Dr. Katie Fiorella is an assistant professor in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health and Section Chief for the Food Systems & Health concentration in the Master of Public Health (MPH) Program. She received both her MPH and PhD from the University of California, Berkley, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, before joining the MPH Program in 2017.

Dr. Fiorella is an environmental scientist and epidemiologist whose research aims to understand how environmental change impacts people’s livelihood, food, and nutrition security. Her work focuses on global fisheries and the households that are reliant on the environment to access food and income.

“My work aims to foster a deeper understanding of how ecological and social systems interact, the ways communities and households adapt to and mitigate environmental change, and the links between human well-being and ecological sustainability,” says Fiorella.

Dr. Fiorella’s initial focus on ecology piqued her interest in understanding the interdependent relationship between people and their environment. This in turn led to an interest in food systems and their impact on public health.

“We have lots of broad notions of how healthy ecosystems and healthy people go together, and I’ve been interested in unpacking the mechanisms through which these things link up.”

When asked about her favorite part of teaching, Fiorella says she enjoys helping students learn how to think about complex food systems as a whole, making sense of them and the ways they contribute to health outcomes and disparities.

“Seeing students grapple with the complexity of these systems, and begin to break them down and think about actions they can take to improve health outcomes has been inspiring. It has been particularly rewarding to see students go on to tackle this on an even deeper level in their practicums and capstones.”

Written by Katie Lesser and Zoe Wakoff