Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology, Environmental Health, and Neurology
University of California, Los Angeles

Beate Ritz, MD, Ph.D., is a Professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health with co-appointments in Environmental Health Sciences and Neurology at the UCLA, SOM; and a member of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. She co-directed the NIEHS-funded Center for Gene-Environment (GxE) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) at UCLA that included neuroscientists, human geneticists, and clinicians. She initiated the field of air pollution and pregnancy outcome research in the mid-1990s. Her lab has studied the effects of occupational and environmental toxins focusing on air pollution and pesticides, developing geographic information system (GIS) based exposure assessment tools and more recently omic tools to discover biomarkers for environmental factors impacting pregnancy and reproductive outcomes (gestational disorders, adverse birth outcomes, placenta function) and neurodevelopment (autism). Dr. Ritz served on multiple National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine (NAS-IOM) committees, U.S. EPA panels, and the Scientific Advisory Board for the California State Air Toxics Assessment program. She has served as President of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE in 2018-19). In 2022, she received the Society for Epidemiology Research (SER) Ken Rothman Career Achievement Award for scientific innovation in research or teaching of epidemiology.