Dr. Diane S. Henshel is an expert in risk assessment and sub-lethal health effectives of environmental pollutants. Her research focuses on the effects of pollutants on wildlife and human health and on assessment of a novel non-invasive treatment to counteract chemical stress.
Trained as a neuroscientist, Henshel joined O'Neill's faculty in 1992 after post-doctoral work at the University of British Columbia. She teaches toxicology, risk assessment and risk communication, and is a trained and practicing mediator. Henshel is also the principal in Henshel EnviroComm, a technical and risk communication-focused consulting company that provides technical support to government agencies and communities addressing environmental contamination.
Henshel's wildlife work involves correlations between field and laboratory studies, typically focusing on developmental or neuroendocrine-related effects. The human health work usually entails using existing databases to draw correlations between population level indicators of health effects with landscape scale indicators of environmental contamination, often incorporating socioeconomic indicators as co-factors. Currently, she is developing a new holistic cybersecurity risk assessment paradigm.
Henshel has served on a number of boards, panels, and advisory committees for agencies including the U.S.-Canada International Joint Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Research Council.
