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Georgia Kayser, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Global Health in the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and on the steering committee of the University of California, Planetary Health Center. Her environmental health research focuses on adolescent and children’s environmental health, water quality, environmental determinants of risk, and environmental health disparities. In her research she has explored the factors that limit access to safe and sustainable drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) services, globally; identified environmental determinants of risk, including pesticide and microbiological contaminants in drinking water; and examined environmental health disparities that result from gender, racial/ethnic, and geographic inequalities. Her methodological expertise is in the use of cross-sectional studies to explore WaSH risk factors for disease across countries, formative research to identify interventions, experimental and quasi-experimental methods to test specific interventions, and geospatial analysis to understand patterns of exposure. She has conducted research in over 20 countries across the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia with funding from government, international organizations, and private sector sources. She is currently working on a NIEHS funded K01 career award that explores pesticide exposures, mental health and endocrine disruption among children growing up near pesticide spray sites in Ecuador.

Prior to UCSD, Dr. Kayser was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. She holds a PhD from The Fletcher School at Tufts University where she concentrated in Development Economics and has a B.S. in Policy Analysis from Cornell University.