Associate Professor
Environmental and Occupational Health
267.359.6062
igor.burstyn@drexel.edu
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Degrees

PhD, Environmental and Occupational Health, Utrecht University
MSc, Occupational Hygiene, The University of British Columbia
BSc, Microbiology, The University of British Columbia

Bio

Igor Burstyn, PhD, is an accomplished educator and researcher in the field of environmental and occupational health, with training in both epidemiology and occupational hygiene. His research primarily focuses on the identification of sources and the health impacts of occupational and environmental exposures, with particular interest in the effect of environmental in utero exposures on health of pregnant women and their children. Dr. Burstyn's methodological expertise lies in the areas of measurement error, misclassification, and confounding as they apply to observational data in epidemiology. He collaborates extensively both nationally and internationally.

His achievements have been recognized by Canadian Journal of Statistics Award (2022) for contribution to a paper on dose-response modelling and Outstanding Contribution to Epidemiology Award (2019) from the American College of Epidemiology.

Dr. Burstyn teaches graduate courses in occupational hygiene and epidemiology. He has also served as an advisor for both master’s and doctoral students, and successfully mentored a number of post-doctoral fellows and early-career faculty. Dr. Burstyn is ready to take part in tackling any occupational health problems that the public or his colleagues bring to his attention.

Research Interests

• Epidemiologic Methods
• Statistical Modeling
• Occupational Health
• Environmental Exposures
• Maternal and Child Health
• Mental Health and Behavioral Health
• Neurodevelopment and Neurologic Disorders
• Industrial Hygiene
• Risk Assessment
• Bayesian Statistics
• Probabilistic Bias Analysis

Publications

Burstyn I, Goldstein N, Gustafson P.: Towards reduction in bias in epidemic curves due to outcome misclassification through Bayesian analysis of time-series of laboratory test results: Case study of COVID-19 in Alberta, Canada and Philadelphia, USA. BMC Medical Research Methodology 20:146 (2020) (https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-020-01037-4; https://rdcu.be/b4GOM); OSF Preprints. April 9, 2020 (doi:10.31219/osf.io/qpgbk) & medRxiv, April 11, 2020.

Singer AB, Fallin MD, Burstyn I: Bayesian correction for exposure misclassification and evolution of evidence in two studies of the association between maternal occupational exposure to asthmagens and risk of autism spectrum disorder. Current Environmental Health Reports 5(3):338-50 (2018) (https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40572-018-0205-0).

Burstyn I, Gustafson P, Pintos J, Lavoué J, Siemiatycki J: Correction of odds ratios in case-control studies for exposure misclassification with partial knowledge of the degree of agreement among experts who assessed exposures. Occupational and Environmental Medicine 75(2):155-9 (2018) (http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2017-104609).

Goldstein ND, Welles SL, Burstyn I: To be or not to be: Bayesian correction for misclassification of self-reported sexual behaviors among men who have sex with men. Epidemiology 26(5):637-44 (2015) (http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/EDE.0000000000000328) (with original poem).

Burstyn I: Peering through the mist: What does the chemistry of contaminants in electronic cigarettes tell us about health risks? BMC Public Health 14:18 (2014) (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/14/18); erratum in http://antithrlies.com/2015/06/11/post-publication-peer-review-correction-to-burstyn-2014-and-related-matters; with special thanks to Dr. Carl. V. Phillips.

Burstyn I, Lavoué J, van Tongeren M: Aggregation of exposure level and probability into a single metric in job-exposure matrices creates bias. The Annals of Occupational Hygiene 56(9):1038-50 (2012) (https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/annhyg/mes031)

Gustafson P, Burstyn I: Bayesian inference of gene-environment interaction from incomplete data: What happens when information on environment is disjoint from data on gene and disease? Statistics in Medicine 30(8):877-89 (2011) (doi: 10.1002/sim.4176).

Burstyn I, Wang X, Yasui Y, Sithole F, Zwaigenbaum L: Autism spectrum disorders and fetal hypoxia in a population-based cohort: Accounting for missing exposures via Estimation-Maximization algorithm. BMC Medical Research Methodology 11:2 (2011) (https://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/11/2).

Kim HM, Richardson D, Loomis D, van Tongeren M, Burstyn I: Bias in the estimation of exposure effects with individual- or group-based exposure assessment. Journal of Exposure Analysis & Environmental Epidemiology 21: 212-21 (2011) (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/jes.2009.74).

Burstyn I: Measurement error and model specification in determining how duration of tasks affects level of occupational exposure. The Annals of Occupational Hygiene 53(3):265-70 (2009) (https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/annhyg/mep003).

Burstyn I and Teschke K: Studying the determinants of exposure: A review of methods. American Industrial Hygiene Association Journal 60:57-72 (1999).

View Dr. Burstyn's full list of publications on PubMed