Speakers

Toby Andrew is a Lecturer in Human Genetics at the Department of Genomics of Common Disease, Imperial College, where he is a Principle Investigator and course organiser for the MSc in Human Molecular Genetics. Trained in Biology (BSc. Leeds 1985), Computing and Statistics (MSc. York, 1989) and Human Genetics (PhD. KCL, 2005) his research focuses on the genetics and epigenetics of metabolic disease including gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and diabetes. He was awarded a prestigious MRC New Investigator Award in 2009 on the genetics of mitochondrial function and has published widely on the genetics of common disease and gene mapping methods. Dr Andrew is the principle investigator for the Epigenetics-GDM three-year project awarded by the French National Research Agency from 2017 entitled “The impact of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) upon the epigenetics of mother and newborn infant and long-term risk of type 2 diabetes”.

Eeva Ekholm, MD, adjunct professor in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Turku, specialist in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Turku University Hospital. Her research has focused on hemodynamic changes in pregnancy, pathophysiology of pre-eclampsia and assessment of fetal well-being. She has developed a new treatment model based on interactive ultrasound for substance abusing pregnant women. The focus of the intervention is to bring the fetus to the mothers mind with a mentalization based approach.

Alexandre A. Ferraro is professor of Social and Preventive Pediatrics at the Medical School of the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil. After the Graduation in Medicine and Residence in Pediatrics he got a phd in Medical Science (2011). He moved to London for a Msc in Epidemiology (2003/04) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a post-doc fellowship (2004/05) at the King's College Psychiatry Institute, London. His area of research is Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. Currently he is working with infants exposed during pregnancy to maternal stress (deprivation, violence and mental health) and also with late life consequences of being born through cesarean section.

Thora Halldorsdottir Dr. Thora Halldorsdottir received her PhD in Clinical Psychology under the mentorship of Thomas Ollendick, PhD at Virginia Tech. Her PhD focused on examining predictors and moderators of treatment outcomes in youth following empirically-supported psychosocial interventions. Dr. Halldorsdottir is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany, with Elisabeth Binder, MD, PhD. Building on her background in developmental psychopathology, she is currently studying gene-by-environment interactions shaping the risk for stress-related psychiatric disorders across the developmental trajectory. The Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry is part of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science focusing on psychiatric disorders and recently evaluated by an independent scientific commission to be one of the world’s leaders in this field.

Vasanti Jadva is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge. Her research examines the psychological well-being and experiences of individuals involved in third party reproduction, specifically, families created using egg donation, sperm donation and surrogacy, surrogates and their families and egg and sperm donors. She is an Affiliated Lecturer at the Department of Psychology and a member of the National Gamete Donation Trust’s advisory council.

Eero Kajantie is specialist in paediatrics, clinical genetics and public health at National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki and Oulu, Finland. He has studied the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease framework since late 1990s in longitudinal cohort studies including the Helsinki 1924-1944 Birth Cohort Study. His recent research focuses on the life-long effects of specific early life stressors such as preterm birth, maternal pregnancy conditions and maternal psychosocial stress on offspring health and well-being. This research has uncovered increased levels of cardiometabolic risk factors and social challenges and is currently assessing mechanisms and targets for prevention. Dr Kajantie is a PI in two clinical longitudinal studies, the Helsinki Study of Very Low Birth Weight Adults and the Ester preterm birth and pregnancy study, and a population-wide registry study on long-term outcomes of preterm birth. He holds several important grants and is one of the founders of the Adults Born Preterm International Collaboration.

