Bio

My research focuses on understanding the relation of environmental, dietary, and lifestyle factors with fertility and fecundity in men and women.

While I have focused on many aspects of diet and fertility, I have published extensively on the benefits of folic acid, at levels well above the current recommendations, in terms of preventing anovulation and incident pregnancy loss and increasing the success of infertility treatment. One of my current NIH grants is focused on extending this work to examine the potential interaction between diet, air pollution, and fertility among women. Specifically, using validated spatial-temporal regression models of air pollution exposure, validated dietary questionnaires, personal air pollution monitors, and novel metabolomics biomarkers, this grant will determine the extent to which air pollution and its specific constituents affect fecundity, the potential for diet to modify these associations, and the possible mechanisms of action using a cohort of women undergoing in vitro fertilization at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Another core area of research focus is on maternal body weight and fecundity. My research in this area has helped quantify the impact that weight loss could have on preventing subfecundity and adverse pregnancy outcomes particularly among women who are overweight and obese in adolescence. Finally, I am a leading researcher on diet and male fertility with my research in this area helping highlight the impact that diet, physical activity, and body weight can have on markers of male fertility such as semen quality, reproductive hormones, and live birth.