Speakers – 2023 Mexico-USA Exposome Symposium

Robert O. Wright, MD, MPH

Dr. Robert Wright is a pediatrician, medical toxicologist, and environmental epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is the Ethel H. Wise Chair of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Co-Director of the Institute for Exposomic Research, and Principal Investigator of an ongoing longitudinal birth cohort in Mexico City (Programming Research in Obesity, Growth, Environment and Social Stress–PROGRESS) in collaboration with the National Institute of Public Health, Mexico. He also founded the MATCH (Metals Assessment Targeting Community Health) study in Tar Creek, Oklahoma. Dr. Wright studies chemical mixtures, epigenetics and the role social stressors as modifiers of chemical toxicity. He is an international advocate for research on exposomics—the measure of all health relevant environmental exposures throughout the lifespan. He established the Mount Sinai P30 Core Center grant program that provides support to grow Mount Sinai’s environmental research (in the LifeSpan (HEALS). He has published over 350 research studies and has served on numerous international and national committees and advisory boards. Dr. Wright founded the Senator Frank Lautenberg Laboratory of Environmental Health Sciences at Mount Sinai in 2014 and in 2022 launched the “Exposomic in Precision Medicine” program as part of Mount Sinai’s CTSA. The program is designed to make the environment an integral part of precision medicine initiatives with the goal of bringing it into clinical training as a tool for optimally determining treatment options and variable individual responses to treatment.

Martha M. (Mara) Téllez Rojo, PhD

Dr. Martha (Mara) Téllez Rojo is an epidemiologist from the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in Mexico. Her research focuses on the long-term effects of environmental toxicants, social stressors and nutritional conditions during gestation and infancy. From 2004-2014, she headed the Statistical Division at INSP where she directed program evaluations of social interventions and national health surveys. Much of her recent work focuses on shaping health policy related to lead exposure in Mexico. She currently serve as vice-president of the International Society for Children’s Health and the Environment. She is the site PI for ELEMENT (Early Live Exposure in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants project) and PROGRESS (Program Research in Obesity, Growth, Environment and Social Stressors). Both are ongoing birth cohorts with studies focused on the health effects of environmental exposures over the life course in Mexico. In the last ten years, she has collaborated with Dr. Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, an anthropologist, to develop a bioethnographic framework for asking and answering biosocial questions in both cohorts.

Citlalli Osorio, MSc, PhD

Dr. Citlalli Osorio has held the position of Associate Research Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Research (UNAM) since 2019 as part of SIJA program designed for young talented researchers. Her research interests lie principally, but not exclusively, in studying cardiovascular risk biomarkers associated with environmental contaminants and the impact of early life exposure to pollutants on childhood and maternal health.  Dr Osorio studied Chemistry Pharmaceutical Biology at Facultad de Química UNAM, and she received her Master’s degree and PhD in Toxicology at CINVESTAV (IPN). She has held postdoctoral positions at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Instituto de Salud Global in Barcelona, Spain, and the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in México. 

Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, MPH

Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, MPH is the Leon Hess Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and serves as the Director of the NIH/NIEHS P30 Center for Environmental Health and Justice in Northern Manhattan, one of such 21 centers across the country. He currently serves as President of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, a professional society of nearly 2,000 members worldwide. Dr. Baccarelli’s research investigates molecular mechanisms as pathways linking environmental exposures to human disease.

Dr. Baccarelli has authored over 600 scientific publications and has received numerous awards and grants for his research on environmental factors affecting human health. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine of the United States and has been featured in the Web-of-Science list of the most influential, highest-cited scientists of the past ten years.

Alejandra Cantoral, ScM, ScD

Dr. Alejandra Cantoral is a full-time professor and coordinator of the Nutrition Clinic at the Iberoamericana University in Mexico City and has been affiliated with the National System of Researchers in Mexico since 2015. She has conducted research collaborating with the Mexican National Institute of Public Health and international institutions (Michigan University, Harvard University, Indiana University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine) on birth cohort studies developed in Mexico since 2009. Her research is focused on environmental exposures through food and chronic diseases (obesity, hepatic steatosis, diabetes). She leads or co-leads more than 14 research projects. Dr. Cantoral has published more than 110 articles in high impact national and international journals. She earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in nutrition, a diploma of Specialist in Clinical Nutrition, and a doctorate in Epidemiology. She obtained a Certification in Public Health from the National Board of Public Health Examiners in 2010

Héctor Lamadrid-Figueroa, MD, ScD  

Dr. Héctor Lamadrid-Figueroa is the Chair of the Department of Perinatal Health at the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico and holds the title of National Researcher Level 2. His work focuses on epidemiology, maternal and child health, program impact evaluation, and applied statistical methods. From 2011 to 2015, Dr. Lamadrid-Figueroa contributed as a consultant for the MEASURE Evaluation consortium. In this role, he facilitated program impact evaluation workshops in Mexico, South Africa, India, and Nepal. He has also been a collaborator with The Global Burden of Disease Study since 2015. In 2022, he was inducted into Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society, in recognition of his research efforts.

