Medical research in Victoria setting off the world’s smoke alarm

Article

Published: 5 August 2024

Dr Rongbin Xu: Hi, I’m Ronbin. I’m from Monash University. I currently work in the Climate Air Quality Research Unit, which is a unit in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine.

Text: 2023-24 Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research. Dr Rongbin Xu, Public Health Researcher Award.

Text: Why did you become a health or medical researcher?

Dr Rongbin Xu: Doing health and medical research work can help many people because you do some public health research and you know what risk factors contributes to people’s health, so we can target on those risk factors to improve the population health and help many people.

Text: What problem is your project addressing?

Vision: View of Rongbin working at computer.

Dr Rongbin Xu: This addressing the environment health issue, like in the context of climate change, the bushfires are increasing, and heatwaves are increasing and they all harm people’s health. So my topic is addressing to evaluate those impacts and to quantify those impacts and to assess which people and which communities are most vulnerable to those impacts, and we can implement target interventions.

Text: What have the project results been?

Dr Rongbin Xu: Our recent study we used some mechanical models, many models to model the global air pollution level around the bushfires, because bushfires is a global threat, health threat and air pollution from bushfires can affect more people than the bushfires itself.

Vision: View of Rongbin working in the office with others.

Dr Rongbin Xu: So we a modelling the air pollution from the bushfires, bushfire smoke, which is an essential part to eradicate the health impacts.

Text: How could this project make a difference to people’s lives?

Dr Rongbin Xu: With this project we can identify what health impacts those bushfires or heatwaves, for example, our research shows the exposure to bushfire smoke, or exposure to extreme heat, can increase the hospitalisation from respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, or even increased mortality.

Vision: View of Rongbin walking to the Monash University and talking to reception in his office.

Dr Rongbin Xu: So our results can show which communities are most impacted by those health impacts we can provide that information to the stakeholders such as the governments to develop some early warning systems to help people to take actions where there’s serious bushfire smoke or serious heatwave event so they can be cautious about that exposure and protect their health in advance in those events.

Text: 2023-24 Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research. Celebrating the achievements of Victoria’s early career health and medical researchers.

Text: Victoria State Government. Authorised by the Victorian Government, Melbourne.

Author: Medical Research

Victoria is securing its place as a world-leading medical research hub, as academics like Dr Rongbin Xu take their research to the world stage.

Rongbin, a research fellow in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, was recently awarded the Premier’s Award for Health and Medical Research Excellence (Premier’s Excellence Award) and the Public Health Researcher Award at the 2023-24 Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research.

These awards recognised Rongbin’s PhD, which looks at pollution exposure caused by smoke from bushfires. The results found, perhaps expectedly, that human exposure levels after climate-impacted events are alarming.

‘Air pollution from bushfires can affect the health of more people than the bushfires themselves,’ he explains.

As part of his PhD, Rongbin created the world’s first comprehensive measure of population exposure to smoke pollution. His machine-learning approach monitors daily smoke pollution worldwide, using chemical transport model simulations and air quality station data.

His PhD paper also found a huge disparity in exposure levels across the globe, with people in low-income countries experiencing 4 times higher levels of smoke pollution than those in high-income nations.

Dr Rongbin Xu standing at a podium smiling, with an "Excellence Award 2023-24" plaque visible. Behind are the flags of Australia and the Australian Aboriginal flag. This disparity could be partly due to less industrialised countries burning agricultural waste and forests, and poorer management of wildfires. Rongbin hopes his model can be used in these countries to monitor – and avoid – higher exposure to smoke pollution.

‘We can provide this information to governments, to help people take action where there are serious bushfire events,’ he says.

Rongbin’s ground-breaking study has been featured in the New York Times, referenced by the WHO and the UN, and he has worked on more than 90 peer-reviewed articles.

In a career highlight, his paper was published on the ultra-competitive front cover of Nature magazine.

‘The paper was submitted to Nature on Oct 25, 2022, exactly one day before my daughter was born,’ Rongbin remembers, adding that this new arrival caused many sleepless nights during the paper revision period. ‘Luckily my colleagues helped me a lot to do the revision!’

He undertook his Bachelor degree and Masters at the School of Public Health at Peking University in Beijing, where he witnessed consistent heavy air pollution.

‘I had to wear an N95 mask regularly,’ he says, remembering that ‘particularly in winter, I often saw heavy mazes with very low visibility. This experience made me interested in environmental health research.’

For his PhD accomplishments, Rongbin was surprised and honoured to be awarded 2 awards at the 2023-24 Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research.

‘Just like the Nature paper, this award is also a big surprise and absolutely a major milestone in my research career,’ he says.

The Excellence Award is the night’s flagship prize, recognising the exceptional contributions of an early-career health and medical researcher in Victoria. It’s this recognition early in his career that Rongbin is grateful for, noting that the award has given him courage and confidence in his work.

‘It also significantly adds to my track record,’ he says, and that the awards ‘will be super helpful for me to apply for fellowships, grants, and academic promotion.’

The Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research recognise the exceptional contributions of Victoria’s early-career health and medical researchers, who are currently completing or have recently completed a PhD.

Established in 1995 by the Victorian Government in partnership with the Australian Society for Medical Research, they highlight the breadth of work being undertaken in Victoria to make significant improvements to the lives of people around the world.

For more information about the awards and to view the full list of 2023-24 winners, visit: Premier’s Awards for Health and Medical Research.

Medical research in Victoria setting off the world’s smoke alarm

View transcript