Post-Doctoral Associates

Dr. Esen is a postdoctoral researcher from the Department of Clinical Epidemiology (DCE) at Aarhus University in Denmark. She is currently undertaking a two-year research stay at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). Dr. Esen holds a Master's degree in statistics and a PhD in health sciences from Aarhus University. Her research focuses on data management, data analysis, and statistical and epidemiological methods, with a particular emphasis on causal inference methods and pharmacoepidemiology. Her current research involves developing algorithms for target trial emulation. She has been involved in numerous national and international research projects, demonstrating a strong track record of collaboration. This includes working with researchers at Stanford University and the Karolinska Institute, as well as contributing to large-scale international initiatives such as the Nordic Pregnancy Drug Safety Study (NorPreSS). Her work has been recognized through publications in high-impact journals. She was awarded the Best Flash Talk Prize in 2020 and the prestigious Tove Nilsson Research Prize in 2024 for significant contributions to the field of epidemiology.

Pengfei is a doctoral graduate and postdoc associate in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Medicine (MBBS) with honors research distinction in public health at Sun Yat-Sen University. Her research interests include environmental chemical exposure, early-life disease origin, birth cohort, maternal and child health. She received Macmillan International Dissertation Research Fellowships on Exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and child development. She has served as a reviewer for peer-reviewed journals such as American Journal of Epidemiology and Current Pollution Reports.

Exposomics covers the interaction between environmental exposures, including from contaminants, diet, and drugs, with biological consequences. My specific interests within exposomics are to develop mass spectral and informatics approaches to more comprehensively characterize both the exposome (exogenous compounds) and endogenous (biological) molecules. I am also interested in the interaction between exogenous compounds and endogenous compounds which can lead to novel compounds, for example DNA adducts, small molecule adducts, and oxidation products. As oxidation products are a nearly universal indication of biological stress, developing tools to improve the coverage of oxidized molecules will aid in numerous applications. Through my future research, I aim to develop techniques that more comprehensively covering molecules which are indicative of our exposures and biological response, allowing researchers to determine mechanisms and markers linking health and the environment. Ideally, the research and mentoring during my career will result in changes in policy and education, and development of new treatments, which will reduce harmful exposures and their consequences. Current focuses include PFAS software development, exposome monitoring using passive sampling and non-targeted mass spectrometry software solutions, and lipidomics.

Haoran is a doctoral student  in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. Her research interests center around the understanding of how environmental exposures during critical periods of early life development may affect the risk of health conditions in pregnancy complications, neonatal outcomes, and childhood neurodevelopment. With backgrounds of environmental science and engineering in her undergraduate study, Haoran is also interested in exposure related research like chemical mixtures and geospatial analysis.