Robert A. Canales

Robert A. Canales

Ph.D.

Associate Professor

School: Milken Institute School of Public Health

Department: Environmental and Occupational Health

Contact:

Email: Robert A. Canales

Office Phone: (202) 994-1734

950 New Hampshire Ave. NW, Office 415 Washington DC 20052

Prior to joining George Washington University, Dr. Canales was a team scientist at the University of Arizona working across programs in environmental health, one health, applied mathematics, and statistics. He was also an Assistant Professor of Statistics at the New School, jointly with the Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College.

Currently he aims to collaborate with investigators and students interested in data science, simulation, and the development of mechanistic models of health, risk, and environmental systems. His multidisciplinary work takes many forms but primarily focuses on personal and residential multimedia exposures, contaminant transport, indoor air quality, infectious disease transmission, and risk analysis. Methods include machine learning, probabilistic simulation, agent-based modeling, dynamic compartmental modeling, Monte Carlo simulation, and nonparametric techniques.

Robert also enjoys instructing students across various programs in public health and mentoring students from diverse backgrounds that are motivated to learn about interdisciplinary science, applied statistics, and computational methods in environmental science and health.

Education

Post Doctoral Fellow, Exposure, Epidemiology & Risk, Harvard School of Public Health

PhD, Environmental Engineering & Science, Stanford University

MS, Statistics, Stanford University

MS, Environmental Engineering & Science, Stanford University

BS, Civil Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

Expertise

Environmental and Occupational Health

Risk Assessment, Management and Communication

Occupational Health

Infectious Disease

Children's Health

Underserved Populations

Teaching

PUBH 3132: Health and Environment

PUBH 6126: Assessment and Control of Environmental and Occupational Hazards

PUBH 6131: Quantitative Methods in Environmental and Occupational Health

PUBH 6144: Environmental Health Data Development and Modeling

PUBH 8144: Advanced Environmental Health Data Development and Modeling

Research

Mathematical modeling and simulation for contaminant fate and transport, exposure science, and risk analysis
Development of computational methods for imputation, distribution development, and data integration
Collection of exposure factors and human behavior dynamics for environmental exposure models
Applications of data science, machine learning, and environmental statistics
Topics include infectious disease dynamics, indoor air pollution, children's health, agricultural health, and vulnerable populations