Max Aung, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Health Equity Interests
Integrating data science approaches to investigate the human exposome and pursue environmental justice
Biography
Dr. Max Aung is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Environmental Health at the University of Southern California. Dr. Aung is an alumnus of the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice Fellowship as well as the RWJF Health Policy Research Scholars Fellowship. His research focuses on applying data science frameworks to understand potential mechanisms linking chemical mixtures to health across the life course and pursue environmental justice. He specifically integrates multiple hierarchies of exogenous and endogenous biomarkers, including biomonitored toxicant exposures, targeted bioactive lipids, and untargeted lipidomics and metabolomics. His current funded projects focus on integrating these biomarkers in diverse prospective cohorts to better understand mechanisms linking the human exposome to maternal health outcomes, child neurodevelopment, and cancer outcomes.
Research Interests
- Immigrant Health
- Maternal Health
- Adolescents
- Molecular Epidemiology
- Environmental Justice
- neurological
- Environmental Omics
- pregnancy
- infancy
- adolescence
- Data Sciences
Publications
Maternal blood metal concentrations and whole blood DNA methylation during pregnancy in the Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation (EARLI).
Epigenetics. 2022 Mar;17(3):253-268. doi: 10.1080/15592294.2021.1897059. Epub 2021 Apr 2. PubMed PMID: 33794742; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8920182.
Maternal lipidomic signatures in relation to spontaneous preterm birth and large-for-gestational age neonates.
Sci Rep. 2021 Apr 14;11(1):8115. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-87472-9. Epub 2021 Apr 14. PubMed PMID: 33854141; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8046995.
Cross-Sectional Estimation of Endogenous Biomarker Associations with Prenatal Phenols, Phthalates, Metals, and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Single-Pollutant and Mixtures Analysis Approaches.
Environ Health Perspect. 2021 Mar;129(3):37007. doi: 10.1289/EHP7396. Epub 2021 Mar 24. PubMed PMID: 33761273; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7990518.
Application of an analytical framework for multivariate mediation analysis of environmental data.
Nat Commun. 2020 Nov 6;11(1):5624. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-19335-2. Epub 2020 Nov 6. PubMed PMID: 33159049; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7648785.
Prediction and associations of preterm birth and its subtypes with eicosanoid enzymatic pathways and inflammatory markers.
Sci Rep. 2019 Nov 19;9(1):17049. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-53448-z. Epub 2019 Nov 19. PubMed PMID: 31745121; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6863859.