Do The Change: Challenging and Reimagining OEHS

Do the Change with Simon Camponuri (Part 1)

• Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH) • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Join us for Part 1 of our conversation with Simon Camponuri! Discover his untraditional journey from premed student, to wildlife researcher, and finally to Valley Fever researcher, and explore how his drive to explore his various passions led him to a field he feels fulfilled in.

See full transcript here: www.coeh.berkeley.edu/do-change-simon-camponuri

JOANNE TEH:

Hey, guys. Welcome to Do the Change podcast where we're challenging and reimagining occupational and environmental health sciences. In this podcast we focus on upcoming and current leaders in their field and dive into how they got to where they are today and their advice for those interested in the field. My name is Joanne. And I'm a current undergraduate here at Berkeley. And our guest for this episode is Simon Camponuri. Hi, Simon.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Hey. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

JOANNE TEH:

Of course. I'm glad to meet you. So let me introduce you real quick. So Simon Camponuri is an MPH here at the Environmental Health Sciences Division School at UC Berkeley. So he's a current PhD candidate, and he is focusing on the environmental and occupational epidemiology of Valley fever in the United States. He received his MPH from UC Berkeley in environmental health sciences, where he analyzed the impact of precipitation and temperature on the seasonal transmission patterns of Valley fever in California. In his doctoral research, Simon's continuing to examine the myriad influences of the environment on Valley fever epidemiology. So how are you today, Simon?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

I'm doing great. It's a beautiful day here in California. I'm a little tired. I just got back from a conference last night, so.

JOANNE TEH:

Oh, man, where are you right now? It looks pretty outside.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

I'm on the courtyard of the public health building patio.

JOANNE TEH:

Oh, Berkeley Way West?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah, yeah.

JOANNE TEH:

I see. I see.[LAUGHS] It's quite hot today, though.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah, it's not. I mean, I just got back from Texas where it was hot and humid. So this feels great.

JOANNE TEH:

[LAUGHS] Yeah, that's true. That's true. So why don't we start by you telling me maybe some of your journey into environmental health sciences?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Sure, yeah. Where to begin? I guess, like, I don't know, like, many people who end up in an MBA program, I think, a lot of people start out pre-med and then decide to do maybe if they're interested more in population health than in individual health or, I think, people have all kinds of reasons. But I also started out pre-med and. found that I liked thinking about systems thinking a bit more. And I also just liked the people who were doing more broad population-level science. And. I found myself getting into the ecology world. And I started working, doing a bunch of research on wildlife ecology and just looking at how climate change and droughts and things are impacting wildlife species in California and all kinds of human-animal interactions. And then I was working down in Central California on a research team. And we were trapping and marking and monitoring the populations of giant kangaroo rats, which was a very fun experience. They're nocturnal. So it was kind of tough fieldwork in terms of going out and working all night long and then sleeping during the day. But I during that, we were at a team of five of us, and three people caught Valley fever while we were working. And so we were looking at all these different parts of the different species and things in the ecosystem, but clearly, there was like a microbial part of the ecosystem that we weren't really paying attention to and weren't aware of. And so I was lucky enough to not be one of those, one of the two that did not get Valley fever, but that sparked my interest in the fact that pathogens exist in the ecosystems that we operate in. And trying to-- I was motivated to try and understand where they occur, how people get sick, and hopefully prevent folks from getting sick. And so I took some time off, and my path was a little meandering. But then I came back, and now it worked out very well that my advisor now got funding to research Valley fever and I had some personal experience with it. So I'm excited and very happy to be back in that space.

JOANNE TEH:

Mm-hmm, that's awesome. That's funny to me because I'm currently a pre-med student, and many people I know are as well. So what was the timeline of you switching gears and like deciding like, hey, this is what I wanted to do? Like, when did you start getting interested in climate and ecology?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

That's a good question. I think I started out pre-med in undergrad and took all of the pre-med classes but found, I think, I was surrounded by a lot of really hypercompetitive people. I think pre-med at Berkeley can be really competitive, and didn't like that atmosphere or that energy. And I think people weren't excited about what they were they were doing. It felt more like there was pressure to compete and succeed rather than they were really like, interested and empathetic and caring about people and wanting to make people healthier. I don't know, think I didn't particularly enjoy that. So I found myself gravitating towards people who were excited about what they were doing and I think that energy is infectious and makes you excited about whatever you're doing. So I just tried to surround myself with people like that, and those people tended to be more in the ecology space. So that's what pulled me in that direction.

