Rate My Professor Maria Amaya

Maria Amaya, Ph.D., RNC, WHNP-BC, is Professor of Nursing and Wakefield Professor of Health Sciences at the University of Texas at El Paso School of Nursing. She previously served as Director of Research for the school and was promoted to full professor in 1999. In 2011, Amaya was inducted as a Fellow of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (FAANP).

Amaya's academic interests and research specializations center on environmental health in nursing, particularly the impacts of air pollution, particulate matter, ultrafine particles, lead exposure, dust events, and urban heat on respiratory conditions like asthma in the El Paso US-Mexico border region. She has engaged in interdisciplinary efforts, including National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences-funded projects with colleagues in geological sciences and civil engineering to analyze airborne pollutants and their biological effects.

Key publications include "Language Proficiency and Academic Success of Bilingual Hispanic Nursing Students along the US-Mexico Border" (2022, co-authored with Dominguez De Quezada, Alfred, Hermanns, Greer, and Vardaman), "Community Exposure to Nighttime Heat in a Desert Urban Setting, El Paso, Texas" (2016), "The Effect of Ventilation, Age, and Asthmatic Condition on Ultrafine Particle Deposition in Children" (2012), "Principal Component Analysis Optimization of a PM2.5 Land Use Regression Model with Small Monitoring Network" (2012), "Blood lead in the 21st Century: The sub-microgram challenge" (2010), "Temporal-spatial analysis of US-Mexico border environmental fine and coarse PM air sample extract activity in human bronchial epithelial cells" (2009), and "Urban Airborne Lead: X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy Establishes Soil as Dominant Source" (2009). Her work has garnered 183 citations.