Beate Ritz joined the faculty of the School of Public Health at UCLA in 1995 and is Professor of Epidemiology with co-appointments in the Environmental Health department at the UCLA School of Public Health and in Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine; she is a member of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH), the Southern California Environmental Health Science Center (SCEHSC), co-directed the NIEHS-funded UCLA Center for Gene-Environment Studies of Parkinson’s disease and is the Interim Director for the APDA Center of Excellence in Parkinon’s Disease Research. Dr. Ritz received her MD and a PhD in Medical Sociology from the University of Hamburg Germany in 1983 and 1987; she was a research fellow and resident at the Psychiatric University-Hospital in Hamburg from 1987-1989, and received an MPH degree from UCLA in 1993 and doctoral training and a PhD degree in Epidemiology in 1995 from UCLA.