JOANNE TEH:

I see. So you did undergrad at Berkeley?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

I did, yeah.

JOANNE TEH:

OK, cool. I definitely agree with you. The pre-med culture here at Berkeley is different I feel like.[LAUGHTER] So how did you go from just being friends with people who were interested in ecology and then end up in doing the kangaroo rats research?[LAUGHTER]

SIMON CAMPONURI:

That's a good question. Well, I was taking-- I think, there are kind of two majors at Berkeley that for bio there's molecular and cell bio and integrative bio. And I don't know if you have to pick. I ended up, like, early on. I ended up picking IB-- integrated bio-- because it was a little more like macro scale and ecology. And I like those people more, and the professors it felt like they were more interested in students and teaching and inspiring the next generation of scientists or just they're the ones who took the time to talk to me as a literally undergrad. So that felt good. And then I started taking those classes. I ended up-- I think I applied for a URAP position, which is like an undergraduate research apprenticeship program. I had been working in two research group, the research groups one looking at squirrel behavior and cognition and how squirrels navigate the spaces that they're in. And then another research group looking at the impact of a road closure in Berkeley. There's a famous, maybe not famous, famous at the time road in the Berkeley Hills that they close every winter to cars, and it's primarily because there's a newt migration across the road.

JOANNE TEH:

Wow

SIMON CAMPONURI:

And they don't want to let all the newts to get run over by the cars. And so I was-- there was a professor who-- so I guess the way that the policy worked with the road closure is that they would close the road on a certain day every year. I think it was sometime in November they would close the road and then reopen it sometime in the spring. But climate patterns don't really follow our calendar. And so the newts would cue into whenever the first rains come, and then they would start to migrate. And so that could be before the road was closed. And so we were going out after the first rain, but before the road was closed and collecting roadkill newts that had been hit by cars and trying to basically collect all these samples to show that they've changed that policy and get the road to close on the first rain rather than a set date for the year. So anyways, I was doing that. And then I applied for this position with Justin Brashares here in-- he's in ESPM-- Environmental Science Policy and Management-- at Berkeley. And he's a big wildlife ecologist. And he was doing this research on kangaroo rats, and it sounded awesome. And so I started working on that project and ended up working on that for two years doing a bunch of different things, lots of wildlife field work and also in wet lab research and lots of things.

JOANNE TEH:

Mm-hmm, that's really cool. You really tried your hand at a lot of different labs.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah, I did. I don't know, I think, I was trying to get a breadth of experiences and, I don't know. Part of that was just like the excitement and that I think I felt the energy from the people around me who were just excited about what they were doing, and so I wanted to do it all the time.

JOANNE TEH:

Mm-hmm. Wait, that's really nice. There's a lesson to be learned here about surrounding yourself with the people who share your passions.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Definitely. Absolutely.

JOANNE TEH:

So what happened, oh, at the kangaroo rats, where did you go to research the kangaroo rats again?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

So it's there-- our field site was in the Carrizo Plain National Monument, which is it's like it's in Eastern San Luis Obispo County more close to Bakersfield, I would say, on the edge of Kern County, maybe an hour and a half West of Bakersfield.

JOANNE TEH:

Mm-hmm, that's really cool field work that is that far away as an undergrad.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

It was. Honestly, it was. I worked there for the summer, and it was driving up and down from Berkeley somewhat regularly. And it's like a five-hour drive each way.

JOANNE TEH:

Oh, my goodness.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

[LAUGHS] A lot of car time.

JOANNE TEH:

So that was your first run in with Valley fever?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

That was, yeah. I hadn't heard of it before then.

