What do you focus on in your doctoral studies here at Brown?
My dissertation looks at exposure to environmental chemicals during pregnancy and the impacts that might have on outcomes right at birth, like how big the baby is, how big their head is, etc. because all of these are indicators of future growth and development. More specifically, I’m looking at how this impacts neurodevelopmental outcomes, like whether or not a child gets ADHD for example. So far, as a community, we’ve only looked at these exposures one at a time but what my work does is it looks at a mixture of chemicals, because you and I aren’t exposed to one thing at a time. We don’t live in a vacuum and at any given moment we are being exposed to multiple environmental chemicals. So part of my work looks at how we can identify these mixtures and how these mixtures can impact children’s heath later on in life.
Why did you come to Brown for your Ph.D.?
Joe Braun is my primary mentor and thesis advisor and his work is what brought me to Brown. I was pretty sure I wanted to do reproductive and perinatal work for my dissertation and as I was interviewing and learning more about programs, I learned about the work being done at the School of Public Health. Dr. Braun is phenomenally passionate about what he does and I wanted to work with someone who shared the same passion for this work that I do. He’s also affiliated with this great study, the HOME study based out of Cincinnati, which measures the effects of low-level exposures during and after pregnancy on children’s health outcomes.