Edmund Y. W. Seto
He, Him, His. American-born Chinese from the Bay Area.
Surname: Seto in Cantonese Chinese is pronounced with long e “Seeto”.
Current Positions
- Professor of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington
- Director, UW Center for Environmental Health Equity — an EPA Region 10 Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center (TCTAC)
- Deputy Director, NIEHS Interdisciplinary Center for Exposures, Diseases, Genomics, and Environment (EDGE), University of Washington
Degrees
- AB Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
- MS Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley
- PhD Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley
Bio
Edmund Seto is Professor in the Exposure Sciences Group of the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences in the School of Public Health and the University of Washington in Seattle.
Dr. Seto serves as Director of the University of Washington’s Center for Environmental Health Equity — an EPA Region 10 (AK, ID, OR, WA) Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center.
He also serves as Deputy Director of the University of Washington’s NIEHS P30 EDGE Center, and a member its Exposure Core.
His research group develops and applies novel technologies — sensors, devices, wearables, apps, models, mapping, measurement approaches — to environmental health challenges. Many of the group’s current projects involve community-engaged research.
He teaches courses in Geographic Information Systems and Exposure Sciences measurement methods at the University of Washington.
Prior to joining the UW, he was Associate Adjunct Professor in Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He also served as Associate Faculty Director of the health care initiative for the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).
Dr. Seto has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and MS and PhD degrees in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. Seto taught and conducted prior work in the field of Health Impact Assessment in the San Francisco Bay Area. His group also developed smartphone apps that have been used for large studies in the US, Asia, and Europe. For several years he worked on infectious epidemiologic studies, notably for schistosomiasis in China. Occassionally, he is involved in quantitative microbial risk assessments for state agencies based on his masters degree research.
Additionally, Dr. Seto currently serves as an advisor for community organizations and environmental/health solutions-focused technology startups.
Research Interests
- Exposure Science
- Community-engaged research
- Sensor and digital technologies
- Artificial Intelligence/Data Science
- Health Impact Assessment
- Mathematical modeling
- Spatial epidemiology
- Infectious disease transmission and control
- Environmental Justice
Languages
Speaks, reads, writes English well, French not very well. Speaks Cantonese OK and Mandarin not so OK. Codes in R, Javascript, C, C++, Java, Python.