Meredith Sarah Shiels (born May 6, 1982) is an American cancer epidemiologist who researches cancer risks in people with HIV. She is a senior investigator at the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

Life

Meredith Sarah Shiels was born May 6, 1982, in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

, Pennsylvania to Judy and Stuart Shiels. She completed a B.S. in Biobehavioral Health in 2004 from the

Schreyer Honors College The Schreyer Honors College (or SHC) is the honors program of the Pennsylvania State University. Founded in 1980 as the University Scholars Program, it was expanded and renamed in 1997 in response to a $30 million gift by William and Joan Sch ...

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

. Her honor's thesis was titled, ''Effects of 24-hour smoking abstinence and tobacco smoking on salivary cortisol levels and self-reported craving in men and women''. Laura Cousino Klein was her advisor. She earned a M.H.S. (2006) and Ph.D. (2009) in cancer epidemiology from the

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the public health graduate school of Johns Hopkins University, a private university, private research university primarily based in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded as the Johns Hopkins ...

. Her master's thesis was titled, ''Cigarette smoking behavior in relation to variation in three genes involved in dopamine metabolism: Catechol-O-methyltransferase, Dopamine Beta-Hydroxylase and Monoamine Oxidase-A''. Shiels' dissertation was titled ''AIDS-defining and non-AIDS-defining cancers in HIV-infected individuals''. Anthony J. Alberg was her master's thesis advisor and Stephen R. Cole was her doctoral advisor. She joined the

(NCI) Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch (IIB) as a Cancer Research Training Award postdoctoral fellow in 2009, and was promoted to research fellow in 2011. Shiels became a tenure-track investigator in 2016 and was promoted to senior investigator and awarded

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

(NIH) scientific tenure in 2021. Her research program focuses on quantifying cancer risk and burden in people living with HIV, estimating the impact of risk factors on changing cancer rates over time, and understanding rising rates of premature mortality in the United States.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shiels, Meredith Living people Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health alumni National Institutes of Health people 21st-century American women scientists American women epidemiologists American epidemiologists Cancer epidemiologists 1982 births Scientists from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania State University alumni