Dr. Lamadrid-Figueroa earned his medical degree from the State University of Morelos, Mexico, and later obtained his Doctor of Science degree in Epidemiology from the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico. He remains committed to advancing public health through his research and collaborative efforts.

Marcela Tamayo y Ortiz, ScD

Dr. Marcela Tamayo y Ortiz is Director of the Occupational Health Research Unit at the Mexican Social Security Institute, a position she has held since October 2020. She has collaborated with the ELEMENT and PROGRESS birth cohorts for more than 15 years. She is adjunct coordinator of the Doctorate in Environmental Health Sciences program of the National Institute of Public Health where she has worked as a CONACYT professor and researcher since 2006. Dr. Tamayo y Ortiz is a member of the National System of Researchers of Mexico, Level 1.  She is the author of more than 70 published scientific articles and serves as the advisor for 15 graduate students and medical residents. She directs the Latin American and Caribbean Chapter of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) and actively participates with the Chemical World initiative of the General Health Council in the immediate action program to reduce lead exposure. From 2000-2004 she worked in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán in the Interdisciplinary Group of Appropriate Rural Technology, A.C.  She has a Master of Science in Environmental Health from the School of Public Health of Mexico and a Doctor of Science in Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Juan A. Rivera-Dommarco, PhD

Dr. Juan Ángel Rivera Dommarco Rivera is Senior Researcher in Medical Sciences at the Centre for Population Health Research of the National Institute of Public Health and Professor at the School of Public Health in Mexico. He is the former Director General of the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) of Mexico and the founding Director of the Centre for Research on Nutrition and Health, which he directed for 15 years.

Dr. Rivera’s research interests include the epidemiology of malnutrition (undernutrition and obesity), the short- and long-term effects of undernutrition in early childhood, and the design and evaluation of programs and policies to improve population nutrition and health.  He is the author of more than 395 peer-reviewed articles, 160 book chapters and 74 books. He has given more than 800 presentations at national and international scientific events and his published work has been cited more than 70,400 times in various national and international scientific journals.

He is currently a member of the Executive Council of the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI), commissioner of EAT Lancet 2.0 on healthy diets from sustainable food systems, member of the Board of Directors of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), member of the National Academy of Medicine (ANM), the Mexican Academy of Sciences (AMC), the American Society of Nutrition (ASN) and the Latin American Society of Nutrition (SLAN), of which he was president (2015-2018).

Trevor K. Archer, PhD

Dr. Trevor K. Archer received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1987 at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, after which he did postdoctoral training on chromatin gene transcription and steroid receptors at the National Cancer Institute, in Bethesda. In 1992, Dr. Archer joined the University of Western Ontario in Canada, as a National Cancer Institute of Canada Scientist. Dr. Archer was recruited to the NIEHS in 1999 as head of Chromatin Structure and Gene Expression. Subsequently he was appointed as Chief, Laboratory of Molecular Carcinogenesis in February 2003 and in 2014 became the founding chief of the new Epigenetics and Stem Cell Biology laboratory at NIEHS. In addition to his scientific endeavors, Dr. Archer is a champion for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the scientific enterprise. Dr. Archer has made numerous original and important contributions to the study of chromatin structure/function, epigenetics, and gene transcriptional regulation in breast cancer cells while publishing ~120 peer reviewed manuscripts. In recognition of his scientific accomplishments and scientific leadership Dr. Archer was named a NIH Distinguished Investigator in 2019.

María Imelda López Villaseñor, PhD

Dr. María Imelda López Villaseñor is Director of the Institute of Biomedical Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

Eduardo César Lazcano Ponce, PhD, MD

 Dr. Lazcano is a Researcher in Medical Sciences of the National Institute of Public Health and part of the National System of Researchers of CONACyT, Level III. He is also the editor of the Epidemiology section of the Journal of Public Health of Mexico. He is currently a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the Mexican Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of the State of Morelos, and the Mexican Society of Public Health.

