Dr. Hayes is a world renowned environmental biologist and a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds joint appointments in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Endocrinology, the Molecular Toxicology Group, and the Energy and Resources Group. In these capacities, he has directly trained thousands of students. He is a leader in the scientific community and is a recipient of numerous awards
His research focuses on the role of environmental factors on growth and development in amphibians. Recently his work has gained international recognition for results demonstrating how atrazine, a wildly used pesticide which is found in groundwater, local streams & ponds, has been shown to alter reproductive development in frogs even at extremely low levels He has published more than 40 papers, over 150 abstracts, and has given more than 300 talks on this topic. Through his research, he has come to realize that the most important environmental factors affecting amphibian development are synthetic chemicals (such as pesticides) that interact with hormones in a variety of ways to alter developmental responses. His research focuses on the effects of endocrine disrupting pesticides on amphibian growth, development, reproduction and immune function and how these studies predict effects in other wildlife and humans.
As a researcher and biologist, he has been involved in research on the herbicide, atrazine, widely used, here in South Florida.
Presentation:
Dr. Hayes will discuss the critical impact that pesticides have on environmental health and public health and the strong need to provide public access to this scientific information for active involvement by the public in health and for safer environmental policy decisions. He will discuss his pioneering published research that has demonstrated that atrazine exposure results in neural damage and hyperactivity, immune suppression, and induces a hormonal stress response that leads to impaired sexual development of offspring and the implications of these potent endocrine disrupters that chemically alter reproductive health.