UCLA Fielding School of Public Health graduate Dr. Liqiao (Vicky) Li recognized for academic excellence
UCLA Fielding School of Public Health graduate Dr. Liqiao (Vicky) Li was recognized for academic excellence with Dean's Outstanding Student Award.
Dr. Liqiao (Vicky) Li, a new graduate of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has been recognized for her excellence in academics at the school, ranked as among the Top 10 public health graduate schools in the United States.
Li, who has earned her PhD in the Fielding School’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, received the Dean's Outstanding Student Award, or DOSA, at the school’s 2022 Student Academic Honors and Awards Ceremony.
“This award serves as a milestone for my academic life at UCLA, where I spent days and nights exploring research topics on air quality and exposure assessment,” Li said. “It empowers me with confidence to step out of my comfort zone and encourages me to create more possibilities, while pursuing my career in environmental consulting.”
Li’s research at the Fielding School has focused on air quality issues, ranging from the e-cigarettes aerosols to the effectiveness of simple cloth masks in fighting respiratory droplets during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a 2020 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Aerosol Science and Technology, she found that that even a simple cloth mask provides significant protections against COVID-19 transmission, reducing the spread of respiratory droplets by as much as 77%. That work, in fact, led to her selection in 2021 to deliver the inaugural American Association for Aerosol Research Lecture, presented virtually to an audience of students and scientists from across the United States and internationally.
“She is definitely one of the most outstanding doctoral students I have ever interacted with,” said Dr. Yifang Zhu, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health professor of environmental health sciences and senior associate dean for academic programs. “In sum, Vicky is an incredibly bright and extraordinarily hardworking young scholar who is engaged in important research contributing significantly to public health.”
Li, who grew up in China, now lives in Los Angeles. She has a 3.8 GPA and is a graduate of Beijing Jiaotong University (2015, BS, environmental engineering), and earned her MPH (2017) and PhD (2021) from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She currently works for an environmental consulting firm, specializing in air quality and health risk assessment.
The Dean's Outstanding Student Awards, which include a stipend, are awarded annually to students in each of the Fielding School’s five academic departments on the basis of academic excellence.
Faculty Referenced by this Article
Industrial Hygiene & Analytical Chemistry
Dr. Hankinson is a Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and of EHS, and Chair of the Molecular Toxicology IDP
Associate Professor for Industrial Hygiene and Environmental Health Sciences
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