Environmental Health Student Anton Panev Joins ORAU

Anton Panev, a graduating senior from the Department of Environment Health, has joined the scientific staff of Oak Ridge Associated University’s (ORAU) unit specializing in occupational exposures and worker health studies.  The permanent staff position grew out of Panev’s recent summer internship under Dr. Jeff Miller in which Panev worked on safety culture evaluation for several Department of Energy (DOE) facilities.

“ORAU is always on the look-out for bright and capable undergraduate and graduate students that are looking for internships,” said Miller who is both a certified industrial hygienist and certified safety professional.  “We expose our interns to many different types of projects in occupational and environmental health and we try to make their time here challenging and meaningful. Several of the people in our group started as interns and were hired into permanent positions. I think of internships as a three month job interview,” said Dr. Miller.

For his part, Panev explains that he understood the importance of occupational health and safety long before the start of his academic endeavors. Growing up in post-communist Bulgaria, where laws protecting workers were lax or non-existent, he began to appreciate the necessity of stringent regulations. The personal commitment and dedication to the field of health and safety was strongly reinforced during his experience in ETSU.  “The Department of Environmental Health is relatively small, but it is saturated with overly qualified individuals, who are happy to go the extra seventy seven miles for the benefit of students,” said Panev.  Since age fourteen when he emigrated to east Tennessee, Panev has come to regard the Tri-Cities area as his hometown.

In his new position at ORAU Panev will continue to focus on occupational health and safety topics within DOE facilities.