Biography

Dr. Jade Mitchell is Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering at Michigan State University. Her research expertise is in human health risk analysis, understanding how chemical and microbial stressors from diverse environmental exposures lead to adverse human health outcomes. She uses quantitative analysis, statistical and mechanistic modeling to characterize ... risks to support risk management decision making, including engineering design and environmental policy. Dr. Mitchell is keenly interested in and uniquely well suited for research projects involving risk tradeoffs between chemical and microbial stressors; and addressing needs at the intersection of the two. Major applications of her research are in the water quality, food safety and security domains including bioterrorism. She is currently leading several projects related to the risk prioritization of emerging contaminants in drinking water, and the risk trade-offs between opportunistic pathogens and disinfection byproducts in distribution systems. She also leads a large interdisciplinary research education program related to quantifying infectious disease risks for pathogens in different microenvironments funded by the National Institutes of Health. Her research portfolio also includes work funded by U.S. EPA and the National Science Foundation. She has published over 50 peer reviewed publications. Dr. Mitchell is an elected Council member of the Society for Risk Analysis and an editorial board member of the Risk Analysis journal. She served on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) planning committee for the Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions, Workshop: Pivotal Interfaces of Environmental Health and Infectious Disease Research to Inform Responses to Outbreaks, Epidemics, and Pandemics. She received her B.S. in 1997 from the University of Pittsburgh in Civil and Environmental Engineering. After graduation she worked for engineering consultant firms. A strong desire to understand and direct the “best management practices” she used in her daily work prompted her to purse an M.S. in Civil Engineering, which she obtained in 2007 followed by her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering in 2010 from Drexel University. Prior to joining Michigan State University, Dr. Mitchell completed post-doctoral research fellowships with the U.S. EPA National Exposure Research Laboratory and the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service where she focused on chemical exposures through multiple types of environmental media.