Debra T. Silverman is chief of the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. She joined the NCI as a biostatistician in 1972 and has been a cancer epidemiologist there since 1983.
Dr. Silverman’s research focuses on the environmental effects of toxic substances on human physiology with particular reference to cancer. Dr. Silverman’s research included studies on alcohol and pancreatic cancer and completion of a federally funded, 20-year study linking diesel exhaust exposure to lung cancer, known as the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS). Much of her work at the NIH has centered on improving the design and execution of scientific investigations aimed at evaluating occupational, environmental, and other factors linked to human cancers. More recent research has included studies of the longstanding high incidence of bladder cancer in the New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont [Source: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, May 2, 2016], a phenomenon thought to be associated with well contamination from early use of arsenic-based pesticides.
Education
editShe received a Sc.D. in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts and her Sc.M. degree in biostatistics from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.
Honors and Awards
editDr. Silverman is a member of the American Epidemiological Society and a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, many related to her landmark study: the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS). In 2013, she received the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Alice Hamilton Award for scientific excellence in the area of occupational health.