Meredith Franklin
Associate Professor
University of Toronto
Department of Statistical Sciences
School of the Environment
700 University Ave
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
UToronto Faculty Website
USC Faculty Website
GitHub Profile
Research
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. Previously I was a faculty member in the Biostatistics Division at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (2010-2021). I received a PhD from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Research
My research focuses on the development of spatiotemporal methods in statistics and machine learning for environmental data. I am primarily interested in quantifying environmental exposures their impacts on health outcomes.
Current Projects
- With a team from Texas A&M, UCLA, USC, BoulderAir, and funding from HEI Energy we are conducting extensive monitoring of air pollutants, greenhouse gases, radioactivity and noise in two major unconventional oil shales in the US Southwest. We aim to better understand the community exposures in the region. See more and real-time data. This project follows our research on flaring from oil and gas operations in the Eagle Ford, TX and its association with adverse health effects.
- With funding from NASA and a team from the VA and Harvard, we have been using satellite remote sensing to retrospectively track Veterans' exposure to smoke, dust and air pollution.
- Funded by the NIH, we are leveraging satellite data of wildfires and smoke to better understand exposures and their impacts on air quality and subsequently on age-related disease endpoints in the California Teachers Study.
- In another HEI-funded project we are modeling exposures to non-tailpipe pollutants including particulate matter metals and noise to examine their role on children's health including stress, sleep, and lung function. Through this work we have made methodological advancements, particularly in machine learning for exposure assessment and uncertainty quantification.
- With a team lead by colleagues at USC we are modeling exposures to Hydrogen Sulfide in the wake of an accidental release that caused concentrations to spike.
Teaching
UToronto Courses: Data Science II (JSC370)., Statistical Theory (STA255), Research in Environment and Sustainability (ENV1197)
USC Courses: Health Data Science (PM566), Mathematical Statistics (PM 522b)., and Spatial Statistics (PM 569)..
I was previously the director of MS programs in Biostatistics, and Applied Biostatistics and Epidemiology, and the founding director of Public Health Data Science in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at USC.
Contact
You can also find me on LinkedIn and Twitter/X @dr_mfranklin