Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Toxicology, Texas A&M University, 2023
  • B.S., Chemistry, Southern Methodist University, 2018
Professional Honors
  • KC Donnelly Award Supplement, Research Intern, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2022
  • Health, Safety, and Environment Intern, Chevron, 2021
  • National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Program Trainee, 2020-2023
  • National Institute of Health T32 Trainee Fellowship, 2019
Professional Affiliations
  • 2020 – Present, Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC)
  • 2019 – Present, Society of Toxicology (SOT)

Dr. Cordova is a toxicologist with a background in analytical and environmental chemistry and regulatory toxicology. Her doctoral dissertation focused on developing an analytical-to-in vitro approach to decipher the bioactive fraction of complex substances that may pose risks to human or environmental health. Her expertise includes the environmental chemistry of PAHs and other hydrocarbons as well as PFAS. The approaches she helped to develop have broad applicability to oil spill fingerprinting, environmental forensics, and exposure and risk assessment for emerging contaminants.

During her graduate education at Texas A&M University, Dr. Cordova developed expertise in new methodologies for the characterization of complex substances, including crude and refined petroleum products, to elucidate their composition and potential impacts on human health. She also developed frameworks to apply this high-throughput information to address regulatory drivers, such as product registration and hazard evaluation. She specialized in nontarget and targeted analytical techniques, including ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry (IMS-MS), GC-MS, and GC-MS/MS. With the Texas A&M Superfund Research Program, she developed techniques that could later be applied to other complex substances and environmental mixtures, especially in rapid-response disaster scenarios. Dr. Cordova also held two internships during her doctoral studies. In 2021, she worked as a Health, Safety, and Environment Intern for Chevron, where she researched the uses of remote sensing in the energy industry and evaluated the operational environment, safety, security, and health risks associated with various assets across the company. Dr. Cordova was also awarded a KC Donnelly Research Supplement and worked with Los Alamos National Laboratory on a pilot project in 2022 using remote sensing techniques for oil spill chemical characterization. Dr. Cordova is active in the Society of Toxicology and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and has shared her work at various conferences and via publications.