Lida Chatzi, MD, PhD

Biography

Dr Chatzi is a physician-environmental epidemiologist  and Professor with tenure of Environmental Health at Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California (USC). She leads an interdisciplinary program of research focused on advancing our understanding of how exposure to environmental chemicals affect human health. Overall, her investigations have focused on the health effects of environmental toxicants classified as endocrine disruptors, including perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), organochlorine pesticides, phenols, phthalates, and metals. She currently leads four NIEHS-funded studies examining exposure to environmental pollutants and metabolic health outcomes (R01ES029944, R01ES030691, R01ES030364, R21ES029681). She is the Director of the USC Center for Translational Research on Environmental Health (USC-R-TEN) which conducts translational research on the influence of environmental pollutants on health outcomes by integrating human population-data and experimental study designs. She is also the Deputy Director of the P30 Southern California Environmental Health Science Center funded by NIEHS and I am leading efforts to increase diversity in environmental health sciences. She has coordinated international projects and developed an emerging body of literature examining the impact of PFAS exposure on metabolic health, using innovative study designs, including high-throughput approaches for exposure assessment, exposure mixtures, and integration of multi-omics biomarkers. One of these papers was selected as a NIEHS paper of the year for 2020, while another one was featured in Environmental Health Perspectives 2022 PFAS collection, a curated list of the most impactful PFAS articles over the past 5 years. In support of this work, she is leading an interdisciplinary NIEHS-funded project measuring the impact of PFAS on longitudinal changes in glucose metabolism, insulin sensitivity, and beta-cell function in cohorts in Southern California (R01ES029944) and on the improvement of fatty liver disease after pediatric bariatric surgery in an innovative “natural” quasi-experimental design (R01ES030691).  She has mentored dozens of undergraduate and more than 30 pre-and postdoctoral trainees and junior faculty, and I am the Director of the Career Development Program for SCEHSC, role in which I have acquired extensive experience as formal and informal mentor to junior faculty and postdoctoral fellows.