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$5 million project aims to improve e-cigarette testing

For decades, tobacco companies and researchers have used specialized smoking machines to test the physical and chemical properties of cigarette smoke — an important step in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory process. The machines work by essentially “puffing” a cigarette and capturing the smoke onto a filter, which can be analyzed to determine levels of various toxins in the smoke.

Gallo’s Work on Establishing Objective Measures for Sexual Exposure Rewarded With Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Grant

When asked about why she decided to work in public health, Maria Gallo, PhD, College of Public Health associate professor of epidemiology, thought back to when she was a Peace Corps volunteer in a small village in Nicaragua about 20 years ago. Gallo witnessed that people fell ill with a “mysterious hemorrhagic fever.” Until a team from the Centers for Disease Control arrived and identified the outbreak of leptospirosis, the cause was unknown.

Gallo says that “seeing a field investigation unfold in real life was powerful.”

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