
Damaskini Valvi, MD, PhD, MPH
About Me
Dania Valvi, MD, PhD, MPH, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health where she is a member of the Institute for Exposomic Research and co-Director of the MS in Epidemiology program at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. An environmental epidemiologist, Dr. Valvi is examining how early life and life-course environmental exposures impact health, with a particularly focus on the effects of chemicals and nutritional factors on children’s health and development. She employs novel ‘omics’-based approaches to facilitate the understanding of disease mechanisms and identification of biomarkers for the prevention and early detection of environmental disease. Her recent research in prospective population studies in Spain, the Faroe Islands, United States and elsewhere, has focused on the health effects of chemicals classified as endocrine disruptors, including perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), organochlorine pesticides, phenols, phthalates, and metals. She is Co-Investigator on multiple NIH-funded research projects focused on the environmental origins of disease, and the Principal Investigator on a NIEHS funded project examining the metabolic effects and mechanisms of toxicity of early life exposure to PFAS.
Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Dr. Valvi was a research scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship. During the period 2008-2014 she conducted environmental health research at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL, currently known as 'ISGlobal') in the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB). Dr. Valvi is a member of many professional societies, including the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE), The Obesity Society (TOS), the Endocrine Society, and the International Society for Children’s Health and the Environment (ISCHE). She was a guest editor of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health’s Special Issue ‘Maternal and Child Environmental Health and Disease’ and has served as ad-hoc reviewer of manuscripts and study protocols for the CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and several international scientific journals in the research fields of Epidemiology, Environmental Sciences, Pediatrics, Endocrinology & Metabolism, and Clinical Medicine.