BBI Member Alison Paquette, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a member of the Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine. BBI: Can you tell us about how you got involved in your area of research within precision medicine? Dr. Paquette: I was always really interested in biochemistry and genetics, but I became especially excited about how to apply this to children’s health after I did an internship with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. While there, I learned about how infants and children are uniquely vulnerable to environmental chemicals, and how those influences can persist into adulthood. I saw this time period as actionable, because if you can intervene in childhood health outcomes, those impacts can persist for a lifetime. I decided to complete my PhD along these lines, working with Dr. Carmen Marsit, who looks at the developmental origins of health and disease, especially how the period of in-utero development affects childhood health. My research has been largely focused on the placenta and its long-term impacts on fetal health. This has led to a series of interrelated projects with Seattle Children’s Research Institute (SCRI) and the ECHO PATHWAYS consortium within the UW, mentored by an expert in children’s health and phthalate exposure, Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana.
