DrValentina Quintero Santofimio

Dr Valentina Quintero Santofimio is an epidemiologist at Imperial College London’s National Heart and Lung Institute and a Colt Foundation Research Fellow. She completed her PhD in Clinical Medicine at Imperial College London, specialising in the occupational epidemiology of chronic airflow obstruction. She also holds an MSc in Molecular Medicine from Imperial College London and a BSc in Biomedical Science.

Her research focuses on the occupational and environmental determinants of respiratory health, with particular interests in small-airways obstruction, chronic airflow limitation, disease progression, and the interaction between workplace exposures and genetic susceptibility. Her current fellowship investigates the molecular signatures of small-airways obstruction and their relationship with occupational exposures.

Before undertaking her PhD, Valentina worked as a Research Assistant in Medical Statistics at the National Heart and Lung Institute, where she contributed to analyses using UK Biobank data to examine occupational exposures and small-airways obstruction. Her subsequent research has drawn on both UK Biobank and data from the multinational Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease study to investigate how occupational exposures, independently and in combination with genetic variants, influence respiratory symptoms, lung function, disease progression, and mortality.

Valentina is actively involved in the scientific community through research publication and teaching on MSc programmes. She has also contributed to initiatives including the Global Respiratory Health Blog and the UK and Ireland Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Society, where she serves as Secretary. Her work has been published in leading respiratory and public health journals, and she has received several awards, including presentation and poster prizes at international conferences and travel awards from respiratory and epidemiology societies.