Manish Arora: Application of Tooth Matrix Biomarkers to Environmental Biodynamics

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Application of Tooth Matrix Biomarkers to Environmental Biodynamics

Speakers:

Manish Arora, PhD

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

 

 

 

 

Speaker Bio: 

Dr. Arora is an exposure biologist and environmental epidemiologist with training in advanced analytical chemistry methods. He was awarded an Australian government scholarship to study the uptake of environmental metal toxicants and its impact on human health. He was later accepted as postdoctoral fellow at the Environmental and Occupational Medicine and Epidemiology program at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is current a Professor and Vice Chairman of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, as well as Division Chief of Environmental Health, and Director of the Laboratory for Exposomic Innovation and Precision Environmental Medicine.

Dr. Arora has developed sophisticated laboratory methods to measure chemical signatures in teeth and hair as markers of environmental chemical exposures, with a focus on reconstructing early life exposure history.

Date: Wednesday, January 13, 1 to 2pm

 

Heather Volk: Moving ECHO Science Toward Gene-Environment Interaction for Neurodevelopmental Outcomes

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Moving ECHO Science Toward Gene-Environment Interaction for Neurodevelopmental Outcomes

Speaker:

Heather Volk. PhD, MPH

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

 

 

 

Speaker Bio: Heather E. Volk is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also Co-Director of the NICHD-funded Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, and Associate Director for Environmental Epidemiology in the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Research. Dr. Volk additionally is co-Director of the Psychiatric Epidemiology Traning program, supported by a Institutional Training grant (T32) from the National Institute of Mental Health. She also holds a joint appointment in the School’s Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. Dr. Volk earned a MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Boston University and a PhD in Public Health Studies (Epidemiology) at Saint Louis University, prior to post-doctoral training in Enviornmental Genomics through the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC).  She, along with her team, studies how environmental and genetic factors work together to confer risk for neurodevelopmental outcomes, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD).  She is the PI of several NIH-funded research grants which examine how environmental exposures (air pollution, metals) effect brain development, epidemiologic studies of comorbidity with ASD, and leads investigations into joint genetic, epigenetic, and environmental risks for ASD.  Dr. Volk additionally serves as co-PI for the Autism Spectrum Disorder Enriched Risk ECHO Cohort, a collaboration of nine cohorts of infants at high-familial risk for ASD.

Date: Wednesday, September 9, 1 to 2pm

Jessie Buckley: Estimating Effects of Exposure Mixtures on Child Health: Novel Methods for Solution-oriented ECHO Research

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Estimating Effects of Exposure Mixtures on Child Health: Novel Methods for Solution-oriented ECHO Research

Speaker:

Jessie Buckley, PhD, MPH

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

ECHO Data Analysis Center (DAC)

 

 

Speaker Bio:  Jessie Buckley is an environmental and pediatric/perinatal epidemiologist, working on research to inform environmental policies targeted at improving children’s health. Her work looks at developmental origins of health and disease framework and focuses on determining effects of early life exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals on child physical growth and development. Using molecular epidemiology and advanced statistical approaches, she has conducted several studies evaluating the role of environmental chemical exposures in the development of childhood obesity. She has also researched the utility of biomarkers of exposure to several classes of environmental chemicals that have widespread human exposure, including phthalates.

Topic:  Interest in understanding the combined effects of multiple exposures (i.e., mixtures) on children’s health is rapidly increasing, with a related proliferation of methods for estimating these effects. In this talk, Jessie will demonstrate two useful approaches for estimating mixtures effects – Bayesian kernel machine regression and quantile g-computation – with an application to endocrine disrupting chemical mixtures and childhood bone health. In addition, Jessie will introduce a novel statistical framework to advance solution-oriented mixtures research in ECHO by more directly informing practices, programs, and policies to improve children’s health.

Date: Wednesday, June 10, 1 to 2pm