Public health Ph.D. student Felix Agyemang Opoku has been awarded the UC Global Health Initiative Center for Planetary Health Water and Health Summer Research Fellowship.

The research fellowships are designed to provide students with funding to conduct research on water and health.

Opoku, who works with Professor Asa Bradman, is one of three selected for the fellowship across all UC campuses.

"It's a beautiful thing to be in a program that is very interdisciplinary, from economics, environmental health to engineering, all coming together for the sake of the public," Opoku said. "It gives me fulfillment that my work is relevant and it's been recognized."

He earned a bachelor's degree in medical laboratory technology and a Master of Public Health in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana.

Opoku's professional background includes clinical work as a biomedical scientist and research focused on occupational and environmental exposures and their association with injury and disease risks in Ghana. His current research interests center on environmental health, particularly investigating the aerosolization of cyanotoxins from harmful algal blooms (HAB), air pollution and related health outcomes.

Between June and August 2025, he compiled literature on the factors contributing to HAB events in California, as well as their distribution, trends, toxicity, testing, monitoring and mitigation.

"This fellowship helped steep my understanding of how to sample environmental data, how to compile literature and how to speak to industry people about your research," Opoku said.

He and Bradman met with leading scientists in the field, including personnel from the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Water Resources.

These exchanges underscored the fellowship's role in connecting emerging researchers with policymakers and scientific leaders.

"At the end of the day, it is not scientists or researchers versus industry, people, or policymakers," he said. "I wanted this holistic training where I get advanced training at the intersection of science and policy. Where we can come together to bring change in environmental health because I believe that a healthy environment is going to be translated into having healthy outcomes."