Current Pre-doctoral Trainees
Willow Crawford-Crudell, Biostatistics
Willow is a first year PhD student in the Department of Biostatistics. Her research interests include statistical methods that can be used to answer questions related to environmental health. Prior to starting at UW, Willow worked as a Data Scientist at Mathematica, a public policy research company. Most of her work at Mathematica existed at the intersection of data science and health equity in public health. When she’s not studying or working, you can find her walking her dog, trying a new baking recipe, or rock climbing.
James Peng, Biostatistics
James is a third year PhD student in the Department of Biostatistics. His research interests include causal inference, global health equity, infectious disease, and environmental health. Prior to UW, he worked as a data scientist at the University of California, San Francisco and as a middle school math teacher in San Jose, CA. James received his undergraduate degree in math and chemistry at Dartmouth College and his master's degree in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Elijah Scott, DEOHS
Elijah is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Science. He is currently working under Dr. Judit Marsillach, researching the systematic effects of air pollution exposure. His research interests include air pollution, environmental mixtures, and biomarkers of exposure. His project is focused on how air pollution causes various adverse health outcomes due to systemic oxidative stress and inflammation. In his free time, Elijah enjoys climbing, hiking, and traveling.
Charlotte Talham, Biostatistics
Charlotte is a second year PhD student in the Department of Biostatistics. Her interests include causal inference and statistical methods for environmental exposures. Prior to joining the University of Washington, she received her undergraduate degree in mathematics, statistics and economics at the University of Florida and worked at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities as a post-baccalaureate research fellow.
Katelin Teigen, DEOHS
Katelin Teigen is a first year doctoral student in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences. Her research interests include climate and health, air quality modeling, environmental epidemiology, community engagement, and environmental justice. Prior to coming to UW, she earned her MPH in Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health, during which she investigated the mental health impacts of climate change and extreme heat. Outside of academia, Katelin enjoys hiking, biking, backpacking, climbing, skiing, surfing, and embarrassing herself at karaoke.
Current Postdoctoral Trainees
Brennan Baker, DEOHS
Brennan completed his PhD in Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University in 2022. He is an environmental molecular epidemiologist investigating the links between prenatal exposures and children’s health and their underlying molecular mechanisms. His PhD work was the first to examine human functional brain phenotypes in relation to prenatal acetaminophen, showing that acetaminophen exposure measured in meconium was associated with child Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and that the association was mediated by functional brain connectivity measured via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Follow-up work uncovered that prenatal acetaminophen may increase risks for low birthweight and reduced gestational age, but that these adverse birth outcomes do not mediate links with child ADHD. Serving as a co-investigator on a pilot grant, Brennan conducted the first study of the effects of prenatal acetaminophen exposure on genome-wide gene expression (via RNA-sequencing) in the brain (using a mouse model). As a BEBTEH postdoctoral fellow, Brennan is working under the mentorship of Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana. Gene expression studies are uncommon in observational epidemiology, and Brennan’s postdoctoral work is at the leading edge of methods development integrating epidemiologic and transcriptomic approaches. He developed the only existing RNA- sequencing analysis pipeline allowing for multiple imputation of missing covariate data and conducted the largest analysis of the relationship between prenatal psychological stress and the placental transcriptome to date. Spanning beyond prenatal pharmaceuticals, Brennan’s work has also examined the impact of prenatal exposures to ubiquitous environmental chemicals including phthalates, parabens, and flame retardants.
Emilia Vignola, Epidemiology
Emilia (Emma) Vignola completed her PhD in Community Health and Health Policy at the City University of New York School of Public Health in 2023. Her multi-methods dissertation drawing on both primary and secondary data focused on understanding and mitigating the health influences of precarious employment among food chain workers. She is interested broadly in how work and employment quality influence health and health equity, as a way of incorporating questions of power into her public health research and practice. While pursuing her doctorate she worked as a fellow at the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute on research and advocacy related to food labor and food justice. She also collaborated on a multi-country qualitative study on non-standard employment and health as part of the Precarious Work Research consortium. As a BEBTEH postdoctoral trainee, she will work with Dr. Anjum Hajat on research projects related to measuring precarious employment and its health impacts, and with Dr. Marissa Baker on an evaluation of a mentorship program for women in construction.