JOANNE TEH:

Mm-hmm. What happened after? Did it stay in your life after that?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

A little, I mean, yes and no. I think that was a very impressionable experience. And I think many other members or other researchers who have done work in the Carrizo Plain specifically have also gotten Valley fever. And so I think now I know that that's very prominent, but it's also I research it now. But, I think, coming out of undergrad, I still didn't know if I wanted to go to med school or if I wanted to go to veterinary school. I'd been doing all this wildlife stuff and thought it might be cool to be a wildlife vet or go into research. And everyone I talked to basically just told me to go work and go out into the world. If you're not sure what you want to do, don't keep doing school. Go get some experience and like see what you like and what you don't like and what jobs you might want to have and which ones you don't. And so I did that. I went and I worked at a veterinary clinic after undergrad and which was very fun and I learned a lot and got a lot of really cool hands-on skills that I don't think I would have been able to do if I was working in human medicine. But then that also helped me realize that I didn't want to become a vet, which was very useful information. And then my girlfriend at the time, now wife, got into grad school on the East Coast, and so we moved to Connecticut. And I worked doing research at the Yale medical school while my wife was in grad school there. And then after that, I started my masters at Berkeley, and now I've stayed for the PhD.

JOANNE TEH:

I see. I see. So you had more of, like an untraditional path where you took your time, collected experiences?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah.

JOANNE TEH:

Would you-- oh, yeah, sorry. Go ahead.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Just like untraditional path is, I find that everyone has an untraditional path or like they find their ways into their spaces. And it's rare that you meet someone who has known that they want to do since they were four years old and have just done that. I think everybody kind of just tries and explores and finds themselves excited by things and pursuing those.

JOANNE TEH:

That's good insight.[LAUGHS] Would you recommend the same thing, like, going out to pursue these working experiences to those who like maybe just graduated undergrad and are kind of uncertain?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

I think so. Yeah. I mean, it depends on what you want to do. I guess, if you don't know what you want to do, then yes. I think that, I think, work experience is really valuable. I think both having done, I guess, a couple of graduate degrees now, I'm on my second one. And having gone through my wife's experience of being in grad school, I've met a lot of people, both who came straight through undergrad and kept in school and both and people who took time off. And I have the sense that people who took time off have a better idea of what they want to get out of grad school and the skills that they want to develop and how it will help them in their career and know what to prioritize, I guess, in terms of like what is work that is just important because it's school and what is work that's important because it will actually benefit you and your skills long term. So I guess, I think, it makes people maybe a little bit more well-rounded. But that's not to say that some people coming out of undergrad into grad school know what they want to do, but just a general pattern, I guess I've observed.

JOANNE TEH:

Mm-hmm. That's a great insight, actually. I feel like many undergrads can get kind of caught up in the idea of following the timeline, following the tunnel straight into grad school or straight into med school.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah.

JOANNE TEH:

It's easy to forget, there's much more experiences to be gained from the wider world.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it was particularly difficult for people graduating the undergrad in 2020 when I started my master's program, because in that sense, I would say going and doing grad school makes a lot of sense because it's not a lot is going on in the world. And I mean, there were, I guess, in the public health space, there were a lot of cool things that you could be doing in terms of contact tracing and helping with the COVID response. But also, I totally understand the impulse to go to school at that time. But yeah, the working space was, I guess, more challenging to be in.

JOANNE TEH:

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So after you came back to Berkeley for your grad school, how did you enter-- what did you enter in focusing on?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Sorry, can you repeat the question?

JOANNE TEH:

Sorry I phrased that kind of weirdly. When you entered Berkeley again for your first masters, what did you like focus on? What were you thinking of at the time? What was your research interest?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

