Professional Profile
Dr. Brianna Rivera is a toxicologist in ToxStrategies’ Health Sciences Practice. She earned her Ph.D. in Toxicology from Oregon State University’s Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology. Dr. Rivera has an interdisciplinary background in exposure science and mechanistic toxicology. Her dissertation research focused on simplifying complex environmental mixtures by integrating toxicity data, using in vivo, in vitro, and in silico model systems or exposure data (i.e., consumer habits, demographics, environmental factors) to prioritize chemicals of interest. Specifically, she applied these chemical prioritization approaches to identify important combinations of consumer product-related chemicals from personal or household sampling and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons identified at a contaminated site. During her academic career, she completed internships in both the regulatory (U.S. EPA Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment) and private (consulting) sectors.
Dr. Rivera has experience utilizing new approach methodologies to answer complex research questions. This expertise includes synthesizing mechanistic data from in vitro, in vivo, and epidemiological studies, for use in hazard assessments, using mechanistic constructs such as key characteristics of carcinogens, adverse outcome pathways (AOPs), or mode of action (MoA). She also has experience with using open source and in-house R packages to pull, synthesize, and visualize high-throughput and mechanistic data for use in hazard assessments. Furthermore, she has been involved in planning and implementing systematic review from the scoping phase to critical appraisal and synthesis for use in a weight-of-evidence framework.