Thomas F. McElrath, MD, PhD
Dr. McElrath is Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School and an Attending Physician in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at The Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is also appointed as an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. With over 25 years of clinical experience in Obstetrics, his area of expertise is in both the epidemiology and treatment of patients at increased risk of preterm birth. He has secondary clinical interests in the treatment of pregnant patients with chronic neurologic conditions and patients with colitis. He has a PhD in Demography with ongoing research interests in the effects of environmental toxicant exposures in pregnancy and biomarker epidemiology for the prediction of preterm birth ad associated pregnancy complications. His present area of concentration involves the investigation of exosome proteomics to stratify pregnancies at risk of preterm birth. Dr McElrath lives with his family outside Boston, Massachusetts.
Fun Fact: Dr. McElrath was a Fulbright Scholar after college and has lived and worked in multiple countries in the developing world.
David Cantonwine, PhD, MPH
By training I am an environmental epidemiologist. For the last 10 years I have managed the LIFECODES biorepository. As part of my doctoral research, I worked with the Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants (ELEMENT) study, a NIEHS-supported award-winning +30-year collaboration with the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico and served as the primary liaison with our field research team in Mexico from 2007-2010. As part of my post-doctoral research, I worked with Dr. John Meeker, and a diverse team of researchers in Puerto Rico to setup the initial study design, protocols, and study logistics for human recruitment of the Puerto Rico Testsite for Exploring Contamination Threats (PROTECT), a P42 Superfund study that, among other aims, is investigating the association of phthalate exposure during pregnancy and molecular markers of preterm birth. In my current position I work alongside Dr. Thomas McElrath to elevate LIFECODES as one of the unique datasets to investigate environmental chemical effects upon pregnancy and later life outcomes.
Kathryn Gray, MD, PhD
Dr. Gray is an Ob/Gyn and physician-scientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) who specializes in Maternal-Fetal Medicine (MFM) and Clinical Genetics. Dr. Gray’s research uses precision medicine approaches to understand pregnancy-specific conditions including maternal, fetal, and obstetric disorders. Dr. Gray received her MD/PhD from the University of Michigan in 2007 and completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Emory University in 2011. She also completed her combined MFM/Clinical Genetics fellowship at Brigham and Women’s and Boston Children’s Hospitals in 2016. Dr. Gray is the recipient of an NIH-NHLBI K08 career development award. She has also been awarded an NIH-NHLBI Trans-omics Precision Medicine grant for genome sequencing and other omics on a large pregnancy cohort, the Boston-Colombia Collaborative for Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes (BCC-PREG). Dr. Gray is the BWH site PI for a biorepository of samples from pregnancies with SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID vaccination. In addition, she is the co-PI for the BWH LIFECODES longitudinal pregnancy biobank. You can follow her on Twitter: @ob_kjg.
Dr. Gray uses genetics and other omics to understand the basis of adverse pregnancy outcomes in LIFECODES. LIFECODES is part of the large TOPMed Boston-Colombia Collaborative for Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes (BCC-PREG) cohort and will be the largest pregnancy cohort with whole genome sequencing and other omic information to date.
Fun fact: Dr. Gray spends her time outside of work chasing around 3 young, energetic boys. She enjoys anything outdoors, including cycling, swimming, hiking, and exploring the greater New England area.
Babatunde Akinwunmi, MD, MPH, MMSc
I am primarily a Physician and currently a research scientist. I coordinate and manage some of our current research projects. I enjoy working on all the multiple projects in the lab that relate to maternal fetal medicine, genetics, preeclampsia genetic consortium, LIFECODES and so on. With the LIFECODES longitudinal survey and multiple other projects, the lab has been able to do various data driven investigations that are answering many critical pregnancy and childbirth questions. Our maternal preeclampsia genetic consortium studies and multi-omics are also bringing many previously unknown interactive genes/genetic loci with possible association with the maternal preeclampsia disease etiology into focus.
Various publications in our lab have led to current improvement in the overall care of pregnant women and giving them an enjoyable motherhood experience. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic and Vaccines studies have given us an opportunity to move quickly in developing great study designs and accomplishing many cutting edge research publications under the great leadership of the lab. Our research is also helping the non-pregnant women in allaying their fears about motherhood and helping them make more informed and goal-oriented decisions on their future reproductive choices.
Elida Kocharian
Elida (she/her) has been a research assistant for LIFECODES since the summer of 2021. She is passionate about environmental health science and women’s health, and her research interests lie in the biochemical mechanisms of action of environmental toxins and toxicants. She aspires to be a physician-scientist, and when she isn’t recruiting patients or waist-deep in paperwork, she’s outside admiring trees or onstage playing bass in a funk band.
Anneli Merivaara
Anneli (she/her) has been a research assistant for the LIFECODES project since the fall of 2021. She is interested in cognitive science and women’s health and wants to improve patient care through the research projects she is working on. When she isn’t in the lab or the clinic, she is sailing or crocheting animals for her friends.