Meet the Directors
Robert Wright, MD, MPH
Co-Director, Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research
Professor and Ethel H. Wise Professor and Chair, Environmental Medicine and Public Health
Professor, Pediatrics
Robert Wright, MD, MPH, is a pediatrician, medical toxicologist and environmental epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is the Ethel H. Wise Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health and Founding Co-Director of the School’s Institute for Exposomic Research. Dr. Wright founded and directed the Senator Frank Lautenberg Laboratory of Environmental Health Sciences at Mount Sinai until 2019, and now serves as Associate Director. Dr. Wright studies complex chemical mixtures and the role of social factors in modifying or mediating chemical toxicity. He has published over 200 research studies and has served on numerous national committee/advisory boards, including the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council (NAEHSC) since September 2018. Prior to joining Mount Sinai in 2012, Dr. Wright was Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He received his medical degree at the University of Michigan Medical School and completed his residency in Pediatrics at Northwestern University, as well as fellowships in Emergency Medicine, Medical Toxicology, Environmental Epidemiology, and Genetic Epidemiology.
Rosalind Wright, MD, MPH
Co-Director, Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research
Dr. Wright holds the Horace W. Goldsmith Professorship in Children’s Health Research and is Professor of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Dean for Translational Biomedical Sciences. She received a bachelor of science in Human Genetics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and she obtained her medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1989, graduating Cum Laude.
During medical school, she was selected to spend a year as a Howard Hughes Research Scholar at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland further pursuing research in molecular biology. Following medical school, Dr. Wright completed an internship in Internal Medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She then moved to Chicago, Illinois to complete her residency in Internal Medicine at Northwestern University where she also served as Chief Medical Resident. She then returned to Boston to complete fellowship training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Harvard Medical School. As part of this training she obtained a Masters in Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. In 1997, she joined the clinical faculty at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the research faculty at the Channing Laboratory, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health where she remained on the faculty until she was recruited to Mount Sinai as Vice Chair of Clinical & Translational Research in the Department of Pediatrics in August 2012.
Manish Arora, BDS, MPH, PhD, FICD
Director, Laboratory for Innovation in Exposomic Precision Medicine
Director, The Senator Frank R. Lautenberg Environmental Health Sciences Laboratory
Edith J. Baerwald Professor and Vice Chair, Environmental Medicine and Public Health
Manish Arora, BDS, MPH, PhD, FICD, is the Edith J. Baerwald Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he directs the Laboratory for Innovation in Exposomic Precision Medicine and the Senator Frank R. Lautenberg Environmental Health Sciences Laboratory. Dr. Arora is an environmental epidemiologist and exposure biologist. His research focuses on the effects of prenatal and early childhood chemical exposures on lifelong health trajectories. In 2019, he was awarded a prestigious Outstanding Investigator Award through the NIEHS Revolutionizing Innovative, Visionary Environmental Health Research (RIVER) program in support of his research on a theory that proposes the existence of a dynamic interface between the environment and human physiology over someone’s lifetime. Dr. Arora is known for his innovative work on biomarkers that utilize human baby and permanent teeth to reconstruct the timing of exposure to various harmful chemicals and essential nutrients, and the biological response to those environmental factors. Dr. Arora developed the method of using teeth to reconstruct prenatal and early-life exposures to nutrient and toxic elements in children with neurological conditions. Methods such as tooth analysis have provided the Mount Sinai Institute for Exposomic Research a wide-net approach to observe multiple exposures and patterns at a time. His methods are being applied to the study of outcomes that are national health priorities, including autism, schizophrenia, and Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). In 2017, he was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) by the office of President Obama. He graduated with a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2006, and undertook postgraduate fellowship training at the Harvard School of Public Health.