CERCH has the distinct advantage of being centralized in University of California Berkeley and the San Francisco Bay Area, both of which offer a breadth of opportunities and access to critical and emerging technologies and practices. These opportunities, in combination with our track record of excellence, help to attract some of the greatest researchers in their respective fields, across a broad spectrum of multidisciplinary specializations. Our team is one that values scientific rigor in the utmost, while maintaining a strong culture of collegiality, transparency and a collaborative spirit.
The CERCH Team
Lucia Calderon, MPH MCP
UCSF Study Coordinator, CHAMACOS Maternal Cognition
Lucia Calderon is a research coordinator with UC San Francisco and works on the CHAMACOS Maternal Cognition Study. She received her Master of Public Health and Master of City Planning from UC Berkeley in 2021 and was a Graduate Student Researcher on the LUCIR Study before beginning her current role.
Rosemary Castorina, PhD
Project Scientist
Dr. Castorina is an environmental health scientist whose research has focused on developing methods to quantify toxicant exposures and evaluate subsequent health risks. She has authored publications on a range of topics including pesticides, flame retardants, emerging pollutants like PFAS and VOCs, black carbon, synthetic food dyes, and hormone growth enhancers. At present, Dr. Castorina is a principal investigator for two air quality biomonitoring studies in the San Joaquin Valley: the Stockton Air Pollution Exposure Project (SAPEP) and the Biomonitoring Component of the San Joaquin Valley Pollution and Health Environmental Research Study (BiomSPHERE).
Donna Dahrouge, MPH
Assistant Director
Ms. Dahrouge is the Assistant Director at CERCH. She manages the administrative functions at the center including financial oversight, grant management, human resources, IT infrastructure and cybersecurity, and facilities and operations. She also has administrative oversight of field office operations. She serves as the liaison between CERCH and all our collaborators worldwide. Ms. Dahrouge holds a Masters of Public Health from UC Berkeley.
Julianna Deardorff, PhD
Associate Professor, Maternal and Child Health Program; King Sweesy and Robert Womack Endowed Chair in Medical Science and Public Health
(510) 642-7334
Licensed clinical psychologist with expertise in pubertal development and adolescent health, and is Associate Professor in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. Dr. Deardorff is a co-investigator on the CYGNET study, an NIH-funded longitudinal study of Bay Area girls’ pubertal development, and has partnered with Zero Breast Cancer in San Rafael on projects related to teen education and participatory research with young people. She is PI of a NIDA-funded R01 to examine early adversity, stress reactivity, puberty, and alcohol/drug and sexual behaviors at ages 14 and 16 years in the CHAMACOS cohort. Dr. Deardorff is the co-author of the book, The New Puberty: How to Navigate Development in Today’s Girls (Rodale Books).
Brenda Eskenazi, PhD
Director
The Distinguished Jennifer and Brian Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Maternal and Child Health and Epidemiology at UC Berkeley and the Director of the Center for Environmental Research and Community Health (CERCH). She is a neuropsychologist and epidemiologist whose long-standing research interest has been the effects of toxicants including lead, solvents, environmental tobacco smoke, dioxin, and pesticides on human reproduction (both male and female) and child development.
Bob Gunier, PhD, MPH
Associate Director
Dr. Gunier is an environmental health scientist with specific expertise in exposure assessment, environmental epidemiology, biostatistics and the use of Geographic Information Science (GIS). He previously worked with multi-disciplinary teams at the California Department of Public Health and Cancer Prevention Institute of California studying the effects of environmental exposures to pesticides and air pollutants on childhood and breast cancers in California. His current work focuses on the effects of environmental exposures on neurodevelopment and respiratory function in children.
Kim Harley, PhD
Associate Director for Health Effects Research
Associate Adjunct Professor of Maternal and Child Health in the School of Public Health, UC Berkeley. She is a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist whose work focuses on the association between exposure to common endocrine disrupting chemicals (including pesticides, flame retardants, bisphenol A, phthalates, and parabens) and fertility, birth outcome, child development and timing of puberty. Dr. Harley engages youth to address environmental injustices in their communities by training them to conduct high quality research and advocacy activities. Her recent interests include women's exposure to and health effects of chemicals in personal care products and cleaning products.
Kimberly Hazard, MS
PhD Student
Kim is a doctoral student in Environmental Health Sciences at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on exposures in early childhood environments. Kim is the project coordinator for the NIEHS Healthy Children & Environments Study being conducted in 88 child care centers in Northern California.
Nina Holland, PhD
Director, School of Public Health Biorepository; Director, Children’s Environmental Health Laboratory; Adjunct Professor, UC Berkeley School of Public Health
Dr. Holland has a background in genetics with extensive experience in molecular epidemiology, human cytogenetics and reproductive toxicology. Dr.Holland’s main scientific interest is in biomarkers of children’s environmental health.
Katie Kogut, MPH, MSc
CHAMACOS Study Coordinator
(510) 642-9431
Ms. Kogut is the CHAMACOS Study Coordinator. She oversees all aspects of data collection for CHAMACOS, including development of questionnaires and study instruments, study protocols, and staff training. She is particularly interested in factors affecting children’s neurodevelopment and behavior. Ms. Kogut holds a Masters of Public Health from UC Berkeley and a Masters of Psychology from University College in London.
