Dr. Mary B. Rice MD MPH is the Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Respiratory Health and director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a pulmonary critical care physician and director of research for the division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) at Harvard Medical School.
Rice’s area of investigation focuses on the influence of environmental exposures, especially air pollution and climate change, on the respiratory health of children and adults, and the development of interventions to mitigate these health effects. She is the principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded clinical trial of home air purification for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and she leads the environmental health research program of the American Lung Association Lung Health Cohort. She also co-leads a new NIH-funded P20 Center at Harvard Chan School, which aims to bring sustainable climate solutions to heat-stressed, low-income communities around the globe.
Rice chaired the American Thoracic Society’s Environmental Health Policy Committee 2018-2021 and in 2024 she was elected as chair of the Environmental, Occupational and Population Health Assembly of the ATS. In 2024, she was appointed by the EPA administrator to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), an independent scientific committee that advises the U.S. EPA on National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).