Alexandra Maertens, B.Sc., Toxicologist
Alexandra Maertens graduated from Excelsior College with a B.Sc. in English and Sociology in 1999, winning the Nyquist Memorial Award. Ms. Maertens then spent time working at the National Cancer Institute and the Environmental Law section of Vinson & Elkins, before entering the doctoral program in the Toxicology division of the Department of Environmental Health Science at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health. Ms. Maertens has also traveled extensively, spending time in Asia and Europe and is multi-lingual, speaking Mandarin, Russian and French.
While at Johns Hopkins, her research initially focused on the effects of aluminum on iron trafficking and oxidative stress in astrocytes. Later research at Johns Hopkins involved the development of a database to integrate high-throughput data from multiple lab groups on systematically generated mutant histone phenotypes as well as modification sites. As part of this project, Ms. Maertens designed and programmed a user interface that combined molecular visualization with data display, and developed a text-mining method to facilitate database annotation. This project resulted in HistoneHits, the first database of its kind, which was published in Genome Research. Since her time at Johns Hopkins, Ms. Maertens has earned a post-graduate certificate in Data Mining from the University of California, San Diego and continues her interest in computational toxicology, mathematical modeling, and data-mining.
Since joining CERM, Ms. Maertens has participated in the EPA Sustainable Futures training workshop. She provides human health hazard assessment and evaluation of multiple substances both for the Sustainable Futures Program and other programs.
She will apply her knowledge and experience to the evaluation of chemicals for TSCA PMN submissions, Canadian NSN submissions, and other U.S. and global initiatives such as HPV (high production volume) chemicals and REACH.