Chrisa Whitmore

Chrisa Whitmore is a third-year PhD candidate in Environmental Science with a minor in Plant Pathology at the University of Arizona, where she conducts research at the intersection of public health, environmental microbiology, and community science in Dr. Joseph Hoover's Geospatial Environmental Health Laboratory. Raised in the Tucson desert by a mother from Vietnam who taught her that clean water is essential to health, Chrisa developed a lifelong passion for water. That passion led her to earn a B.S. in Public Health from the University of Arizona and an M.P.H. in Environmental Health Sciences from the University at Albany, SUNY, before returning to the University of Arizona for an M.S. in Biosystems Engineering focused on fungi and their applications. During her MS studies, Chrisa was an NSF NRT Indige-FEWSS Trainee, an experience that strengthened her commitment to community engagement and provided valuable training in holistic, transdisciplinary research on food, energy, and water systems in Indigenous communities. Her dissertation combines nature-based solutions with community-based participatory research to address uranium contamination in water sources near abandoned uranium mines. She seeks to understand where these contaminants are located, which vulnerable groups are most impacted, and how microbes such as bacteria and fungi may be used as potential remediation tools. With a multidisciplinary background, Chrisa is dedicated to transforming scientific research into real-world solutions that address environmental health-related problems.