Brigitte  Pfluger

Brigitte Pfluger is a PhD candidate in Nutrition and Health sciences in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory Univeristy. She is a recipient of the competitive National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Graduate and Post-doctoral Training Environmental Health Science and Toxicology T32 Training Grant and is a Research Fellow with the Global Rice Research Foundation (2023-2024). She was also a Graduate Global Research Fellow for the Halle Institue for Global Research (2020-2021). Her research interests focus on the The use of targeted and untargeted metabolomics and biomonitoring coupled with dietary intake data to improve our knowledge of nutrition-envioronment interactions and metabolic pathways. The overall objective of her dissertation research is to examine the impact of multiple urine and dried blood spot metabolites from mother-infant pairs with child nutrition and development by addressing the following research aims and utilizing data from two distinct research efforts:

1) To examine the relationships between maternal and infant urinary biomarkers of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) exposure with infant birth outcomes and offspring growth and development in Rwanda, Guatemala, and Peru. (Household Air Pollution Intervention Network [HAPIN] Trial data)

2) To examine and establish changes in the dried blood spot (DBS) metabolome/exposome during critical windows of child growth in Guatemala. (Rice bran dietary intervention trials data)

Her efforts involve interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaborations between Emory University and Colorado State University (CSU). From a multi-country framework, her research seeks to improve scientific understanding of how PAHs, xenobiotics, and food component metabolites may influence early childhood growth and development. Using statistical modelling techniques for exposure science, Brigitte is examining associations between urinary biomarkers of PAH exposure in utero and year one of life with infant birth outcomes, child growth, and child motor, cognitive, language, and socio-emotional development. She worked with the CSU Bioanalysis and Omics Core to broadly develop a metabolomics / exposomics platform using robotics from dried blood spots in the laboratory.