Dr. Leyre Notario-Barandiaran received her BS at Miguel Hernández University in Pharmacy/Chemistry in 2014, an MPH at Miguel Hernández University in Public Health in 2015, and a PhD at Miguel Hernández University in Public Health, Medical and Surgical Sciences in 2022. Dr. Leyre Notario’s primary research interest is nutrition, particularly dietary patterns and their association with metabolic outcomes, such as BMI, and also metals exposure. During her doctoral training, Dr. Notario conducted and participated in the validation of numerous food frequency questionnaires (FFQ) for the INfancia y Medio Ambiente (INMA) and Nutrition in Early Life and Asthma (NELA) birth cohorts. These FFQs have been used to assess the association between diet and several health outcomes in children and adolescents. During the last year of her program, Dr. Notario began working in the field of environmental epidemiology, evaluating the association between a healthy dietary pattern, the Mediterranean diet, and exposure to metals in children. Dr. Notario employed novel statistical techniques to evaluate the effect of the metal mixtures and the effect of the foods as a whole. Building on her previous work, in her postdoctoral position, she wants to explore the association between dietary patterns and environmental exposures in the New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study.
Prof. Dr. Margaret R. Karagas is the inaugural chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Geisel School of Medicine and director of the Centers for Molecular Epidemiology and Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research at Dartmouth College. As part of her deep commitment to interdisciplinary training, Professor Karagas collaboratively established an innovative, cross-disciplinary postdoctoral and graduate program in quantitative biomedical sciences (QBS) that integrates epidemiology, bioinformatics, and biostatistics and mentors diverse investigators at all stages of their career. Her research interests encompass interdisciplinary studies that seek to illuminate the causes of human disease by investigating emerging environmental exposures, host factors, and mechanisms that impact health from infancy to adult life. Her studies focus on under-studied, rural populations while contributing to large multi-center efforts, such as the NIH-funded Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Study, which includes over 90,000 participants across the USA. She collaborates globally and has served on international consensus panels and committees for the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the European Food Safety Authority, the US National Institute of Health, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, among others.
