Raquel Silva

Raquel is an environmental health scientist with a diverse background in environmental engineering, management, and policy. With more than 15 years of experience, she provides support to different public sector clients in systematic literature reviews of toxicological and epidemiological studies, the development of flagship reports on animal toxicology studies of different chemicals, data analysis, and project management.

Raquel worked for several years in quality and environmental management and business excellence, and completed an MBA program with a focus on entrepreneurship and innovation management. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her doctoral research involved global assessments of the impact of air pollution and climate change on human health, including air quality modeling and spatial data analysis.

After completing her Ph.D., she conducted air quality simulations for the UNC Institute for the Environment and climate and health vulnerability mapping for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Raquel’s postdoctoral research focused on eco-health and exposure to chemicals in consumer products. She conducted literature reviews and statistical data analysis, developed a survey module on subjective factors influencing the personal experience of nature, and collaborated on a pilot study of residential exposure, including home visits to conduct participant training and support video self-ethnography on risk perception.

Since 2018, as a lead health scientist at ICF, Raquel has managed and contributed to several projects for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and other federal agencies. She provides support to systematic literature reviews, and the development of evidence maps, to characterize the scientific literature relevant to exposure to different chemicals, including the definition of the search strategy and development of the literature review protocol, literature screening, evaluation of study quality and risk of bias, data extraction, development of visualizations, and preparation of text synthesis. Additionally, she supports the National Toxicology Program coordinating an international workgroup responsible for developing a tool for risk of bias assessment. Raquel is an experienced data analyst, writer, and reviewer of scientific manuscripts and technical reports.