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Associate Professor of Public Health, University of California, Irvine

Dr. Veronica Vieira is an Associate Professor of Public Health at University of California, Irvine. Dr. Verónica Vieira is an environmental epidemiologist interested in spatial analysis methods and exposure modeling. She received her environmental engineering and public health training at MIT, Stanford, and Boston University.She earned a MS in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University and a DSc in Environmental Health from Boston University School of Public Health. Her research is focused on spatiotemporal modeling of exposures in environmental epidemiology. Dr. Vieira has been an investigator with the Boston University Superfund Research Program for over 10 years where she examines the relationship between mixtures of chemical and non-chemical stressors and neurobehavioral outcomes in children. Dr. Vieira has an extensive knowledge of GIS, groundwater modeling, cluster detection methods, and on persistent environmental contaminants including tetrachloroethylene (PCE, a dry-cleaning solvent), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, a perfluorinated compound (PFC) involved in the manufacturing of Teflon), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs, a common class of flame retardants). As part of a multi-university community health project, Dr. Vieira collaborates on a large historical reconstruction of PFOA exposures among residents of the mid-Ohio valley to study potential health effects. These communities are located near a large chemical plant that emitted PFOA into the local air and water for several decades. Components of this work include improving methods for geocoding rural addresses using GIS and examining the relationship between PFOA serum levels and drinking water concentrations. A major focus of Dr. Vieira’s research is the spatiotemporal analysis of birth defects and infant bronchiolitis in relation to PM2.5 exposure using generalized additive models (GAM) in a geographic framework. Her research also includes method development for spatial epidemiology such as disease mapping, cluster detection, and space-time interactions. Dr. Vieira collaborates with researchers at BUSPH, Harvard University, the University of Southern Denmark, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique in Rennes France, and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Sweden to apply disease mapping to various health outcomes including cancer, birth outcomes, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Experience

  • –present
    Associate Professor of Public Health, University of California, Irvine