I guess came in interested in zoonotic disease. I had all this wildlife experience and was really interested in how-- and I had applied wanting to do zoonotic disease work before COVID happened. And so it felt even more important during that pandemic. The person who I worked with, I worked with Justin Remais, and I think he's one of the main people, at least at the School of Public Health who has some research on wildlife-borne diseases and zoonotic diseases. And so I wanted to work with him. And then he had just gotten a bunch of funding to study Valley fever, which had experience with. So I ended up joining his research group. I actually started working with them before I even started the masters program. I had applied and gotten accepted, and then over the summer before I started the masters program, I started working with Justin's group and doing research and helping out where I could and then ended up staying with Justin's group, my throughout my master's program. So all my research pretty much was on Valley fever at that time and continues to be about Valley fever. So I was, I think, probably maybe my interests have shifted since then. I'm definitely still interested in zoonotic disease. And I guess I should say that we think that the fungus that causes Valley fever is carried by rodents. And there's a pretty-- there's a growing body of evidence to suggest that rodents are important hosts for the fungus. So it's cool to have that still be a part of my research and be able to still think about wildlife and have them be important factors of the disease system. But I think my main interests have shifted maybe more towards climate and health broadly and maybe like a little bit less away. I'm not necessarily dedicated to working on zoonotic diseases. So those are also impacted by climate, but more generally just diseases that are environmentally influenced or influenced by climate and/or also just like health outcomes that are influenced by climate. So there's so many that I could list, but arguably I would say, maybe almost every health outcome is somehow influenced by climate.

JOANNE TEH:

Yeah, that's true. That makes a lot of sense. I was thinking like in the recent years, every time I hear about Valley fever, it's always been in conjuction with discussing climate change, like, how it's a marker of how the seasons are shifting, things like that.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah, it is. It's a good, I mean, I think for many ways, for many reasons, it's a good example. And I'm really happy that I'm getting my PhD training focusing on Valley fever because there are a lot of parts of it that. are a great case study or study system for learning about climate and health methods. But there are also some ways that it's not perfect. And it's really hard to detect the fungus in the environment and there's pretty low awareness of the disease. And so we don't-- not everyone goes into health care, and it's pretty underreported. So our estimates of the number of cases, I think, CDC estimated that there were like 30 times or I'm going to mess up the number. It's some wild times lower than the actual burden of disease, so.

JOANNE TEH:

I see. I see. I've actually never heard of Valley fever prior to like joining COEH in the first place. So it is very not that well known. So I actually wanted to ask you, how do you guys-- since you do all your research on Valley fever, how do you guys communicate the results of your research to those who need it most, like those who are working in agriculture in the field?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

This is a huge question. And it's something I also feel like I'm learning and trying to do a better job of. I think it's sometimes it can be-- I think there are great efforts and great research projects where the there are built-in community engagement parts to them. And in those cases, there's direct communication of the results to the community. And I appreciate those projects a lot. Our research doesn't necessarily have a built-in community engagement part of it. We do have or have a pretty close collaboration with the California Department of Public Health. And so they let us use some of their data, and also we do our analysis, and then share those with CDPH. And then they generate a bunch of public awareness materials based on our findings. So, for example, this past week, one of our main research findings was that droughts follow-- I guess heavy rainfall during the winter following a drought leads to a huge spike in cases in the fall season so like, September, October, November. And we saw a drought in 2022 and then a lot of rain in the winter of 2022. And so based on our findings and our collaboration with CDPH, they put out a bunch of warnings that the risk of Valley fever was going to be really high in 2023, and they were probably going to see a lot of cases. And so they did a bunch of public awareness work and also physician awareness, so the physicians would know to test for it and hopefully improve the diagnosis of the disease. And then we did see a huge spike in cases. So it was like a little validating that our results are true, but also unfortunate that a lot of people have gotten sick. So that's I guess the main way that we communicate our results is directly to our state partners. I guess other ways we-- our group does a fair amount of conference presentations to communicate it to the research community. That's not necessarily the community itself, the impacted community, but we also work with or have done a lot of media interviews. So we were-- there was recently a Washington Post article highlighting our work, and there's been some grist pieces on it. And so those, like popular media sources have also highlighted our work. But I wish that we had maybe a more direct way of communicating with those people who are at risk and impacted, like construction workers and agriculture workers and people working outside who are exposed to dust.

JOANNE TEH:

Mm-hmm. Congrats on the Washington Post, by the way. That's pretty awesome.[LAUGHTER]

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. This one, they, they came on a field sampling trip with us that I unfortunately had to miss. But it seemed like they got some good photos of us working in the field.

JOANNE TEH:

Awesome. I feel like communicating the research results to the actual workers who are, like, who need it, the construction workers and agriculture workers seems to be like the one of the biggest drawbacks of EHS in general. I see that with many other aspects of EHS. Do you agree that this is, like, a drawback in the field in general?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah. I guess it depends on who you're talking to. I think some researchers do a great job and have really close collaborations with groups of agricultural workers or groups of construction workers. I think I would, maybe say that there's a-- broaden it beyond EHS. I think that maybe EHS is one of the fields that does a better job of compared to other research fields in communicating their results just because I think there is somewhat of a growing culture of community engagement. And I think there's increasing prioritization of having community partners that you communicate your results with. But I think it's probably just a general problem in academia of all research, trying to be better about communicating our results with the general public. And I think research can sometimes just stay in the research field and stay in a journal somewhere and not get communicated through other routes, so.

JOANNE TEH:

Yeah, that sounds much more correct than what I was saying. Forgive my ignorance. You're right. It's more about the academia.[LAUGHTER]

SIMON CAMPONURI:

No, it's unfortunate. And I don't know, I think that everyone, I don't know, I think could do a better job. I think a lot of researchers could maybe put more effort into trying to communicate to those who are directly impacted.

JOANNE TEH:

Mm-hmm. Well, I guess, even stuff like this podcast is a way of trying to accomplish that, right?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah, hopefully. I hope so.[LAUGHTER]

JOANNE TEH:

Hopefully. I actually also wanted to ask, so you mentioned that the Washington Post came and then joined you guys on a day out on the field. So I wanted to ask you like, what does your regular day-to-day work look like?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

It's a good question. It's somewhat varied, which is something that I like about what I do. And I think it's true maybe for a lot of environmental health scientists, I think, there are opportunities to go out in the field and sample and measure whatever you're looking at. So for us, we do a fair amount of soil sampling because the fungus that causes Valley fever grows in the soil. And so we're taking soil samples from different parts of the environment, particularly at rodent burrows and surface soils and looking for patterns in where we can detect fungus. So that is a fun part of it. I wouldn't say it's a day-to-day. It's we take a trip every spring and fall to collect soil samples. So it's once, twice a year. But those days are very fun.

JOANNE TEH:

Do you normally go to spots that you already have identified as this is the soil collecting spot? Or do you just find a new rodent burrow?[LAUGHTER]

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Right now, we are going back to the same spots. We're trying to track these spots over time to see if there are changes. And so we've been sampling from the same spots for the last-- this will be our fourth year, I think, maybe third, fourth year collecting every spring and fall. So we're trying to measure it over time. But outside of those field sampling seasons, most of my day-to-day is a lot of data analysis. I do a lot of work with the-- Valley fever is a reportable disease in California. And so every case that's diagnosed by the physician or a lab is required to be reported to the state. And so I have access to that data of all reported cases. And so we do a lot of analysis using that as our outcome data and then looking at how different factors influence when people are getting infected. So a lot of good analysis.

JOANNE TEH:

Awesome. So most of your-- most of your days are just spent indoors grinding away?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Somewhat, yeah. But I enjoy it. I enjoy all the aspects of it, so.

JOANNE TEH:

Mm-hmm. Awesome. Is there any specific-- so you said, you guys enjoy all those aspects. Is there any part that you dislike most?

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Dislike most? That's a good question. I don't know. I think, maybe writing, really like writing that much.[LAUGHTER]

JOANNE TEH:

I think this is a popular answer if you ask many researchers.

SIMON CAMPONURI:

Yeah. It's more fun to do the work than to write it up. I don't know, I think, maybe, yeah. I think it kind of goes in flow. It's like sometimes you're doing a lot of data analysis, and then as you do it, you like doing that more. And sometimes you do a lot of writing. And as you write more, that part of your brain has a little bit more practice, and so you start to enjoy it more. But I don't know, it's the thing I probably like the least is writing.[LAUGHTER]

JOANNE TEH:

Hey, guys. This is Joanne Teh, your host for this episode. And we have reached the end of part 1 of this conversation with our wonderful guest. Don't click out yet, because part 2 of this conversation has already been posted. So check out our page to finish the conversation. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, and follow us on Spotify and Instagram at Do the Change podcast.