Akhgar Ghassabian, MD, PhD

Akhgar Ghassabian, MD, PhD, is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and an investigator at NYU Langone’s Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards.

Dr. Ghassabian obtained her medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and completed a master’s and a PhD in epidemiology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. During her doctoral training, Dr. Ghassabian gained expertise in psychiatric epidemiology and pediatric population neuroimaging, focusing on early influences such as maternal endocrine disruption and inflammation on brain development and psychopathology. Prior to joining NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Dr. Ghassabian was the Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) fellow at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), during which she received additional training in life course epidemiology and advanced methods for longitudinal data analysis.

At NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Dr. Ghassabian’s research focuses on identifying environmental exposures that contribute to the etiology of developmental disabilities and psychopathology. She is particularly interested in brain influences of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and air pollution. In her research, she applies a wide range of research tools, for example biomonitoring, wearables, and brain magnetic resonance imaging, as well as study designs, for example observational cohorts and natural experiment design, to understand how environmental contaminants influence human health across the life course. Her work is embedded in large pediatric cohorts including the Generation R Study, Upstate KIDS, and NYU Children’s Health and Environment Study (NYU CHES).

Dr. Ghassabian’s research is funded from grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. She is the recipient of the Rubicon Award from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (2014), the Robin/Guze Young Investigator Award from the American Psychopathological Association (2019), and the NARSAD Young Investigator Award (2021).