The project team at UC Davis has a long track record of successful interdisciplinary research. The project was directed by Dr. Thomas Young, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Davis. Project co-leaders included Prof. Deborah Bennett (Professor, Public Health Sciences), Dr. Michael Denison (Professor, Environmental Toxicology), and Dr. Bruce Hammock (Distinguished Professor of Entomology and UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center).

Thomas Young, PI. Dr. Young has managed over $11M of grant funding as principal investigator, and directed all aspects of this project. In addition to his overall direction of the project, Dr. Young’s lab conducted all of the water sample extraction, sample concentration and mass spectrometry data acquisition. This includes supervising the staff members who conducted extraction and concentration (Wong) and instrumental acquisition (Alaimo), and the postdoctoral scholar (Black) who performed the bulk of the data analysis for nontarget chemical identification.

Deborah Bennett, Co-PI. Dr. Bennett managed all aspects of participant recruitment and related activities and provided input and guidance regarding exposure assessment and communication with the stakeholder community. Dr. Bennett has managed numerous public health studies with household volunteer involvement and is familiar with all aspects of IRB and human subjects protocols. 

Michael Denison, Co-PI. (Deceased) Dr. Denison directed all aspects of the bioassays determining the presence of estrogenic chemicals in water extracts. Dr. Denison’s laboratory developed the estrogen receptor (ER)-cell bioassay used in this study, and he had over 20 years of experience with these specific bioassay methodologies and their application to environmental, biological and chemical analysis. He supervised the bioassay work performed by Dr. He.

Bruce Hammock, Co-PI. Dr. Hammock managed the advanced chemical analysis efforts performed after nontarget chemicals of interest were selected for further study in cases when those chemicals could not be identified using established workflows. He also brought to the project team substantial knowledge and experience regarding cancer mechanisms and the characteristics of carcinogens. 

Daniel Tancredi. Dr. Tancredi provided biostatistical expertise to the project, primarily during the study design and participant recruitment efforts and the data analysis stages.
 

Jun Yang. Dr. Yang brought extensive experience with the mass spectrometry of xenobiotic chemicals to the project. 

Guochen He, Assistant Project Scientist. Dr. He conducted the hands-on analysis of water sample extracts for estrogen-active chemicals using the cellular bioassays. She has over 10 years of experience using the recombinant ER-responsive cell lines for the analysis of extracts from a wide variety of environmental matrices, and their use in the identification of bioactive chemicals using bioassay-based fractionation approaches.

Gabrielle Black, Post-Doctoral Researcher. Dr. Black performed the hands-on analysis of water sample extracts and non-targeted chemical analysis using HRMS data. She has over 8 years of experience in analytical chemistry performing suspect and non-targeted chemical analysis in complex environmental samples. Dr. Black combined non-targeted chemical analysis with the cellular bioassay data to investigate chemical features correlated with bioactivity.