{"id":7852,"date":"2025-05-20T12:43:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T16:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/?p=7852"},"modified":"2025-05-20T12:44:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T16:44:14","slug":"not-done-yet-meet-dr-emily-werder-the-radiology-researcher-balancing-brain-scans-and-baseball-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/2025\/05\/not-done-yet-meet-dr-emily-werder-the-radiology-researcher-balancing-brain-scans-and-baseball-games\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cNot Done Yet\u201d: Meet Dr. Emily Werder, the Radiology Researcher Balancing Brain Scans and Baseball Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AWhen you first meet\u00a0Emily Werder<\/strong>, new assistant professor in the Department of Radiology\u2019s Research Division, you might assume she\u2019s laser-focused on decoding the brain’s secrets\u2014and you\u2019d be right. But give it a beat, and you\u2019ll also find someone who once aspired to be Erin Brockovich, enjoys a good walk-up song, and would choose a heaping bowl of ice cream as her final meal.<\/p>\n

Dr. Werder is an\u00a0environmental epidemiologist<\/strong>\u00a0who studies how everyday chemical exposures can shape brain development, especially in children. She is part of a growing group of interdisciplinary researchers at UNC who straddle multiple fields. She studies how everyday chemicals\u2014things we all encounter in our air, water, or maybe even shampoo\u2014can affect brain development. But it\u2019s not just chemistry, imaging, or numbers. It\u2019s all the above.<\/p>\n

Her path to radiology wasn\u2019t planned but instead evolved organically. \u201cI\u2019d been working on a K99 grant at NIEHS, looking at environmental exposures and brain development using MRI data from the Baby Connectome Project at the BRIC,\u201d Werder explains. \u201cI was already working with many people in the department, including Weili Lin, Gang Li, Tengfei Li, Zhengwang Wu, Hongtu Zhu. When the opportunity to join the department came up, it felt like a natural fit. I was already doing the work\u2014it just made sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Radiology may seem like a departure for someone who once taught in Durham public schools, but Werder has never followed a straight line. Originally from Michigan, she landed at UNC as an undergrad, not quite knowing what she wanted to be\u2014maybe a doctor, perhaps a teacher, maybe something in between. A single class in epidemiology at UNC\u2019s\u00a0Gillings School of Global Public Health shifted her course.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore COVID, no one even knew what epidemiology was,\u201d she laughs. \u201cI thought maybe I\u2019d be like Erin Brockovich. That was my only frame of reference.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a few years teaching in\u00a0Durham Public Schools, she returned to UNC for a\u00a0master\u2019s in health Behavior and later joined the Epidemiology Department for her PhD. \u201cPretty early on, I realized epidemiology was the direction I wanted to go,\u201d she says. And go she did, with projects spanning everything from air pollution and adult brain health to the neurological impact of early-life chemical exposures. Along the way, she fell in love with data\u2014the kind that links invisible molecules to measurable differences in brain function.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s a typical day like for an environmental epidemiologist? According to Emily, it\u2019s a lot of time spent on the computer. \u201cI\u2019m not in a lab pipetting things\u2014I\u2019m analyzing large datasets from collaborators. The chemists give us exposure measurements from analyzing urine from infants; the radiologists process brain MRIs and change them into numbers. Then, I bring those together to ask: Are these exposures connected to how the brain develops? If so, how?\u201d<\/p>\n

While her work may be highly technical, Werder herself is decidedly down-to-earth. She describes herself in one word as \u201ceasygoing,\u201d which might explain how she juggles cutting-edge research and raising\u00a0three<\/em>\u00a0young kids (ages four, seven, and nine), and right now, most of her free time is spent outdoors and at the ballfield. \u201cIt\u2019s baseball season,\u201d she laughs. \u201cSo most of the music I hear these days is walk-up songs at the kids\u2019 games.\u201d If she had a superpower, she says it would be the ability to be in multiple places simultaneously, though she admits flying would be way more fun.<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s not decoding datasets or cheering from the bleachers, Werder brings a refreshing realism to the academic world. She\u2019s candid about the unpredictability of research: \u201cThere\u2019s going to be wins, and a lot of losses. It\u2019s a numbers game. You keep going. Talent helps, but luck and determination matter more than people think.\u201d<\/p>\n

For aspiring epidemiologists, Emily offers valuable advice: \u201cThere\u2019s a certain amount of luck involved in research. Talent matters, but persistence and resilience are just as important. There are a lot of setbacks\u2014it\u2019s part of the system. You can\u2019t tie your self-worth to a single project. Your life needs to be bigger than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re still not sure what kind of person Emily Werder is, ask her best friend, who\u2019d describe her as \u201cfunny, easygoing, and slow to respond to text messages.\u201d If she ever writes a memoir, she already has the title picked out:\u00a0Not Done Yet<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Werder\u2014we’re lucky to have her on board!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you first meet\u00a0Emily Werder, new assistant professor in the Department of Radiology\u2019s Research Division, you might assume she\u2019s laser-focused on decoding the brain’s secrets\u2014and you\u2019d be right. But give it a beat, and you\u2019ll also find someone who once aspired to be Erin Brockovich, enjoys a good walk-up song, and would choose a heaping … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83776,"featured_media":7831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"layout":"","cellInformation":"","apiCallInformation":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[83,91,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-department-news","category-homepage-news","category-in-the-news","odd"],"acf":[],"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1384\/2025\/05\/RSH_EPI_WerderEmily_web.jpg","featured_image_medium":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1384\/2025\/05\/RSH_EPI_WerderEmily_web.jpg","featured_image_medium_large":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1384\/2025\/05\/RSH_EPI_WerderEmily_web.jpg","featured_image_large":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1384\/2025\/05\/RSH_EPI_WerderEmily_web.jpg","featured_image_thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1384\/2025\/05\/RSH_EPI_WerderEmily_web-150x150.jpg","featured_image_alt":"A female with red curly hair, blue eyes is smiling at the camera. She is wearing a pink blouse, a black cardigan, and is standing on an outdoor covered walking bridge.","category_details":[{"name":"Department News","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/category\/department-news\/"},{"name":"Homepage News","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/category\/homepage-news\/"},{"name":"IN THE NEWS","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/category\/department-news\/in-the-news\/"}],"tag_details":[],"_links_to":[],"_links_to_target":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83776"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7854,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7852\/revisions\/7854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/radiology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}