Mission

The mission of the Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) is to study the biological effect of environmental agents, individually and in combination, with specific emphasis on how such exposures affect human health and the health of our ecosystem. Such studies help us understand and predict how exposure to environmental agents affects human health and the dynamic relationship we have with other living things. Three fundamental components influence the physiological effects of environmental exposures: the nature of the exposure, the duration of that exposure, and how well the exposed organism is equipped to deal with the exposure—i.e., the organism’s genetic susceptibility.

CEHS MissionEnvironmental health research at MIT encompasses a wide range of disciplines, and the CEHS continues to bring together faculty members who employ a diverse set of research tools to tackle problems relevant to environmental health sciences. During the past several years, the CEHS has begun to include focused efforts on problems of particular relevance to the developing world, along with adding more human population-based studies. We also have reached out increasingly to the MIT engineering community, because our engineering colleagues are critical players on the front lines to address the reality of environmental hazard remediation.

The MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences is a P30 Core Center funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. To learn more about the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences 2012-2017 Strategic Plan, please click here. Or you can visit http://www.niehs.nih.gov/about/strategicplan/index.cfm.