Rebecca DeVries
Vice President and Senior Epidemiologist
I’ve always been an environmental health advocate, but this work became deeply personal when I learned that my local drinking water supply was contaminated with PFAS. Now my family and I, like many others, have questions about how environmental exposures might harm our health. That experience has strengthened my commitment to delivering rigorous, trusted science to help communities and decision-makers answer those questions.
Dr. Rebecca DeVries is an accomplished epidemiologist who routinely designs, implements, and evaluates research on the relationship between environmental and occupational exposures and adverse health effects. She has successfully managed numerous high-profile and scientifically complex projects requiring expertise in epidemiology, exposure assessment, risk assessment, advanced statistical modeling, database management, and risk communication. This work includes management of many projects on emerging and groundbreaking issues, ranging from wastewater-based epidemiology assessments of opioids, stimulants, and infectious disease in community and institutional settings to comprehensive reviews examining the connection between occupational heat exposure and heat-related illnesses and injuries.
As an expert on PFAS exposure and health risks, she served as co-investigator for a federal study that examined whether adults and children living in two communities with PFAS-contaminated drinking water had a higher prevalence of selected adverse health outcomes. For multiple PFAS biomonitoring programs, she helped develop study protocols, data management plans, and statistical methodologies. Rebecca also managed the first (2022 and 2024) Massachusetts statewide assessments of PFAS contamination in fish, shellfish, and invertebrates in surface waters; and she has adopted novel techniques to investigate PFAS contamination in sea foam and other challenging environmental matrices.
Rebecca is also a respected environmental health trainer and educator. She has prepared exposure assessment guidance and tools used by federal and state agencies; developed and led training courses on environmental health topics for government clients; and taught graduate-level courses in occupational epidemiology and environmental health as an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. She has published in the literature, presented at national conferences, and served as co-president of the New England chapter of the Society for Risk Analysis. She holds a B.S. in environmental science from Ithaca College and an M.S. and Sc.D. in epidemiology from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.