Q: Your full name and any completed credentials:
Nathan Chen, MS.
Q: What universities have you attended, degrees earned and graduation years?
Before studying at UAB, I attended National Taiwan University in Taiwan and earned my master’s degree in 2015 and bachelor’s degree in 2013.
Q: Which program within the Department of Environmental Health Sciences are you currently enrolled?
I am currently enrolled in the PhD in Environmental Health Sciences.
Q: What is your anticipated graduation date from your current program?
December 2024.
Q: Tell me about yourself (where you grew up, how you got into public health, how you ended up at UAB, etc.)
I grew up in Taiwan, a tropical island in southeast Asia. When I was a little kid, one of my favorite moments was when my dear grandpa picked me up from kindergarten with his small truck. He was a professional driver for an advertising company. To catch pedestrian’s eyes, he usually drove the truck slowly from one street to another with a large advertising message painted on the truck. He always turned off the air conditioner and opened the windows while driving. I thus have a chance to look at the view of the street in detail and enjoy all the smells from every corner of the street blown upon my face. That is a whole new world to me. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and passed away when I was at the age of six. His suffering face impressed me and became my first thought of death.
Nevertheless, not until I became a college student with a public health major that I realized that his death may be related to occupational exposure to air pollutants from traffic throughout his career. With the heart to prevent the same tragedy from happening to more people, I stepped onto a career in environmental health sciences and was motivated to study more on the association between environmental exposures and the relevant health effects.
Q: Why did you choose to study Environmental Health Sciences? And why at UAB?
With this heart in mind, I pursued my graduate study in Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene at National Taiwan University where I joined the Exposure Assessment Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Chang-Fu Wu. I studied exposure patterns of workers at a printing factory, wafer factories, a construction place, a shipyard, and a chemical plant. Throughout the training and research, I recognized that great improvement needed to be made in the occupational safety and health regulations in Taiwan and I started to look up workplace regulations and standards in other countries. The well-developed workplace regulations in the US inspired me and the well-established industrial hygiene (IH) training program under the deep south center caught my eyes. And here I am now in the PhD program focusing on IH at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
Q: Is there a faculty member who has made an impact on your academic journey during this program?
Definitely, Dr. Jonghwa Oh. When I came from Taiwan in 2019 as a first-year doctoral student with limited communication skills in English and was not familiar with American culture. Dr. Oh helped me settle within a month by sharing her experience of being an international student. As a minority in the U.S., Dr. Oh understands how culture shocks affect students and always helps students overcome those cultural differences.
As for the academic aspect, Dr. Oh shows her passion for establishing a doctoral student’s independent thinking. Under her mentoring, she taught me to identify the research gaps through literature review rather than assign me a specific research topic, taught me how to design a study rather than show me her plan, and taught me how to analyze data with integrity. Among academic advisors I have met in my academic career, Dr. Oh shows more patience to each student through looking at things from the student’s point of view, especially when students cannot report research progress as expected in time. She also shows more interest in students’ ongoing research projects. Her positive feedback and advice to the students’ reports usually ignite students’ passion for their research topics.
I am grateful to be one of her mentees.
Q: Have you been involved in any interesting projects or organizations during your time here?
Yes, my current project is to evaluate the occupational exposure to hand-arm vibration among groundskeeping workers. This is one of the understudied populations. Moreover, the potential health effects induced by hand-arm vibration including the vascular, neurological, and musculoskeletal disorders are underestimated as well. In fact, there is no OSHA regulation on vibration exposure in the US, and we do not know receiving how much vibration is safe. In the project, I tried to measure both vibration exposure and its health effects at the same time. We identified potential quantitative health indicators for the vascular and muscular health effects induced by HAV in the project. In the future, we hope more studies confirm our results and eventually, find out the safety dose of vibration for the regulation establishment.
Q: What’s been your favorite class in the School of Public Health and why?
ENH 681 Interdisciplinary worksite evaluation. In the class, we have a chance to visit factories and make a safety and healthy program with experts in industrial hygiene, occupational nurse, and ergonomics. Interdisciplinary communication and worksite evaluation are two of the most important foundations to be a successful industrial hygienist. I am glad I took the class.