Cornelis B Lambalk is a gynaecologist/fertility specialist and works as professor of Reproductive Medicine and Scientific Director of de division of Reproductive Medicine at the department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology of the VU University medical centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is a visiting professor in Gent since 2009. His scientific interests are: neuroendocrinology of reproduction (including GnRH-analogues), physiology of natural twinning, reproductive aging, PCOS, embryo quality assessment and implantation. He has published over 200 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and is a member of the scientific board of several international and national organizations and journals in de field

Liisa Lehtonen, MD, Professor in Pediatrics at the University of Turku and the Head of Neonatology at Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland, has done research on how to optimize the long-term development of preterm infants. She is on of the leaders of a follow-up study of very preterm infants, The PIPARI Study (http://www.utu.fi/en/units/med/units/pipari/Pages/home.aspx). As the role of the parents has emerged as a significant factor affecting the outcome of preterm infants, professor Lehtonen has developed with her team the Close Collaboration with Parents Training Program for the NICU staff to integrate parents more closely to the hospital care and to support parenting during hospitalization. She is responsible for a large mutlicenter study evaluating the effectiveness of this training program. Professor Lehtonen has also studied organizational aspects of neonatal care especially related to centralization of the very preterm deliveries to improve the framework of neonatal care.

Hanna Rouhe, MD, PhD, Specialist in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Helsinki University Hospital, Finland, has done research on fear of childbirth. She has studied and treated women with fear of childbirth over ten years. She has been educating colleagues and midwifes in Finland and also abroad about fear of childbirth and traumatic delivery experiences. The thesis about the subject was ready in 2015. Studies about how to prevent traumatization in childbirth are on-going.

Katri Räikkönen, PhD is Academy professor and Professor of developmental, personality and clinical psychology at the Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland. She has conducted her studies at the University of Helsinki, obtained Masters degree in 1988, PhD degree in 1990, and adjunct professor in 1992. Between 1996 and 1998 she was a post doctoral fellow in the Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine Unit at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. In 2012 Räikkönen was elected as a member of Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Before her nomination as academy professor Räikkönen also served as the Vice Dean of research affairs at the Faculty of Behavioral Sciences and was the Director of the national doctoral school of psychology. Räikkönen has a strong track record in multidisciplinary national and international research collaboration and she has published over 290 research papers. Her research focuses on early life programming of cognition and mental health, and aims at unraveling the underlying epi(genetic) and biological mechanisms.

Saroj Saigal obtained her medical degree and pediatric training in India. She did her neonatal fellowship at the Universities of Edinburgh, McGill, and McMaster. She joined the pediatric faculty at McMaster University, Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine, as a neonatologist in 1973, and was also the Director of the Neonatal Follow-up Program for high-risk infants (1973 -2013). Dr. Saigal has been Professor of Pediatrics since 1984, and is currently Professor Emerita at McMaster, and continues to run the follow-up clinic as well as her ongoing research. Dr. Saigal and her colleagues have followed one of the few population-based cohorts of extremely low birth weight infants longitudinally from infancy to adulthood, and she has published extensively on the same. She was co-PI of a further follow-up study on the mental health and cardiovascular and metabolic sequelae of the same cohort, now in their 30s, through a Canadian-Finnish Consortium funded by CIHR (2010-2014). Dr. Saigal has been involved as a collaborator in several perinatal clinical trials. She is also the co-founder (with Dr Eero Kajantie) of ‘Adults born Preterm International Collaboration’ (APIC), a network that facilitates collaboration and sharing of data with investigators interested in the long-term health and disease of this vulnerable population. Dr Saigal has held many leadership positions in the Canadian Pediatric Society. She is the recipient of many awards, among them: the Senior Scientist Career Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2000-2005); the Canadian Pediatric Society’s prestigious Distinguished Neonatologist Award, the Society’s highest award for neonatology (2005); the Landmark Award from the Section of Perinatal Pediatrics of the American Academy of Pediatrics (2009); and the Douglas K, Richardson Award from the American Society for Pediatric Research (2011), for her lifetime achievement as a clinical investigator who has made substantive contributions to Perinatal and Pediatric Healthcare Research.

