On December 12th, 2017, News@Northeastern featured the article “Co-op in Puerto Rico Expands Student’s Interest in Environmental Health,” which detailed the ROUTES experience of former scholar Alejandro Rovira. The story highlights Alejandro’s explorative environmental health journey to Puerto Rico as the first scholar to work off-campus for their ROUTES research co-op. Alejandro, an undergraduate Behavioral Neuroscience student at Northeastern University, first joined the ROUTES program in January of 2017 in order to participate in hands-on environmental health research. As a Puerto Rico native, he was especially interested in working with the Puerto Rico Testsite for Exploring Contamination Threats (PROTECT) and the Center for Research on Early Childhood Exposure and Development (CRECE), two research centers that focus on the ways in which environmental exposures influence pregnant women and their infants after birth in Puerto Rico.
Alejandro had a broad list of tasks while working in Puerto Rico which ranged from driving to specific locations of the island to replace air quality measurement filters to performing biopsies on human placentas following childbirth (amongst other activities). Alejandro even got the chance to survey local residents and medical professionals on environmental health-related topics. ROUTES is pleased to see such exceptional work from one of our former scholars, and we look forward to following Alejandro’s future accomplishments. Click here to read the full article about Alejandro’s ROUTES co-op.
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University