Akhgar Ghassabian, MD, PhD

Akhgar Ghassabian, MD, PhD is an investigator and Assistant Professor at Departments of Pediatrics, Population Health, and Environmental Medicine, New York University School of Medicine. Her research interests center on identifying environmental exposures that contribute to the etiology of developmental disabilities in childhood. Prior to joining New York University 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). 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 (2013). During her doctoral and postdoctoral training, Dr. Ghassabian was actively involved in birth cohort studies in Europe and in the U.S., i.e., Generation R and Upstate KIDS. She was also a collaborator on European epidemiological consortia examining the effect of nutrition (NUTRIMENTHE) and air pollution (ESCAPE) on children’s neurodevelopment. Dr. Ghassabian is the recipient of the Rubicon Award from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in 2014 for a project on the brain basis of autism.