Dr. Devra Davis

Devra Davis, PhD MPH, is Visiting Professor of Medicine at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Visiting Professor of Medicine at Ondokuz Mayis University in Samsun, Turkey. Davis founded non-profit Environmental Health Trust in 2007 in Teton County, Wyoming to provide basic research and education about environmental health hazards and promote constructive policies locally, nationally and internationally. A popular and award-winning scientist and writer, she lectures at University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and major universities in India, Australia, Finland, and elsewhere. She was Founding Director, Center for Environmental Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and Professor of Epidemiology at the Graduate School of Public Health (2004-2010) She has also served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the London School of Hygiene (2002-03) and Tropical Medicine, and at the Yeshiva University, New York (1995-96), and as a Visiting Professor at Mt.Sinai School of Medicine (1983-2010), Oberlin College (2000-2001) and Carnegie Mellon University (1999-2004).
Davis’ work has appeared in more than a dozen languages. She was designated a National Book Award Finalist for When Smoke Ran Like Water (2002, Basic Books). Her most recent book, Disconnect, selected by TIME magazine as a top pick in 2010, received the Silver Medal from Nautilus Books for courageous investigation for the paperback edition in 2013, which was identified by Project Censored as “the news that didn’t make the news,” and is the subject of multi-media international policy-making attention–including special editions recently released in India and Australia.
The Secret History of the War on Cancer was a top pick by Newsweek that influenced national cancer policy by the Cancer Association of South Africa, and is being used at major schools of public health, including Harvard, Emory, and Tulane University. Her most recent book, Disconnect–the truth about cell phone radiation, has influenced policy changes in Canada, Israel, France, Belgium, Cyprus, Spain, Australia, Italy, Finland, and elsewhere.
Dr. Davis also was the founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences and the only woman to serve as Scholar in Residence, 1983-1993. Among the NAS reports she directed were those advising that tobacco smoke be removed from airplanes and the environments of young children.
Her successful career has spanned academia, public policy, and public service. President Clinton appointed the Honorable Dr. Davis to the newly established Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, (1994-99) an independent executive branch agency to investigate, prevent, and mitigate chemical accidents. As the former Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, she has counseled leading officials in the United States, United Nations, European Environment Agency, Pan American Health Organization, World Health Organization, and World Bank and served as a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the U.S. National Toxicology Program, 1983-86 and various advisory committees to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She also served as a U.S. delegate to the International Conference on Women in Beijing in 1996, the