Aderonke Akinkugbe, PhD, MPH

Aderonke (Ronke) Akinkugbe, BDS, MPH, PhD, a public health dentist and chronic disease epidemiologist, is Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  She is a member of the Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research and its NIEHS-funded Center on Health and Environment Across the LifeSpan (HEALS).

Dr. Akinkugbe’s research broadly examines how environmental factors affect oral diseases as well as modifiable risk factors to improve population health outcomes. More specifically, she explores psychosocial and environmental determinants of poor oral and systemic health outcomes across the lifecourse, including the role of prenatal exposures on children's oral health. This approach recognizes how certain components of the exposome, or the totality of environmental exposures from conception onward impact health.

She previously held positions at the Virginia Commonwealth University before joining Icahn Mount Sinai and was named among Icahn’s BioMedical Laureates in 2022.  Dr. Akinkugbe has received several awards for her work, and she is on editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of the American Dental Association.  She has a PhD in Epidemiology from the Gillings School of Global Public Health of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed her dental public health residency at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.  She holds a BDS in Dental Surgery from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and an MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University.