UCD Discovery honoured to co-host Prof. Akram Alshawabkeh, Senior Vice Provost, and Director, PROTECT Superfund Research Center, at Northeastern University

Pictured: Ana Le Chevillier, Prof. Justin Manjourides, Prof. Patricia Maguire, Prof. Akram Alshawabkeh, Dr. Brian Mac Namee, Cora MacCann.

The UCD Institute for Discovery was honoured to co-host Prof. Akram Alshawabkeh, Senior Vice Provost, and Director, (opens in a new window)PROTECT Superfund Research Center, at Northeastern University in September alongside the UCD Insight Centre for Data Analytics.

During his visit to campus, he gave a talk on the PROTECT center.   Akram has led PROTECT, a pan-American consortia research program, which aims to understand how chemicals can lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm birth and impaired fetal growth, in Puerto Rico.

For 15 years, PROTECT researchers have recruited over 2000 women to the study, collecting 5000 data points for each. They primarily focus on the superfund sites, locations polluted with hazardous materials, across the karst landscape in the north of the island, where there’s significant legacy contamination.

Puerto Rico faces serious environmental issues, with 19 Superfund sites and widespread contamination of drinking water. Additionally, extreme weather events such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods elevate the risk of exposure to these hazardous chemicals.

For more information on their research, visit: (opens in a new window)PROTECT Superfund Research Center