Faculty Profiles

BIO

As an environmental epidemiologist and with funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and Detroit community input, I study how social, economic, health, and built environment characteristics and/or air quality affect vulnerability to extreme heat and extreme precipitation. This research will help cities understand how to adapt to heat, heat waves and heavy rainfall in a changing climate.

I received my BA in Biology from the University of Chicago, with a specialization in Ecology and Evolution. Subsequently, I worked as a research assistant in the Clinical Trials Office at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, MI before pursing a Masters in Public Health at the University of Michigan. I completed my MPH in 2008 and then completed my PhD in 2013 in the University of Michigan Department of Environmental Health Sciences, where I was a National Institute on Aging Public Health and Aging trainee. My dissertation focused on associations between high temperatures and hospital admissions and mortality among the elderly as well as sociodemographic and land cover characteristics that modify these associations. In my postdoctoral fellowships, I studied how social and environmental characteristics influence vulnerability to heat-related health effects, using data from longitudinal studies of cardiovascular health in seven U.S. cities as well as state and national records of severe health events.