Dr. Lazcano graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP), completed a specialization in Family Medicine at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), a Masters in Epidemiology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a PhD in Epidemiology at the National Institute of Public Health (INSP).

He has been visitor researcher at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, and at the Centre for Mental Health Research of the Australian National University.  His scientific production includes 404 articles in peer-reviewed journals, with around 17,472 bibliographic citations; he has also edited 27 books and written 72 book chapters, and participated as guest editor in 15 monographic issues of the journal Public Health of Mexico.

Megan Horton, PhD, MPH

Megan Horton, PhD, MPH, is Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is an environmental and life course epidemiologist. Her research combines state-of-the-art environmental exposure assessment with structural and functional neuroimaging and behavioral phenotyping to understand how early life exposure to developmental neurotoxicants affects typical brain development and leads to aberrant cognitive and behavioral outcomes in children. Recently, her research extends to investigate how environmental, social, and occupational stressors impact later life health outcomes including PTSD and cognitive impairment. Dr. Horton is currently the principal investigator of several NIH and NIOSH funded research grants and a key co-investigator on several other projects. Recently, she was elected president of the International Society for Children’s Health and the Environment. She was a recipient of an early career NIH Pathway to Independence Award and during her doctoral studies received a prestigious EPA STAR Fellowship. Dr. Horton joined Mount Sinai in 2013 after earning a MPH and PhD at Columbia University. In addition to dedication to rigorous and innovative science, Dr. Horton is actively involved with mentorship, faculty development, and wellness initiatives within Mount Sinai.

Felipe Vadillo-Ortega, MD, PhD

Dr. Felipe Vadillo-Ortega joined the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2009 and was appointed Head of the Faculty of Medicine Branch at the National Institute of Genomic Medicine. He worked for more than 20 years at the National Institute of Perinatology, serving as Director of Research from 2000 to 2009. He has made contributions to Obstetrics and Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and his work has spanned from basic science to clinical trials. Mechanisms of preterm labor have been his main area of focus. He has published more than 190 peer-reviewed papers and has mentored over 60 post-graduate students, master’s students, and PhD candidates. He is a member of the SNI, level 3 since 2004 and is a Titular Member of the Mexico’s National Academy of Medicine.  Dr. Vadillo-Ortega is a graduate of the Faculty of Medicine at the National University of Mexico. He holds a MSc in Molecular Biology and a PhD in Philosophy and Biochemistry. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Obstetrics at the Oregon Health Sciences University and Postdoctoral Fellow in Reproductive Biology at The University of Pennsylvania.

Manish Arora, BDS, MPH, PhD

Manish Arora, BDS, MPH, PhD, is the Edith J. Baerwald Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. A founding member of the Institute for Exposomic Research, Dr. Arora directs its environmental exposure and precision environmental medicine laboratories, leading a team of over 50 scientists who are advancing research in a vast array of diseases, including autism, Lou Gehrig’s, cancers, and gastrointestinal disorders. In 2020, he and colleagues proposed the “Biodynamic Interface Theory,” a novel theoretical framework that explains how the environment interacts with physiology in a dynamic way over time. This theory has the potential to shift the paradigm of environmental health research from a static to a more nuanced dynamic view of health throughout the life course. In Dr. Arora’s own research, environmental dynamic principles paved the way for his groundbreaking work on the tooth and hair biomarker to reconstruct the timing of exposure to various harmful chemicals and essential nutrients during pregnancy, and the biological response to those environmental factors. In November 2021, Mount Sinai Innovation Partners announced that the exposome sequencing technology platform developed by Dr. Arora and his team was licensed to a new spin-off company, for which he serves as founder and CEO.  Dr. Arora led this technology to an FDA Breakthrough Designation for an autism biomarker that can be applied at birth.Dr. Arora is the author of the book Environmental Biodynamics: A New Science of How the Environment Interacts with Human Health, published by Oxford University Press.

