is an Attending Epidemiologist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City. Her core research focus is on breast cancer and gliomas and on understanding cancer risk and progression in order to identify those at highest risk because of gene carrier status, environmental exposures, or a combination of both. Dr. Bernstein is the Principle Investigator of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded international 24-center Women’s Environmental Cancer Radiation and Epidemiologic (WECARE) Study which was specifically designed to examine the interaction of radiation exposure and genetic predisposition in breast cancer, especially radiation-associated contralateral breast cancer (CBC) among 3,700 women with CBC and unilateral breast cancer. The WECARE Study has served as the source population for studies of candidate genes such as BRCA1, BRCA2, CHEK2, and ATM, candidate gene pathways of DNA damage response involved in radiation-induced double-strand break repair—ATM, CHEK2, P53 binding protein (53BPI), and MDC1, Mre11, Rad50, and Nbs1 (e.g., MRN nuclease complex), a genome-wide association study, and most recently mammographic density. The global hypothesis across these studies is that women who carry certain types of mutations will be more susceptible to breast cancer than noncarriers, and possibly to radiation-associated breast cancer.

Dr. Bernstein currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Epidemiology, the External Advisory group for the NCI-sponsored Breast Cancer Family Registry, the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, and most recently the NCI Board of Scientific Counselors-Clinical Sciences and Epidemiology. For the past two years, she has served on the Organizing Committee of the American Statistical Association Conference on Radiation and Health (2012 and 2014 meetings), and was Co-Chair of the Third North American Congress of Epidemiology, held in June 2011 for which she was honored by the 2012 ACE Award for Leadership and Service in Epidemiology. Dr. Bernstein holds a PhD in Epidemiology from Yale University, an MS in Applied Biometry from the University of Southern California, and an AB from Brown University. Before joining the faculty at MSKCC, she was Deputy Director of the Division of Epidemiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.