Lauren Zeise, Ph.D., was appointed Director of OEHHA by Governor Brown in December 2016. She has been with OEHHA since its inception in 1991 and previously served as Deputy Director for Scientific Affairs. Before OEHHA, she worked at the California Department of Public Health, California Public Health Foundation, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.
Lauren played a leading role in OEHHA’s development of CalEnviroScreen, a tool is used to identify the California communities most burdened by pollution from multiple sources and most vulnerable to its effects. She has overseen or contributed to hundreds of chemical health risk assessments, science-based regulations, and guidance documents for conducting risk assessments.
She earned her doctorate from Harvard University with a thesis on “Surrogate Measures of Human Cancer Risk.” She has served on numerous national and international science advisory committees and boards focusing on environmental public health and improving the way chemicals are tested or evaluated for health risk, including more than 25 National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) committees. She was the 2008 recipient of the Society for Risk Analysis Outstanding Risk Practitioner Award is an honorary lifetime National Academy of Sciences’ National Associate.