Amy Padula is an Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco with the Program for Reproductive Health and the Environment. She received her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University in the Department of Pediatrics.

As an environmental and perinatal epidemiologist, Amy Padula’s research examines environmental exposures during pregnancy and their effects on pregnancy outcomes including preterm birth, birth defects, fetal growth and maternal conditions. Her expertise is maternal and child health resulting from exposures during pregnancy to air pollution (most recently wildfire smoke) and endocrine disrupting chemicals. She also examines social factors including neighborhood socioeconomic status and psychosocial stress that can amplify the effects of environmental exposures.

During her fellowship she will work with the PRINCE Cohort, a pregnancy study in Hamburg led by Dr. Petra Arck, where they follow pregnant women and their children and measure health outcomes. She will quantify per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in maternal blood and determine if levels of these chemicals affect children’s immune systems as measured by vaccine responses.

Her collaboration partner is Petra Arck, professor of Experimental Fetomaternal Medicine at Universität Hamburg.

Amy Padula’s HIAS Fellowship is funded by the Joachim Herz Foundation.