Damon Chaky, Ph.D.

Superfund Basic Research Program

Dr. Damon Chaky (http://pratt.edu/~dchaky/) conducted his doctoral research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute under the direction of Dr. Richard Bopp as part of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine SBRP. His 2003 dissertation on the sources, transport and behavior of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins in the greater New York metropolitan area was a major contribution to the geochemical research project.

Dr. Chaky has continued his research on contaminant sources and exposure in the New York urban environment, recently focusing on the historical record of direct atmospheric exposure revealed by urban lake cores. His post-doctoral research with Dr. Steven Chillrud at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University included the creation of an online database (http://wtc.hs.columbia.edu/) of long-term and World Trade Center-specific air quality data for New York and New Jersey. Dr. Chaky is active in the Harbor Consortium of the New York Academy of Sciences, and has given invited talks on his research at the Hudson River Foundation and the Passaic River Foundation. He also works with the Hudson Riverscope Initiative to study sediment transport in the Hudson using "real-time" acoustic monitors. A major goal of this project is to provide monitoring of sediment and PCB transport during the remedial dredging of the upper Hudson Superfund site.

The multidisciplinary focus of Dr. Chaky's research and his SBRP training has proved exceptionally valuable in the classroom as well as the laboratory. In 2004, Dr. Chaky was appointed as a Science Fellow at Columbia University. Along with other Fellows and senior faculty, he helped to develop an undergraduate course that focused on state-of-the-field, big picture issues in current scientific research.

In the fall of 2006, Dr. Chaky joined the faculty at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, as an assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Science. There he performs research in the field of environmental chemistry, particularly in the transport, behavior and fate of chemical contaminants. Much of his work focuses on the greater New York City urban environment and the lakes and rivers of the Hudson Basin.