Rosalind J Wright, MD, MPH

Rosalind J. Wright, MD, MPH, is the Dean for Public Health and Chair of the Department of Public Health, as well as the Horace W. Goldsmith Professor in Life Course Health Research in the Departments of Public Health, and Environmental Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Wright is Co-Director of the Institute for Exposomic Research, Director of Conduits, the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program at Mount Sinai. She is an internationally recognized clinician-scientist and life course epidemiologist with transdisciplinary training in molecular biology, environmental health, and stress mechanisms. Her expertise encompasses environmental exposure assessment, genetics, epigenetics, and psychosocial stress measurement in environmental health studies.

Dr. Wright’s research has focused on the role of social risk and resiliency factors (e.g., psychosocial stress, social networks, socioeconomic factors) alone or in conjunction with physical environmental factors (e.g., ambient air pollution, diet/nutrition, allergens, chemicals) in programming chronic disease risk. Her work considers antecedents of chronic disease and a range of developmental outcomes in early childhood, including prematurity, birth weight, neuropsychological and cognitive development, sleep, asthma, lung function, and obesity. In 2012, Dr. Wright established the Physiological Assessment of Children’s Environmental Risk (PACER) laboratory, focused on assessing key regulatory biological response systems in pregnant women, infants, and children. Her research has been supported by uninterrupted funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for 23 years. Dr. Wright received a Bachelor of Science in Human Genetics and her medical degree from the University of Michigan. She is highly committed to training the next generation of clinical translational scientists and has mentored 25 predoctoral and 33 postdoctoral students.

Dr. Wright was awarded the inaugural program for Scholars in Environmental Pediatrics, Reproductive Health, and Life Course Science K12 program funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She has served on numerous national and international committees and is currently Co-Chair of the Steering Committee for the Precision Intervention for Severe and/or Exacerbation-Prone Asthma Network at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.