May 25, 2016 | Erin Bluvas, bluvase@sc.edu
The Office of the Provost bestows the most prestigious annual awards for research and scholarship at the University of South Carolina. Environmental Health Sciences (ENHS) Professor and Center for Environmental NanoScience and Risk (CENR) Director Jamie Lead has been named the 2016 recipient of the Office of the Provost’s Educational Foundation Award for Research in Health Sciences. Established in 1984, this award consists of a $3,000 prize and a certificate of recognition. Lead, along with other Office of the Provost Award recipients, was recognized at the Spring General Faculty Meeting (see photo inset).
Dr. Lead has performed exceptionally in this role including developments in cutting-edge nanohybrids design and synthesis and environmental remediation.
-Geoff Scott, ENHS Chair
Originally from the United Kingdom, Lead joined the Arnold School in 2012 as a Professor of ENHS and the SmartStateTM Endowed Chair of CENR, a SmartState Center. “SmartState Centers are tasked with developing economic activity within their home state as well as regionally, nationally and internationally,” says ENHS Chair Geoff Scott. “Dr. Lead has performed exceptionally in this role including developments in cutting-edge nanohybrids design and synthesis and environmental remediation.”
Funded by the S.C. Education Lottery through the SmartState Program with a dollar-for-dollar match from non-state partners, CENR investigates the effects and behaviors of manufactured and natural nanoparticles on the environment and human health. They also develop ‘environmentally-friendly,’ low-hazard and low-risk nanotechnologies for the benefit of human and environmental health.
For example, Lead and his team have created a novel method for remediating oil spills that uses nanotechnology and is cleaner, faster, less hazardous and cheaper than existing and other emerging cleanup techniques. They are in the process of scaling up this new approach so that it can eventually be applied to environmental disasters, such as catastrophic spills from commercial oil tankers.
Dr. Lead and his team are developing new courses in ENHS, which address many contemporary nanoscience issues, better preparing the next generation of scientists to address issues in the environment and health.
-Geoff Scott, ENHS Chair
Lead has three patents for this and other innovative inventions, along with a start-up company to exploit this research. He has authored more than 160 peer-reviewed publications and edited five books, with over 6,500 citations and an h-index of 39 (Web of Science), and he was named in Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers for 2014.
An internationally-renowned expert in the field of nanotechnology, he leads conferences and organizes special issue supplements for various journals. Lead is also the Editor-in-Chief for the journal, NanoImpact. Throughout these achievements, he has successfully mentored more than 40 doctoral students and more than 40 postdoctoral researchers.
“Dr. Lead and his team are developing new courses in ENHS, which address many contemporary nanoscience issues, better preparing the next generation of scientists to address issues in the environment and health,” says Scott. “He serves as a role model to our faculty and students of scholarly research and academic achievement.”