Emily Marques is a recent STEEP PhD graduate from Dr. Angela Slitt’s laboratory at the University of Rhode Island in the College of Pharmacy. Emily defended her Dissertation virtually in April of 2020. Emily’s research focused on investigating the role of diet on PFAS endpoints related to fatty liver disease. Throughout her 5 years at the URI, Emily conducted several animal studies in adults with establish non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and developmental studies that combined PFAS exposure with a maternal high fat diet. In addition, Emily also screened numerous PFAS for lipid accumulation in liver cells isolated form human donors. An important finding from her work was that exposure to a high fat diet can affect the amount PFAS that enter the liver, and a maternal high fat diet can increase partitioning of PFAS to mouse pups.

Since her defense, Emily has started a postdoctoral position at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, with Dr. Alicia Timme-Laragy.  The Timme-Laragy laboratory uses zebrafish to evaluate developmental toxicity to environmental toxicants. Emily is excited to learn about new model species to expand her expertise in environmental toxicology. She is currently working on a project to evaluate redox status during the development of the zebrafish liver and has recently submitted a fellowship grant to the National Institute of Health to investigate a novel mechanism for PFOS toxicity in zebrafish. Emily will also be teaching an Introductory Toxicology course virtually in the spring semester of 2021.