Kelly K. Ferguson


Kelly K. Ferguson is an American public health researcher who is a Senior Investigator in the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She leads the Perinatal and Early Life Epidemiology Group, which studies how maternal exposure to chemicals impacts pregnancy and development. In 2021, she was awarded the inaugural Lou Guillette Jr. Outstanding Young Investigator Award.

Early life and education

Ferguson earned her Master's of Public Health in Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. She stayed in Michigan for her doctoral research, where she studied preterm birth in the United States. Preterm birth contributes to neonatal mortality and children's long-term health conditions. Her research showed that prenatal exposure to phthalates increased the likelihood of preterm birth. She used mass spectrometry to measure phthalate levels in urine samples.

Research and career

Ferguson was appointed to the faculty at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in 2015. She studies how exposure to chemicals in common consumer products impacts prenatal development. She has shown that these chemicals can cross placental and blood–brain barriers. She showed that phthalates, plasticizers found in commercial products impact birth outcomes. She has studied oxidative stress – imbalances between reactive and antioxidant oxygen species. Exercise can result in elevated levels of oxidative stress and antioxidant capacity describes how people respond to it. Ferguson believes that higher levels of phthalates and emotional stress during pregnancy elevates oxidative stress.
Ferguson has focused on complex mixtures of chemicals that often have different effects than the individual chemicals. To evaluate mixtures of chemicals, Ferguson developed an analytical method called "quantile g-computation,".

Awards and honors

In 2018, Ferguson was named the NIEHS Mentor of the Year. That year she was named one of the "Collaborative on Health and the Environment"'s top twenty Pioneers Under 40 in Environmental Public Health.
In 2021, Ferguson was awarded the inaugural Lou Guillette Jr. Outstanding Young Investigator Award by
Healthy Environment and Endocrine Disruptor Strategies.

Selected publications

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