Richard Sharpe is based in the MRC/University Centre for Reproductive Health in Edinburgh where he has led a research programme on developmental disorders of (mainly male) reproductive health. He is an Honorary Professor in Edinburgh University’s College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine. His expertise and research interests cover sexual differentiation, development and puberty (and disorders thereof), fetal programming and inter-generational effects, endocrinology, the effects of lifestyle (smoking, obesity, diet, use of personal care products), drugs and environmental chemical exposures on reproductive development and function. He is also interested in the inter-relationships between reproductive and wider aspects of health in relation to diet, obesity and aging. He has a particular interest in public communication of science and has given talks at science festivals abroad and in the UK. He has served on numerous advisory bodies in Europe and elsewhere. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has served as a Journal Chief Editor and on several editorial boards of journals and has been a Deputy Editor of Human Reproduction for the past 6 years. He has published >360 papers and has an H index of 87 (Google). For further details see: http://www.ed.ac.uk/centre-rep...

Eric Steegers current research interests relate to the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease paradigm involving the complex pathophysiology of suboptimal embryonic development and malplacentation in the first trimester and the consequences for fetal and maternal health as well as disease in later life. This work is largely embedded in the Generation R study, a Rotterdam population-based prospective cohort study among 10,000 pregnant women and their children and the Rotterdam Predict Study, an ongoing hospital based periconception cohort study, including embryonic and placental growth trajectories (3D-US and virtual reality) and tissue-specific epigenetic studies. Eric Steegers is one of the PIs of both cohorts. New knowledge from translational research in these areas is being disseminated and translated in evidence-based local and national transmural preconception and early pregnancy programs for improved risk selection and general and personalized interventions with a special emphasis on high risk and socially deprived reproductive target groups, in close collaboration with related fields like Public Health. Professor Steegers mission is to contribute to the primary and secondary prevention of adverse pregnancy outcomes and disease in later life in current and next generations. Position title: Professor and chair Obstetrics and Gynecology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Viveca Söderström-Anttila completed her residency in obstetrics, gynecology, in reproductive endocrinology at the Helsinki University Central Hospital. She obtained her PhD in 1998 and docentur in 2007 from Helsinki Unversity. Her main clinical and research interest has been infertility treatment with donated oocytes. Other research projects involve in vitro mauration of immature oocytes, single embryo transfer in IVF, follow-up of families and children born after conventional IVF and gamete donation, and outcome of surrogacy. She has published 37 articles in international scientific journals. Since 1992 Viveca Söderström-Anttila has worked as an fertility specialist at the Väestöliitto Fertility Clinic in Helsinki, Finland – during the last six years as an Associate medical chief.

Pathik D. Wadhwa is a tenured Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Pediatrics, and Epidemiology at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, and the founding director of the UC Irvine Development, Health and Disease Research Program. Dr. Wadhwa received his medical degree from the University of Poona, India, in 1985, and his doctorate in social ecology (health psychology/ behavioral medicine concentration) from the University of California, Irvine, in 1993. His research examines the interface between biological, social and behavioral processes in human pregnancy, with an emphasis on outcomes related to fetal development, birth, and subsequent newborn, infant and child development and health. In particular, this work focuses on the interplay between maternal-placental-fetal neuroendocrine, immune, metabolic and genetic/epigenetic processes as putative mechanisms that mediate the effects of the maternal environment (and particularly prenatal stress) on early human development. Dr. Wadhwa has published over 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers and lectured extensively at scientific meetings and universities across North America, Europe and Australia. His research program has been continuously supported by several research grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and other agencies. Dr. Wadhwa is the recipient of several national honors and awards, including recognition for his early- and mid-career contributions from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine, the Perinatal Research Society, the National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization.

Harriet Vermeer is an associate professor at the Center for Child and Family Science, Leiden University, the Netherlands. She examines the influence of various caregivers ‘other than mothers’ on child development, focusing on adoptive and foster parents, fathers, and professional caregivers in daycare. Within these contexts, her research has a strong focus on children’s physical and emotional wellbeing, as well as the development of attachment relationships between children and their caregivers. https://www.universiteitleiden...

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Speakers