Montira Pongsiri

Senior Research Associate

Cornell University

United States of America

Montira Pongsiri, PhD, MPH Dr. Montira Pongsiri was the first Science Advisor at the U.S. Mission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Dr. Pongsiri led the Mission’s efforts to develop and apply science and technology to support ASEAN’s sustainability goals, and to strengthen the capacity of science-based policy-making through programs such as the ASEAN-U.S. sustainable cities partnership. She was on overseas assignment to the U.S. Mission to ASEAN from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development where she was an Environmental Health Scientist. At the EPA, Dr. Pongsiri developed and led a research initiative on biodiversity and human health which studied the links between anthropogenic stressors, changes in biodiversity, and infectious disease transmission. She was the agency’s lead on technical partnerships with the Smithsonian Institution and with Rockefeller’s 100 Resilient Cities Global Challenge. As a member of The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, Dr. Pongsiri brought expertise on environmental change-human disease linkages. Dr. Pongsiri is a Senior Research Associate at Cornell University. Dr. Pongsiri’s primary research and science policy interests are in applying scientific understanding of the relationships between the condition of natural systems and human health to inform policy for long-term sustainability impact. Dr. Pongsiri is currently a Visiting Scientist at the UN Environment Asia-Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok where she works on planetary health demonstration studies and integrated methodologies and tools while also helping UN agencies in the region to incorporate environmental change-health issues into their strategic planning and activities. Dr. Pongsiri completed her Ph.D. at Yale University.