SOT member in 1982, she has been highly active within the Society, serving as president in 2004‒2005. She also has served on many SOT Committees, including the Awards, Nominating, Scientific Program, and Finance. She is an adjunct professor at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is active in her community. She was awarded the 2016 North Carolina Award for Science, the highest honor the governor of North Carolina can bestow, and was named an NIEHS Champion of Environmental Health Research. She also has received several honorary degrees and numerous other awards.
Dr. Birnbaum received her PhD in microbiology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After several years in academia, she joined the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a senior staff fellow in the National Toxicology Program (NTP). While at NIH, she received tenure and led the NIEHS Chemical Disposition Group. Dr. Birnbaum then moved to the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), where she worked for 19 years, mostly as the director of the Experimental Toxicology Division. Her career came full circle in 2009 when she became the director of NIEHS and NTP. She also serves as a senior investigator for the US National Cancer Institute.