Rate My Professor Tomas Guilarte

Tomas Guilarte is Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Dean of the Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work at Florida International University in the field of Health Science, a position he assumed in January 2016. He earned his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, M.S. from the University of Florida, and B.S. from the University of Florida. Previously, Guilarte held the Inaugural Leon Hess Endowed Chair Professorship and served as Chairman of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to Columbia, he spent three decades as a professor and researcher in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Since 2018, he has been a member of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. Guilarte directs the Brain, Behavior, and the Environment laboratory and the FIU Emerging Preeminent Program by the same name, and he is affiliated with the Biomolecular Sciences Institute at FIU. He served on the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Advisory Council until 2017 and has participated in numerous NIH study sections, review panels, and committees nationally and internationally. Additionally, he is a member of the Miami-Dade County Mayor’s HIV/AIDS Getting to Zero Task Force and Opioid Addiction Task Force.

Guilarte’s research specializes in brain science and neurotoxicology, particularly the impact of environmental pollutants on neurological and neurodegenerative diseases and mental health. His work employs behavioral, cellular, molecular, and brain imaging approaches, including studies with primary cultures of brain cells. He has elucidated the effects of low-level lead exposure on the central nervous system during brain development, informing strategies to mitigate learning deficits that have been translated to human populations. His laboratory validated and applied the Translocator Protein 18 kDa (TSPO) as a biomarker for brain injury and inflammation, now used clinically in major medical centers worldwide. Guilarte has also advanced understanding of manganese neurotoxicity and associated neurological diseases. His research has received continuous funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for more than 23 years. In 2018, he received the Distinguished Toxicologist Award from the Hispanic Organization of Toxicologists for outstanding achievements, research excellence, and service to the Society of Toxicology. Key publications include “TSPO in diverse CNS pathologies and psychiatric disease: A critical review and a way forward” (Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 2019), “Manganese-Induced Parkinsonism Is Not Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease: Environmental and Genetic Evidence” (Toxicological Sciences, 2015), and “Translocator protein 18 kDa (TSPO): Molecular sensor of brain injury and repair” (Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 2008).