Ana Maria Mora, MD, PhD
Assistant Researcher
Dr. Mora is a physician and an environmental and occupational epidemiologist whose work has focused on how exposures to environmental toxicants contribute to health outcomes in vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, children, and farmworkers. More recently, her research has also focused on the mental health and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic among farmworkers in California and Mexico, the estimation of specific behavioral risks from space radiation, and on new chemical exposures and health effects of low-income Latino communities. She is actively involved in the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) and the International Society for Children’s Health and the Environment (ISCHE). In 2021-2022, Dr. Mora served as an expert in the Environmental and Occupational Working Group of the Latin America and the Caribbean Code Against Cancer, an effort led by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO).
Jillian Paul
MPH Student
Jillian is a MPH student at UC Berkeley in epidemiology and biostatistics. She worked as a student assistant at CERCH during her undergraduate degree and will continue her work as a Graduate Student Researcher on the CHAMACOS studies.
Stephen Rauch, MPH
Data Analyst and Manager
Mr. Rauch works on the VHEMBE, CHAMACOS, and SEVESO studies. He studies the effect of in utero exposure to chemicals to children's health outcomes, including neurodevelopment and obesity, in addition to cleaning study data and preparing datasets for analysis.
Sharon Sagiv, PhD
Associate Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology
Dr. Sagiv is faculty in the Division of Epidemiology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She is an environmental epidemiologist with research interests focused on the impact of early life exposure to environmental toxicants on child development, with an emphasis on neurodevelopment. Much of Dr. Sagiv’s work focuses on prenatal exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals (PFCs), heavy metals, and agricultural pesticides with cognitive and behavioral development in children.
Marcella L Warner, PhD
Full Researcher, Research Epidemiologist at UC Berkeley School of Public Health; Director of Seveso Studies, CERCH
Dr. Warner's research focuses on the effects of exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds in women and children including chronic, reproductive, and obesogenic health outcomes. She has published extensively on exposure to, and health effects of, dioxins and related persistent organic pollutants. She is a co-investigator on the Seveso Women’s Health Study (SWHS), a cohort study of the health of the female population exposed to dioxin as a result of an industrial explosion in 1976, and the Seveso Second Generation Health Study, which examines the health of the SWHS children exposed to dioxin in utero. She is a co-investigator on the CHAMACOS Maternal Cognition Study,an NIH-funded longitudinal study of psychosocial adversity and environmental exposures across the lifecourse and cognition and brain health at middle age.
Collaborators
Abbey Alkon, RN, PNP, PhD
Professor of Family Healthcare Nursing at the UCSF School of Nursing
Professor at the UCSF School of Nursing, Investigator at the Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health, and Director of the California Childcare Health Program (CCHP). She is a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and epidemiologist with years of experience conducting community-based research in child care settings. Her research includes studies on the effect of adversity on children’s psychobiology and health. Dr. Alkon is the Chair of the American Public Health Association’s Maternal Child Health Section Child Care Committee.
Asa Bradman, PhD, MS
Senior Scientist
Dr. Asa Bradman is an expert in exposure assessment and epidemiology focusing on occupational and environmental exposures to pregnant women, children, and farmworkers living in agricultural communities. In 1998 he co-founded the Center for Environmental Research and Children's Health (CERCH) in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and in 2020 Dr. Bradman joined the faculty at UC Merced. Dr. Bradman leads exposure and epidemiologic studies examining pesticides, flame retardants, metals, emerging pollutants, VOCs, indoor air quality, and other contaminants. He participates in extensive community outreach and education and interfaces with other scientists, state and federal agencies, policy makers, and industry. He is past member and Chair of the California Biomonitoring Scientific Guidance Panel (appointed by Governors Schwarzennegger (2007) and Brown (2013)). In 2017 he was appointed by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to a 5 year term on the USDA National Organic Standards Board.
Salinas Field Office
Norma Morga
CHAMACOS Field Coordinator
(831) 783-2671
Ms. Morga has worked on the CHAMACOS Study since its inception, recruiting pregnant women; collecting biological samples and conducting questionnaires at delivery; conducting neurodevelopmental assessments with children throughout their infancy, toddlerhood, and preschool and early school years; and interviewing mothers at multiple visits. She now coordinates all Salinas-based data collection and serves as the main point of contact for all participants.
Jose Camacho
Community Outreach Coordinator and Co-Principal Investigator of the COSECHA Study
(831) 783-2672
Mr. Camacho is a long-time resident of the Salinas Valley and has worked with CHAMACOS since its inception. He is an expert trainer and has presented hundreds of talks and workshops about environmental health and children. His presentations focus on results of the CHAMACOS study, pesticide exposure prevention, environmental health in child care, and healthy homes. Mr. Camacho has helped to organize and collect environmental samples from homes, fields, and child care facilities, and inspected thousands of Salinas Valley homes. He played an integral role in the implementation of the COSECHA Study, investigating Salinas Valley teens’ ambient exposures to pesticides applied to the fields near their homes, and now serves as the Co-Principal Investigator (with Dr. Kim Harley) of that Study.