Patricia Ostrosky-Wegman, PhD

Dr. Patricia Ostrosky Wegman was named Director of the Institute of Biomedical Research in 2011 and was the director during two periods until 2019. Dr. Ostrosky is a Genetic Toxicologist with a PhD in Biomedical Sciences. She is a senior scientist in the Biomedical Institute. Her research has pioneered studies in individual susceptibility and established some of the bases in Immunotoxicology and Pharmacogenetics. She has been President of the Mexican Human Genetic Association and of the Latinoamerican Association of Mutagenesis, Teratogenesis and Carcinogenesis. She has served two times as a member of the council of the EMGS. Dr. Ostrosky Wegman has been awarded several awards: Premio Heberto Castillo. Medalla “Ricardo Miledi” en Salud, Biotecnología y Medio Ambiente, Premio UNAM Ciencias Naturales and the EMS Student Education Award.

Tonatiuh Barrientos Gutierrez, MD, PhD

Dr. Tonatiuh Barrientos Gutiérrez is Director of the Center of Population Health Research at the National Institute of Public Health, Mexico (INSP). He works in several areas of public health in Mexico, including COVID-19 and hepatitis, tobacco control, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, child development and teen pregnancy. Currently, Tonatiuh is invested in the identification of structural interventions to reduce addiction, chronic diseases and reproductive health inequalities. He currently leads the Mexico team of the project “SALURBAL: salud urbana en América Latina”. 

Dr. Barrientos is a member of the National Academy of Medicine in Mexico and a member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico. He received his medical degree from the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico and a doctoral degree in epidemiology at the University of Texas at Houston. He completed his postdoctoral training in social epidemiology at the University of Michigan.

Laura McGuinn, PhD

Dr. Laura McGuinn is an environmental epidemiologist who studies the health effects of urban chemical and non-chemical stressors with a particular focus on vulnerable populations, windows of susceptibility, and novel exposure assessment approaches. Her primary research interests include assessing the individual and joint impacts of air pollution and non-chemical stressors such as noise on physical and mental health outcomes throughout the life course; identifying critical windows of susceptibility in order to identify particularly susceptible subgroups; and elucidating stress-related biologic pathways in these environmental health associations. Dr. McGuinn received her MSc from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, PhD in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and completed postdoctoral training at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Institute for Population and Precision Health at the University of Chicago.

Tiffany R. Sanchez, PhD

Tiffany R. Sanchez, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Science at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Sanchez is a trained environmental and molecular epidemiologist. Her research broadly seeks to understand how environmental exposures influence population health. She employs a multi-disciplinary approach by incorporating diverse methodologies, including mixtures and multi-omics approaches and integrating data from multiple cohorts, to investigate two main research themes: understanding how metals affect lung disease development across urban and rural populations and identifying molecular signatures of environmental-related lung disease using a multi-omics approach. Her long-term goals are to extend the knowledge of environmentally-related chronic disease and identify prevention interventions.

María José Rosa, DrPH

María José Rosa, DrPH, is an environmental epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Rosa is originally from Tegucigalpa, Honduras and she received her BAs in Chemistry and French from Vassar College and her DrPH in Environmental Health Sciences from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Dr. Rosa’s research focuses on the role of both prenatal and early-life social (e.g., psychosocial stress) and physical (e.g., air pollution, metals) environmental factors impacting children’s respiratory health and identifying molecular biomarkers of these effects. She has been working in the PROGRESS cohort in Mexico City since 2016.

María Eugenia Gonsebatt, PhD

Dr. Maria Eugenia Gonsebatt is a full-time professor in the Department of Medical Genomics and Environmental Toxicology at the Institute of Biomedical Research. Her research focuses on the impact of environmental pollutants on health, the environment, and the cellular pathways modulated by the glutathione/tioredoxin systems in responding to toxic agents. Her research has described the geno and immunotoxíc effects of arsenic in human populations and showed the neurotoxicity associated with gestational exposure to this toxic element in animal models. In collaboration with Dr. Poirier of NIH and Dr. Phillips at King’s College, it was determined that the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)-DNA adducts in Mexico City inhabitants correlated with the levels of particulate material in air pollution. Dr. Gonsebatt has 83 peer-reviewed publications and has advised 41 pre and postgraduate students.  She is the former president of the Latin American Association of Environmental Mutagenesis, Carcinogenesis and Teratogenesis, Member of Mexican Society for Toxicology, Mexican Society of Biochemistry and Society of Toxicology. She studied Biology at the University of Buenos Aires and obtained a Master’s and PhD in Genetic Toxicology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Allan Just, PhD

