Employee Spotlight: Brittany Schulz

Meet ORAU Employee Brittany Schulz. Brittany is a contractor working at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) providing Toxicology Research Support.

As an EPA contractor, Brittany has been working in the Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment (CPHEA). Her primary duties include screening and extracting data from studies that are being considered for use in chemical assessments. Her work matters because it is helping to further chemical assessments—which are created by programs like the Provisional Peer-Reviewed Toxicity Values (PPRTVs) and Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) to identify and characterize the health hazards of chemicals found in the environment. These assessments may be used to inform public health-related policy decisions. Brittany also trains new student interns and flexes her creative muslces making a variety of tables and graphics for summarizing toxicity information. Lately, she has been working on R scripts for generating the graphics more quickly.

Background

Brittany graduated with honors from Wheaton College (IL) with a B.S. in Environmental Science and a B.A. in Spanish. Prior to her current position, she completed a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Grand Valley State University, where she contributed to research on methods for E. coli testing at Lake Michigan beaches. Presenting her NSF-REU research was a proud accomplishment. Brittany not only came to the rescue of our beaches, but she also comes to the aid of our four legged friends. One of the highlights of her week is working with all the cats a local shelter she volunteers at. While that goal is to help them all find forever homes, Brittany’s current career goal is to become an author on a publication. She would also like to continue learning new technical skills and building upon her existing ones. In the future she may return to school for a master’s degree. A long-term goal of Brittany’s is to use her Spanish degree to pursue a career abroad where the infrastructure for public health and industrial hygiene is less developed.