Alison earned her PhD in Environmental Sciences and Engineering with a minor in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill in 2013. She will join Dr. Bob Wright's laboratory at Mount Sinai School of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow in September. Alison holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia and an MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Dr. Sanders' research examines the potential health effects of metals in U.S. and international populations and aims to protect the health of susceptible populations by raising public health awareness of the global burden of toxic metals. Her doctoral research investigated the effects of in utero metal exposure and newborn health outcomes. Several of these projects included geostatistical mapping of arsenic and other metals across North Carolina, biomonitoring of metal levels in pregnant women, epidemiologic study of the association between private well metal levels and birth defects, and quantification of metal-induced epigenetic modifications in human heart cells as well as maternal and fetal biological samples.