Wajeeha U.

Wajeeha has deep expertise in perinatal epidemiology, environmental health research, and quantitative methods. Her dissertation investigates how maternal psychological distress and environmental exposures jointly shape severe neonatal morbidity. Her research draws on large-scale pregnancy cohort data to examine how prenatal stress, air pollution, and genetic factors interact to affect birth outcomes. Her work spans epidemiologic study design, linear mixed-effects trajectory modeling, mediation analysis, and gene-environment interaction using GWAS data. Wajeeha has authored and co-authored peer-reviewed publications in journals such as Diabetes Care, Environmental Health Perspectives, and Science of the Total Environment. 

In addition to her dissertation work, Wajeeha leads the UROP Interdisciplinary Research Team. The team conducts satellite-based heat exposure analysis along freight corridors in Los Angeles, using NASA ECOSTRESS data to understand environmental health disparities in vulnerable communities. This work reflects her commitment to research that is both methodologically rigorous and socially meaningful, and it has strengthened her hands-on experience supervising, training, and supporting emerging researchers.

Wajeeha has received multiple honors, including the Health Equity Research Scholarship and the Distinguished Public Impact Fellowship, awarded in recognition of her commitment to research advancing health equity and community well-being. She also serves as a teaching associate at UC Irvine, bringing clarity and structure to complex quantitative and methodological topics.

As a research mentor, Wajeeha is genuinely invested in each student's growth. She guides mentees through every stage of the research process, from formulating a research question and conducting a systematic literature review to analyzing data, interpreting findings, and producing polished, publication-ready work. Her technical strengths include proficiency in R, SAS, Python, and ArcGIS, and she is skilled at breaking down complex statistical and methodological concepts into clear, accessible steps.

Wajeeha's approach to mentorship is grounded in her belief that learning to think like a researcher is one of the most transformative skills a student can develop. She knows what it takes to navigate the demands of rigorous graduate-level research while managing real life, and she brings that understanding and empathy into every mentoring relationship. Her goal is to help students complete a project, find their scholarly voice, and develop their intellectual independence.