Brief Bio

Jennifer Pinto-Martin, PhD, MPH is the Viola MacInnes/Independence Professor in the Biobehavioral Health Sciences in the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing with a secondary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine. She currently serves as the Ombuds for the University. She is the former Executive Director of UPenn’s Center for Public Health, the former Director of the Master of Public Health Program, and has served as both a Department Chair and Chair of the University Faculty Senate.

Dr. Pinto-Martin began her career as an epidemiologist as the Project Director for the Neonatal Brain Hemorrhage (NBH) Study, a longitudinal study of neonatal brain injury in low birthweight infants. The NBH Study had over 20 years of continuous NIH support and conducted five separate assessments of the cohort. Dr. Pinto-Martin’s primary research focus is the epidemiology of autism spectrum disorder. She served as the Director and Principal Investigator of the Pennsylvania Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Research and Epidemiology (PA-CADDRE), one of six such centers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the etiology of ASD. PA-CADDRE is currently involved in data analysis from the Study to Explore Early Development (SEED), a multi-site, case-control study of the risk factors associated with ASD.