Dr. Allan Just is an environmental epidemiologist and Associate Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His areas of research include children’s environmental health, remote sensing and air pollution modeling with satellite data, climate and health epidemiology, and epigenomics. His research investigates how better estimates of the quality of the air we breathe and the temperature in our neighborhoods reveal previously underestimated exposure disparities and health impacts. He uses NASA satellite products and spatiotemporal machine learning to reconstruct environmental exposures to fine particulate matter (PM2.5), air temperature, and humidity in epidemiologic health studies with cohorts and large registries across the US and Mexico. In 2021, he was awarded an NIEHS Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) R01 for his five year project entitled “Extreme temperature, humidity, air pollution and spontaneous preterm birth”.  After obtaining his ScB in Environmental Science at Brown, Dr. Just received his PhD in Environmental Health Science from Columbia University, and completed postdoctoral training in environmental epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health before joining the faculty of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2015.

Jorge Arturo Cardona, MD

Dr. Jorge Arturo Cardona has served as the Director of the National Institute of Perinatology in Mexico since 2014.  He previously held positions as the Head of the Neonatology Service at the Ángeles de las Lomas Hospital and as Head of the Regulatory Coordination of Reproductive and Maternal and Child Health at the Mexican Social Security Institute.  Dr. Cardona is a member of several associations, including the National Academy of Medicine and the Mexican Academy of Pediatric where he serves as the Coordinator of the Honor and Justice Commission.  He is also a member of the National Academy of Medical Education, the Latin American Federation of Perinatal Medicine’s Editorial Committee, and is a Delegate for Mexico to the International Society of the Perinatal Origin of Adult Diseases.  He has taught as a guest professor for more than 350 courses in pediatrics and neonatology nationally and internationally and is the author of more than 100 papers published in specialized journals, both in Mexico City and abroad.

Luz Claudio, PhD

Dr. Luz Claudio is a tenured professor of environmental medicine and public health at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.  She is also Chief of the Division of International Health. 

Dr. Claudio has a doctorate degree in neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  Her area of research focuses on how environmental factors affect health in vulnerable populations such as children and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.  She is best known for studies on health disparities in children and for her work in global health.

Dr. Claudio also directs several training programs through which she mentors aspiring scientists and medical professionals.  Dr. Luz Claudio is the author of the book: How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper: The Step-by-Step Guide.

Elizabeth Roberts, PhD

Dr. Elizabeth F.S. Roberts is a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, who investigates scientific and public health knowledge production and its embodied effects in Latin America and the United States. She currently collaborates with engineers and environmental health scientists in the United States and Mexico as part of two ongoing team-based projects in Mexico City that she directs: “Mexican Exposures: A Bioethnographic Approach to Health and Inequality” and “Neighborhood Environments as Socio-Techno-bio Systems: Water Quality, Public Trust, and Health in Mexico City” (NESTSMX). In these projects, she and her team trace the looping social, economic, biological, and technical processes that shape everyday life, health, and inequality in working class neighborhoods. One of the key aims of Professor Roberts’ current work is the development of bioethnography, a method that combines social and life sciences approaches in order to make better knowledge about health and inequality.

Anita Hardon, PhD

Trained as a medical biologist and anthropologist, Dr. Anita Hardon has been engaged in a range of multi-level, multi-sited, and often interdisciplinary studies on synthetic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, immunization, and AIDS medicines.  Her research has generated important ethnographic insights into the use of these technologies in diverse social-cultural settings, and their effects in everyday life.  Chemical Youth (ERC Advanced Grant, 2012) examined what chemicals and pharmaceutical substances, not only illicit narcotics, ‘do’ for youths, and resulted in innovative methods (“head to toe”) for studying the use of and exposure to chemicals (Hardon 2021). In 2022 Anita Hardon was awarded another ERC Advanced Grant),  Embodied Ecologies, which aims to furnish new fundamental biosocial knowledge about the complex webs of chemicals (both direct and indirect exposures) that make up people’s everyday lives and the social, economic, and political structures that perpetuate inequality. In this project, her team develops new ways of doing citizen science, where people affected by chemical pollution not only gather data for scientists but also help define research priorities. The project will result in practical harm reduction tool kits to gain traction through a network of cities seeking to improve the quality of their residents’ living environments.  Anita Hardon is currently chair of the Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation group of Wageningen University and Research, and Professor of Anthropology of Care and Health at the University of Amsterdam. She has published widely disseminated articles, special issues, and books (Chemical Youth, 2021 Palgrave Macmillan; Social Lives of Medicines, 2002 Cambridge University Press).