J. Richard Pilsner is a molecular epidemiologist committed to investigating how environmental and nutritional factors influence health outcomes via epigenetic processes. In the Fall of 2010, Dr. Pilsner started his first faculty job as an Assistant Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
During his three year tenure as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society (RWJHS) Research Fellow at the University of Michigan, Dr. Pilsner began to investigate the role of prenatal environmental exposures on epigenetic processes. His primary research focused on the Early Life Exposures in Mexico to EJ. Richard Pilsner, Ph.D., M.P.H.nvironmental Toxicants (ELEMENT) study (PI: Dr. Howard Hu), a multidisciplinary birth cohort study with the mission of investigating the influence of environmental toxicant exposures on the development and future health of the fetus. Specifically, Dr. Pilsner examined the role of epigenetics as a mediator of fetal lead exposure and subsequent adverse health outcomes, such as neurodevelopment, and how this relationship is modified by genetic polymorphisms in the one-carbon metabolic pathway. In other interdisciplinary collaborative projects, Dr. Pilsner also examined DNA methylation changes as a result of a broad range of environmental exposures such as methyl mercury, bisphenol A, and psychosocial stress as well as neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.