Vishal Midya

Vishal Midya

Assistant Professor, Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

About me

I am an assistant professor of Environmental Health and Biostatistics in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Climate Science at Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai. Along with Dr. Shoshannah Eggers, I serve as the co-director of the Microbial Exposomics Lab.

My overarching research interest lies in developing and applying interpretable machine learning models for environmental health research. My primary research focuses on (1) developing and applying models of temporal biodynamics of elemental signals that predict childhood or adolescent neurodevelopmental outcomes and (2) how the gut microbiome modifies these effects.

Previously I did a Post Doctoral Fellowship with Damaskini Valvi at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, where I developed integrated statistical models to study how early life and life-course exposure to environmental chemicals impact cardio-metabolic health outcomes, with a particular focus on the mixture-effects and interactions of endocrine disrupting chemicals. I received PhD from Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at the Pennsylvania State University under Jason Liao and Arthur Berg. I wrote my thesis on Frequentist and Bayesian hypothesis testing with a focus on meaningful effect sizes to enhance reproducibility in scientific studies. Before joining Penn State, I completed B.Sc. (Bachelor of Science) in Statistics from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, India and M.Stat (Masters of Statistics) from Indian Statistical Institute. I am a serious Matcha green tea aficionado. Outside of studies, I enjoy the outdoors, long-distance running, rowing, and volleyball.

My current research can be broadly divided into three categories:

  1. Machine-learning in environmental health
  2. Exposomics, microbiome and human health
  3. Elemental Biodynamics

Funding: I am supported by several NIH grants -

  1. NIEHS R21 - ES037112 (MPIs Vishal Midya (contact) and Shoshannah I. Eggers)
  2. NIEHS R35 - R35ES030435 (PI Manish Arora)
  3. NIEHS HHEAR program - U2CES026555 (PI Susan Teitelbaum)
  4. NIEHS P30 - P30ES023515 (PI Robert Wright)
  5. NIEHS R01 - ES033688 (PI Dania Valvi), ES035773 (PI Dania Valvi)
  6. NIMH R01 - MH122447 (MPI Thomason & Trentacosta)