On This Page:

What We Do
Research Tools
Outreach and Partnerships
Management
Divisions
Locations

What We Do

The Center for Computational Toxicology & Exposure (CCTE) is a scientific organization working to support Agency decisions by providing solutions-driven research to rapidly evaluate the potential human health and environmental risks due to exposures to environmental chemicals and ensure the integrity of the freshwater environment and its capacity to support human well-being. To do this, CCTE research strives to:

• Reduce the time required to thoroughly test chemicals and other emerging materials for human health and ecological toxicity from years to months.   
• Expand our understanding of quantitative human and ecological exposures for thousands of chemical substances and emerging materials.
• Develop a comprehensive information system that contains relevant actionable chemical safety and ecological data with the software tools to integrate them for a range of human health and environmental decisions.
• Reduce the time required to characterize freshwater ecosystems and project the future state of ecological condition and ecosystem services from decades to years.
• Demonstrate translation of CCTE data, models, and tools into regulatory decisions by EPA Program Offices, EPA Regions, and States to protect human health and the environment.

Using the knowledge and tools developed from this research, CCTE performs rapid chemical screening and evaluation that allows thousands of chemicals to be evaluated for potential risk in a very short amount of time. The data and tools produced by CCTE researchers can then be leveraged to help Region and Program Offices, states, tribes, and communities make decisions to sustain a healthy society and environment.

Learn more about EPA’s CCTE research by viewing our Safer Chemicals Research Fact Sheets.

Research Tools

• Models, Applications and Databases
• Downloadable Data
• EcoTox Knowledgebase
• Sequence Alignment to Predict Across Species Susceptibility (SeqAPASS)

Outreach and Partnerships

• Collaborative Research
• Computational Toxicology Communities of Practice

Management

Rusty Thomas, Director

• Biography
• Phone: 919-541-5776
• Email: Rusty Thomas (thomas.russell@epa.gov)

Reeder Sams, Deputy Director

• Biography
• Phone: 919-541-4219
• Email: Reeder Sams (sams.reeder@epa.gov)

Divisions

• Biomolecular and Computational Toxicology Division 
• Chemical Characterization and Exposure Division
• Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division
• Scientific Computing and Data Curation Division

Locations

CCTE has research divisions and laboratories located in:

• Durham, NC (Research Triangle Park)
• Cincinnati, OH
• Duluth, MN

CCTE actively engages a wide-range of stakeholders to help make this new chemical information more understandable and usable.