Montira Pongsiri, PhD, MPH
Dr. Pongsiri was the first Science Advisor at the U.S. Mission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) where she led the Mission’s efforts to apply science and technology to support ASEAN’s sustainability goals and to strengthen the capacity of science-based policy-making through programs such as the ASEAN-U.S. Science and Technology Fellows Program and the ASEAN-U.S. sustainable cities partnership.
She was an Environmental Health Scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development. At the EPA, Dr. Pongsiri developed and led a research initiative on biodiversity and human health which studied the links between anthropogenic stressors, changes in biodiversity, and infectious disease transmission. She was the agency’s lead on technical partnerships with the Smithsonian Institution and with Rockefeller’s 100 Resilient Cities Global Challenge. As a member of The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, Dr. Pongsiri brought expertise on environmental change-human disease linkages.
Since departing Cornell University and University of Oxford, Dr. Pongsiri has been a consultant on global environmental change and health cooperation projects, including with ASEAN, which demonstrate the use of integrated environment and health data and tools to advance the Sustainable Development Goals.