Department of Nutrition Student Profile

Audrey Gaskins
SD student, Department of Nutrition

Working with both the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Audrey works in the emerging field of nutrition and reproductive health. She is studying both females and males, prompted by recent scientific understanding that men are implicated in more than 30 percent of infertility instances. She is involved in studies at HSPH and at the infertility clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital. This research investigates nutrition together with other factors, including environmental substances, physical activity, and stress.

Audrey’s dissertation research focuses on folic acid and fertility. While widely recognized as important to females due to its protective effects on neural tube defects, folic acid has not been widely studied in men. Her eventual goal is to help infertile women achieve successful pregnancies, perhaps reducing the number who need to seek assisted reproduction.

An undergraduate mechanical engineering major and premedical student, Audrey decided on public health research as a result of a two-year postbaccalaureate fellowship at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

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*Video Interview Under Construction*