Career Development Program: 2025-2026 Center Scientists
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Yali Luo, PhD, MS
Postdoctoral Fellow, Environmental Health Sciences
Yali Luo, PhD, MS, is a current Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. She received her PhD in Environmental Toxicology from the School of Energy and Environment at City University of Hong Kong. Dr. Luo’s research focuses on the role of the gut-brain axis in modulating the neurotoxicity of environmental toxicants. During her term as an M-LEEaD Center Scientist, with the mentorship of Dr. Hao Wang, she will work specifically on novel mechanistic insights into Cd-induced neurotoxicity.
Sara Stein, PhD, LMSW
Research Assistant Professor, Health Behavior and Health Equity
Sara Stein, PhD, LMSW, serves as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity. She earned her PhD in Social Work and Clinical Psychology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the School of Public Health, both at the University of Michigan. She also holds a Master’s of Social Work Clinical License in the State of Michigan. Dr. Stein’s research focuses on the transmission of effects of stress and trauma from mother to children prenatally, postnatally, and when women are parenting young children. As an M-LEEaD Center Scientist under the mentorship of Dr. Karen Peterson, she will be studying the link between early life metal and psychosocial exposure mixtures with physiological stress during adolescence, an understudied period of development in which stress pathways undergo critical development.
Sara Stein, PhD, LMSW’s profile
