Meet EPA Toxicologist and Science Review Officer Meta Bonner, Ph.D.
Meta Bonner works as the leader of a committed, knowledgeable team whose endeavors ensure high quality extramural research applications for the Agency’s research grant award selection process. Meta works with an outstanding group of people who make it all possible. The team is currently working on peer reviews for the fiscal year 2022 term which involves reviewing draft grant solicitations, developing a schedule of grant openings, preparing details for the peer review meetings, and current and future in-depth contractor considerations for peer review support. Meta is also a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Expert Group on Skin & Eye Irritation and Phototoxicity, which is currently looking at various test guidelines for harmonized test specifications across member nations.
How does your work matter?
The Peer Review Team is the first place for receiving and examining extramural research grant applications in response to EPA requests for applications (RFA). It is the team’s responsibility to ensure that the applications are in the proper format and meet the requirements as outlined in the RFA. The team, in consideration of the research proposals submitted in the application, set up appropriate external experts’ reviews to provide applications with sound science and techniques for the Agency’s funding consideration.
What do you like most about your work at EPA?
Seeing the development from the first research ideas to applicable uses of interactive research areas in health and environmental sciences. I enjoy listening to the peer reviewers’ conversations - always interesting and a learning experience.
When did you first know you wanted to be a scientist or work to protect the environment?
As a kid! One of my first places of learning about science was the Carnegie Negro Library at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, which had a children section loaded with science books. It was a wonderful place of learning because the Greensboro City public libraries in my early childhood years were segregated, meaning only white people were allowed to go into the city’s public libraries to read and checkout books. My brilliant mom allowed me to sometimes tag along with her to her workplace at North Carolina A&T State University, now one of the top-flight research universities and the largest historically black university in the United States, which in those early years was housed in the same building with part of the Nursing and Biology departments. There I met a wonderful scientist conducting experiments on frog embryo development and chemical influences, Dr. Barnes, who was willing to entertain a child’s questions and observations. The current biology building at A&T is named after him, Barnes Hall. Years later, in my formative elementary school years, my mother conducted some of the first federal supported research at A&T in experimental psychology. She looked into the effects of radiation exposure on rat reproduction and behavior.
What advice would you give a student interested in a career in science?
Always be brave enough to ask questions and take all the math and sciences courses allowed.
Tell us about your background.
I have a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Sacred Heart College in Belmont, North Carolina; master’s in Biology from North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University; and a Ph.D. in Zoology from North Carolina State University; a master’s in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University; a Post-doc traineeship in Toxicology from University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill; a post-doctoral position in Neurotoxicology at the Uniformed Services Health Sciences University in Bethesda, Maryland; and a Leadership Certificate from the Executive Education at Brookings Institution. My research training background includes studies concentrating on fish and rodent reproductive and memory behaviors, neuropharmacology in cellular second messenger activity and neural action potential, regulatory toxicological evaluations for risk assessments with specialization in reproductive development, neural, dermal, and ocular toxicology.
If you weren’t in your current career, what would you be doing?
Teaching and/or working at natural history museum or a zoo. I have volunteered at the NC Natural History Museum in Raleigh and the Smithsonian's National Zoo Invertebrate Center in D.C. (a center now dissolved) and enjoyed the interactions with the public and their inquiries and delighted responses to our answers.
If you can have any superpower, what would you choose?
To have A Fact/Truth Meter - the reason I like science is because it deals with facts and the testing of hypothesis.
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the researcher alone. EPA does not endorse the opinions or positions expressed.