Geneva Centre for Autism

Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned environmental epidemiologist who has published widely on environmental exposures, including metals, pesticides, air contaminants and persistent pollutants like PCBs, their interactions with nutrition, and their effects on pregnancy, the newborn, and early child development.

For the last ten years she has focused her efforts on understanding the environmental causes of autism. In this presentation, she will begin by reviewing evidence regarding time trends in the occurrence of autism, describe the state of knowledge, as of ten years ago, about factors that alter risk for autism spectrum disorders, and provide up-to-date information on what has been learned in the last decade.

Dr. Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, is Chief of the Division of Environmental Health, and Professor of Epidemiology, MIND (Medical Investigations of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute at the University of California, Davis. She is an internationally renowned environmental epidemiologist with over 200 scientific publications addressing environmental exposures, including metals, pesticides, air pollutants and endocrine disruptors, their interactions with nutrition, and their influences on pregnancy, the newborn, and child development. In 2002, she turned her attention to autism, launching the CHARGE Study, the first large, comprehensive population-based study of environmental factors in autism, and a few years later, MARBLES (Markers of Autism Risk in Babies – Learning Early Signs), to search for early environmental and biologic predictors of autism, starting in pregnancy. She also collaborates on the multi-site EARLI study, and is Director of the Northern California Center for the National Children’s Study. Dr. Hertz-Picciotto sits on editorial boards for four major scientific journals in epidemiology, environmental health, and autism, including as Associate Editor of Environment International and has held appointments on state, national and international advisory panels to organizations such as the Food Safety in Europe Working Group, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Toxicology Program, California Air Resources Board, and NIH Interagency Coordinating Committee on Autism Research. She has been elected President of two of the largest professional epidemiology societies; chaired the Expert Panel on CDC’s Vaccine Safety Database for Studies of Autism and Thimerosal; chaired National Academy of Sciences Panels on Agent Orange and Vietnam Veterans and more recently the Institute of Medicine Committee on Breast Cancer and the Environment. Dr. Hertz-Picciotto has taught epidemiologic methods on four continents and mentored 60 doctoral and postdoctoral scholars. This year she received the Goldsmith Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology.