Kari C. Nadeau is an American physician-scientist and academic specializing in allergy, asthma, immunology, and exposomics. She is dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health (2026 - present) and the former John Rock Professor of Extreme Weather and Population Studies and chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is an adjunct professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also an adjunct clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford University. Nadeau maintains a clinical practice in allergy, asthma, and immunology for adults and children across multiple institutions. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the WHO Air Pollution and Health Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) and the U.S. EPA Children's Health Protection Committee.
Education After graduating from Haverford College with a degree in biology, Nadeau attended Harvard Medical School via the Medical Scientist Training Program (NIH), and received a PhD in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology and an MD in 1995. She then started an internship and residency in pediatrics. From 1998 to 2002, she worked in the field of biopharmaceuticals and led clinical research to obtain FDA approval for two biologics in the field of Autoimmunity and Oncology, respectively. From 2003 to 2006, Nadeau was a resident and a fellow in Asthma, Allergy, and Immunology. She also did a postdoctoral fellowship in human immune tolerance mechanisms in asthma and allergy.
Career Nadeau began her academic career at Stanford University, where from 2002 to 2005 she served as a Clinical Instructor for Physical Examination in the General Pediatrics division of the School of Medicine. She advanced to Instructor in the Department of Pediatrics from 2006 to 2008 and, in parallel, became a faculty member of the Stanford Institute of Immunity, Transplantation, and Infectious Disease, as well as the Multidisciplinary Program in Immunology at the School of Medicine. In 2008 she was appointed Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Immunology and Allergy, along with a courtesy appointment as Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology. Between 2020 and 2023, she received a courtesy appointment as Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, and from 2021 to 2023 she was affiliated with the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. In 2023, Nadeau joined the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as the John Rock Professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Health. She also became a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in 2024, while retaining her role as adjunct clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford University. At Harvard, she directed an interdisciplinary program integrating environmental exposures research with immunology, clinical medicine, and public health. On July 1, 2026, Nadeau began her tenure as eighth dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Research Nadeau's research spans the intersections of environmental exposures, immunology, allergy, and clinical intervention. Her work integrates exposomics—the comprehensive study of lifetime environmental exposures—with immunologic and epigenetic analysis, focusing on public health, pediatric allergy, and climate-related health challenges. She has combined basic laboratory science with clinical studies and policy engagement, aiming to translate mechanistic insights into improved prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies for environmentally-mediated diseases.
Environmental Exposures, Extreme weather and Immunity Her research examines wildfire smoke, air pollution, microplastics, and other climate-driven exposures, with a focus on high-risk populations such as children, pregnant individuals, first responders, and underserved communities. Over more than three decades, she has studied how environmental and epigenetic factors contribute to immune dysfunction, incorporating exposomics to evaluate the cumulative effects of multiple exposures over time in adults, children, and pregnant women
Food Allergy Mechanisms and Clinical Trials A major component of Nadeau's research has focused on the prevention and treatment of food allergies. While at Stanford, she directed the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research, where she led clinical trials in oral immunotherapy aimed at inducing immune tolerance, particularly in children at risk for single and multiple food allergies. Among these efforts was the phase 2 POISED study, which evaluated sustained unresponsiveness in patients who had completed peanut oral immunotherapy and were monitored for immune biomarkers and long-term outcomes.
Cellular and Epigenetic Mechanisms of Immune Tolerance Nadeau's translational studies have examined how immune cell populations change in response to therapeutic interventions. Her team has characterized the differentiation of CD8⁺ T cells associated with tolerance induction following oral immunotherapy, work published in Nature Communications. She has also documented epigenetic methylation changes in genes such as IL4, IL10, and IFNγ, linked to air pollution exposure during pregnancy. In parallel, she has investigated how particulate air pollutants can alter monocyte polarization and promote "trained immunity" in the context of asthma, identifying potential pathways through which environmental exposures exacerbate disease severity.
Systems and Population-Level Immune Responses Beyond cellular mechanisms, Nadeau has contributed to large-scale studies examining how environmental exposures affect health at the population level. Her research has included mapping associations between pollutant exposure and cardiovascular risk markers, such as blood pressure in adolescents, and analyzing the cellular environment of the lung in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using single-cell RNA sequencing. She has also participated in international collaborations on the development of World Health Organization air quality guidelines, incorporating immunological evidence into public health recommendations. Additional publications have addressed the growing burden of allergic disease in the context of extreme weather, including the implications of longer pollen seasons, increased particulate air pollution, heat waves, and biodiversity loss on respiratory and allergic conditions worldwide.
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