David Michaels, Ph.D.

Professor David Michaels is currently on leave of absence, serving as the United States Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health

Professor Michaels is an epidemiologist with extensive experience in research, regulatory and public policy, and program administration. Since joining the School in 2001, much of Dr. Michaels' work has focused on the use of science in public policy. He directs The Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP), bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scientists to examine the use and misuse of science in two forums in which public policy is shaped: the courts and the regulatory arena.

Dr. Michaels is the author of Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (Oxford University Press, 2008), as well as articles in Science, JAMA, Scientific American, the International Journal of Epidemiology, the American Journal of Public Health and numerous other scientific publications. He was guest editor of a special issue on Scientific Evidence and Public Policy in the American Journal of Public Health, and of an issue of Law and Contemporary Problems entitled Sequestered Science: The Consequences of Undisclosed Knowledge.

Nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the US Senate, Dr. Michaels served as the Department of Energy's Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health from 1998 through January 2001. In this position, he had primary responsibility for protecting the health and safety of workers, the neighboring communities and the environment surrounding the nation's nuclear weapons facilities.

Dr. Michaels was the chief architect of the historic initiative to compensate workers in the nuclear weapons complex who developed cancer or lung disease as a result of exposure to radiation, beryllium and other hazards. Since its enactment in 2000, The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program has provided more than $4.5 billion in benefits to sick workers and their families. He also oversaw promulgation of two major public rules: Chronic Beryllium Disease Prevention (10 CFR 850) and Nuclear Safety Management (10 CFR 830).

In February 2006, Dr. Michaels received the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award for his work on behalf of nuclear weapons workers and for his advocacy for scientific integrity. He is also the recipient of the American Public Health Association's David P. Rall Award for Advocacy in Public Health, and the US Department of Energy's Meritorious Service Award. In 2009, Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, named him the winner its John P. McGovern Science and Society Award.

In December 2009, Dr. Michaels was confirmed by the Senate as the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health. He is on a leave of absence from the University while he fills that position.

Bachelor of Arts (History), City College of New York, 1977
Master of Public Health (Epidemiology), Columbia University, 1981
Doctor of Philosophy (Sociomedical Sciences), Columbia University, 1987

In addition to his current work on science policy, Dr. Michaels has conducted epidemiologic studies on typographers, commercial pressmen, construction workers, bus drivers and paper workers. He also developed a widely-used mathematical model for estimating the number of children whose mothers have died of HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Michaels has focused much of his research and policy work on the health of the disadvantaged. He founded and directed (1986-1990) the Epidemiology Unit of the Montefiore-Rikers Island Health Service, the first such unit in a jail in the United States, conducting studies on tuberculosis, sexually-transmitted disease, drug abuse, mental health, homelessness and HIV. In the early 1990s, Dr. Michaels developed a widely-cited mathematical model estimating the number of children and adolescents orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

He has also served as a member of Safety and Occupational Health Study Section, which evaluates research proposals for extramural funding by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and has lectured on occupational epidemiology in Colombia, Mexico and Chile.