Elected Members
Elaine Fuertes
Elaine Fuertes is an Imperial College Research Fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. Her research focuses on investigating the influence of various environmental (e.g. air pollution, green environment, climate), behavioral (e.g. physical activity) and genetic factors on allergic disease and respiratory health development throughout life.
Elaine received her PhD from the School of Public Health at the University of British Columbia, Canada (2014). She also holds a Master of Science in Public Health (2009) and a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry (2007). As part of her work, Elaine collaborates with several international and multidisciplinary groups throughout Canada and Europe. Most recently, she held a two-year Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship at ISGlobal in Barcelona.
Elaine is currently co-chair of the ISEE Europe Chapter, a member of the ISEE Communications Committee and in the past, was a member of the Student and New Researchers Network (ISEE-SNRN) steering committee (2014-2016).
Contact: efuertes.work [at] gmail.com
Rajini Nagrani
Rajini received doctoral degree in March 2015 from the Tata Memorial Centre, India and thereafter earned a position as Scientific Officer in the same institute until 2017. She later worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria before joining Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research & Epidemiology-BIPS, Bremen in October 2018. Since April 2022 she is Head of the Unit Molecular Epidemiology at the same institute.
Her research focus is on healthy ageing and child health by identifying molecular and environmental markers for various non-communicable diseases.
contact: nagrani [at] leibniz-bips.de
Daniela Fecht
Daniela Fecht is an Associate Professor in Geospatial Health at the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. Her research focuses on geographical variations in population health, with particular focus on cities in Europe and Africa. Her research priority is to address the future challenges of environmental change (pollution levels, climate and land use) through effective adaptation and mitigation strategies. Daniela obtained a degree in biogeography from the Universität des Saarlandes in Germany and a PhD in environmental epidemiology from Imperial College London. She has worked extensively across international research collaborations with funding from Health Effects Institute, European Commission, Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society covering studies on air and noise pollution, child health and climate adaption.
Anna Oudin
Anna is an associate professor in the Planetary Health research group, which integrates epidemiology with actionable health impact assessments to inform urban planning. We explore how environmental factors like traffic noise or air pollution affect health and translate these findings into concrete outcomes. For example, we estimate the health benefits of nature-based solutions, such as increasing greenery or reducing vehicle emissions, in terms of lives saved and diseases prevented. This approach provides policymakers with clear data, including economic costs, to prioritize sustainable, health-focused urban development.
Konstantinos C. Makris
Konstantinos C. Makris is a full professor of environmental health in the Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health within the School of Health Sciences at the Cyprus University of Technology. He has held an appointment as adjunct assistant professor of environmental health at the Department of Environmental Health, Harvard University, USA.
Dr. Makris leads the exposome-based water and health lab which aims to minimize the human health risk associated with chronic exposures to environmental stressors. Towards this goal, his team applies the human exposome methodological framework and its exposomic tools in population health studies conducted in Cyprus, Greece, France, Kuwait, the Netherlands, and Norway. He was one of the two investigators that conducted the cancer cluster investigation for the Astrasol brain cancer court case in Cyprus. Prof. Makris has been invited by >20 universities and organizations in the USA/EU to deliver research talks, such as in Harvard University, Emory University, University of Alberta, University of Delaware, etc., and he has presided >15 symposia in international conferences. He is currently leading the CHILDREN_FIRST Mediterranean child cohort network.
He first joined ISEE back in 2013. In joining ISEE Europe, Konstantinos would like to work together with ISEE colleagues from all regions of Europe towards advancing environmental health research and its dissemination and communication strategic plans. He is based in Cyprus, and he is willing to work together with the Society to tackle the major environment and health challenges of the Eastern Mediterranean region together with scientists from other European countries. He is willing to work with ISEE initiatives that widen participation and spread excellence to all European regions with respect to tackling health inequalities and planetary health challenges.
Contact: konstantinos.makris [at] cut.ac.cy
Kurt Straif
Kurt Straif worked for almost 20 years at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), WHO, as Head of the Evidence Synthesis and Classification Section. Since retiring from IARC, he has worked as a Research Associate at ISGlobal and as a Research Professor and Co-Director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College.
Kurt brings his strong international expertise in evidence synthesis and evidence integration to support ISEE Europe's strategic goals to inform evidence translation and policy development. During his time at IARC/WHO he focused on environmental risk and preventive factors for cancer, and since his retirement from IARC he has broadened his research portfolio to include topics of major public health importance, notably the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis.
Contact: straif.kurt [at] gmail.com
Katherine Ogurtsova
Dr. Katherine Ogurtsova is a researcher and statistician in the Environmental Epidemiology working group at the Institute of Occupational, Social, and Environmental Medicine, Heinrich Heine University (HHU) in Düsseldorf, Germany.
She holds an MSc in Medical Statistics and Modeling from Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Moscow, and a PhD in multistate models from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, defended at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, in 2014.
Her research explores the long-term effects of ambient air pollution, noise, and social environmental factors on cognitive and brain health in adults and older adults. Her expertise lies in statistical methods for medicine, epidemiology, and public health, with a strong focus on methodological challenges. She also teaches R programming at HHU.
Contact: Katherine.Ogurtsova [at] hhu.de