Rebecca A. Simmons is the Hallam Hurt Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is the Director of the NIH Children’s Environmental Health Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and UPENN, the Deputy Director of the NIH funded Center for Excellence in Environment and Toxicology, and PI of the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Simmons received her undergraduate and MD degrees at the University of Arizona and her postdoctoral training at the University of California at San Francisco. She joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. Her main research interests are focused on the causal mechanistic links between the intrauterine milieu and type II diabetes and obesity in the adult with a focus on epigenetics and mitochondria function.  She is author and co-author of more than 150 scientific research publications, reviews and book chapters.