Dr Laura-Jayne Ellis BSc, MSc, PhD, MRSC

Dr Laura-Jayne Bradford (Ellis) is an environmental toxicologist with a research programme that bridges mechanistic understanding of nanomaterial-induced biological effects with translational outcomes for risk assessment, regulatory frameworks, and sustainable material design. Her work focuses on elucidating biological initiating events and adverse outcome pathways triggered by engineered nanomaterials, including novel insights into chronic, multigenerational toxicity in model organisms and implications for environmental and human health 

Research Leadership & Major Projects 

Dr Bradford plays a strategic role in several high-impact, interdisciplinary research programmes. She is also a Senior Research Fellow on INSIGHT: Integrated Models for the Development and Assessment of High Impact Chemicals and Materials, a UKRI Horizon Europe-supported initiative developing integrated predictive frameworks for chemical and material assessment. 

Laura has also worked across several interdisciplinary multi-partnered research project including EU Horizon Europe project  INSIGHT, EU collaborative FP7 and H2020 projects; Nanodefine, ACEnano NanoCommons, RiskGONE, NanoFASE, NanoMILE, NanoSolveIT. Laura has also worked collaboratively on NanoBEE and the Highlights Topics from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). 

Laura has recently secured competitive funding from the Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA) under the ‘Climate Change and Health’ theme to develop an interdisciplinary research programme examining how climate change amplifies pollution exposures and, in turn, affects childhood cognitive development and educational outcomes.

This project advances a novel Climate-Pollution-Cognition framework, integrating environmental science, toxicology, climate modelling, public health, education research, and social inequality analysis. The work addresses a critical but underexplored gap: while climate change and pollution are often studied separately, there is limited integrated research examining how climate-driven processes (e.g., heatwaves, droughts, altered hydrology, wildfire events, atmospheric stagnation, and extreme precipitation) modify the distribution, concentration, and bioavailability of pollutants, and how these altered exposures impact neurodevelopment and learning.

The project brings together expertise across:

• Atmospheric science and climate modelling - to understand how changing meteorological conditions influence pollutant dispersion, transformation, and exposure intensity.
• Environmental toxicology and mechanistic biology - to identify biological pathways linking metal and particulate exposures to neurodevelopmental outcomes.
• Public health and epidemiology - to assess population-level impacts and vulnerability patterns.
• Education and developmental science - to examine measurable impacts on learning, cognition, and long-term life trajectories.
• Sustainability and policy research - to translate findings into actionable frameworks that inform adaptation strategies and environmental regulation. 

This project’s mission is to address sustainability challenges at the nexus of climate systems, environmental quality, and human wellbeing. Importantly, the research programme pushes beyond material-specific nanotoxicology toward a broader systems-level understanding of how environmental change shapes lifelong health and cognitive potential. This will develop an integrated, policy-relevant research agenda that connects mechanistic toxicology with real-world educational and societal outcomes, strengthening climate-health research and advancing interdisciplinary sustainability science.