Barbara recently became a Canadian citizen after immigrating from Belgium, where she obtained her medical degree. Her PhD in Health Sciences, a collaboration between Ghent University in Belgium and the University of Alberta, focussed on the effects of maternal stress during pregnancy and its long-term effects. Her passion for pregnancy, maternal, and child health and the developmental origins of health and wellness led Barbara to conduct postdoctoral research in Ghana and at the University of Alberta, developing, conducting, and analysing longitudinal cohort studies evaluating environmental impacts on pregnancy, maternal, and child outcomes, including the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire and COVID-19 pandemic. Previously a postdoctoral fellow and now research associate with the CARE lab, Barbara supports qualitative and quantitative statistical data analyses for projects in the Wood Buffalo region in northern Alberta, including the Better Together Project and the Indigenous Healthy Life Trajectory Initiative (I-HeLTI) – Wood Buffalo Cohort Study.