Janina Galler developed an interest in neurochemistry in high school and conducted research on brain enzymes that led to academic honors. She is now a leading expert on child malnutrition and brain development. She founded the longitudinal Barbados Nutrition Study in 1973 to examine the long-term effects of childhood malnutrition. The study's major finding that malnutrition can cause attention deficits that persist into adulthood has shaped public policy. Galler also directs research on the epigenetic impacts of early malnutrition on brain development. She graduated from Einstein College of Medicine, where she had strong mentorship and developed her academic and research career focusing on the social impacts of medicine.

1. J
anina Galler fell in love
with neurochemistry
during high school in
New Orleans. Needing to do a
science project, she contacted
Tulane Medical School and
was placed in a lab studying
the brain enzyme monoamine
oxidase. Her research landed her Westinghouse Science
Talent Search honors—an auspicious beginning for the
child of two Holocaust survivors from Poland.
Today Dr. Galler is a leading authority on child
malnutrition and brain and behavioral development.
Among her many titles are professor of psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School and psychiatrist in the Chester
M. Pierce, M.D., Division of Global Psychiatry at the
Massachusetts General Hospital.
She served on the National Advisory
Council of the Eunice Kennedy
Shriver National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development.
Dr. Galler is the founder and
research director of the Barbados
Nutrition Study. This longitudinal
study of Barbadian children, started
in 1973, examines the effects of
childhood malnutrition over life spans and
across generations.
Its major finding—the increased prevalence of atten-
tion and other deficits that continue into adulthood and
can be found among healthy offspring of adults with
histories of malnutrition—has helped shape public policy
targeting underserved children in the United States
and abroad.
She also directs a translational research program relat-
ing to pre-clinical and basic neuroscience studies, includ-
ing epigenetics, of early malnutrition and its impact on
brain and behavioral development.
Dr. Galler was born in Uppsala, Sweden, and immi-
grated to America with her parents as a child. She grew
up in an observant Jewish home and graduated summa
cum laude in two years from Sophie Newcomb College,
“a small women’s college with no premed program at
the time,” she recalls.
Having heard that Einstein welcomed observant
Jewish students, she met with the dean of students and
was accepted. “Einstein took a risk with me,” she says.
“I was very young, female at a time when most medical
students were male, and from the Deep South.”
“I had amazing mentors,” she notes. Chief among
them were Dominick Purpura, M.D.; Herbert Birch, M.D.,
Ph.D.; and Isabelle Rapin, M.D. On her second day at
Einstein, Dr. Birch, a professor of pediatrics and devel-
opmental psychology, invited her to join his lab, and she
worked with him until his death in 1973. Her assignment:
to establish animal models of malnutrition in young rats.
After graduating, she completed her residency in psychi-
atry at Mass General and a fellowship in child psychiatry.
“Einstein has always been
welcoming and inclusive, with a
wonderful faculty that’s unusu-
ally supportive of its students,”
she says. “It values ethics and the
social-justice dimension of medi-
cine as much as the clinical and
research dimensions. Even in my
era, the school helped students
pursue their passions and give back
to society. I developed the entire basis of my academic,
clinical and research career there.” (Einstein is also
where she met her future husband, classmate Burton D.
Rabinowitz, M.D. ’72.)
A member of the Einstein Alumni Association board
of governors since 2011, Dr. Galler became its president
in 2015. She and her fellow board members are dedi-
cated to helping Einstein students, strengthening the
alumni network and supporting the College of Medicine
through alumni programs and events.
Grateful for scholarships she received as a medical
student, she’s committed to philanthropy and appreci-
ates the many alumni who share that commitment.
“We’re ready to partner with Dean Spiegel and the
Board of Trustees on new ways to support the school
and the transition to the ‘new Einstein,’” she says.
ALUMNI PROFILE
Janina R. Galler, M.D. ’72
”EINSTEIN TOOK A RISK WITH
ME. I WAS VERY YOUNG,
FEMALE AT A TIME WHEN
MOST MEDICAL STUDENTS
WERE MALE, AND FROM
THE DEEP SOUTH.“
SCIENCE AT THE HEART OF MEDICINE AU