Faculty & Fellows
Heather Burris
Associate Professor of Pediatrics,
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Attending Neonatologist, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Dr. Burris studies the intersection of social and physical environmental factors that contribute to birth outcome inequity. She is PI of GeoBirth, a cohort study of all births in Penn Medicine from 2008 – 2020 with spatial, electronic health record, and perinatal data including detailed phenotyping of preterm births as spontaneous or medically-indicated.
Ana G. Cristancho, MD, PhD
Instructor, Pediatrics & Neurology
In am a Child Neurologist interested in understanding the mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental delays after prenatal or perinatal brain injury. Through comparing a variety of models of different injuries, like prenatal hypoxia and perinatal inflammation, using high throughout transcriptomics and epigenomics, my goal is to uncover novel pathways that we can use to develop therapies to improve the lives of our patients.
Cara D. Dolin, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Cara Dolin, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital. She joined the faculty in 2018 and is the Director of the Perinatal Diabetes Program at Pennsylvania Hospital. Her research interests are focused on improving our understanding of maternal nutrition and metabolic disorders in pregnancy. She is the co-founder of the Maternal Child Metabolic and Nutrition Research Group (Met-NRG) and a member of Penn Center for Nutritional Science and Medicine (PenNSAM). She is currently the PI of a studies investigating diet and dyslipidemia in early pregnancy (LEAP) and the role of preconception diet, food security, and glycemia on reproductive outcomes (SPOON). She is passionate about advancing our understanding of the role of nutrition and diet across the reproductive lifespan.
Celeste Durnwald, MD
Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Celeste Durnwald, MD, is an Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the faculty in 2012 and is the Director of the Perinatal Diabetes Program at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She is also Director of High Risk Services at the Helen O. Dickens Center for Women’s Health. She is the co-founder of the Maternal Child Metabolic and Nutrition Research Group (Met-NRG). Her research interests are focused on understanding the interplay between altered glucose metabolism and perinatal outcomes. She has completed several randomized clinical trials investigating the benefits of an intensive behavioral intervention program in gestational diabetes as well as postoperative interventions to decrease wound complications in obese women who undergo unscheduled cesarean deliveries. She is currently the PI of the GLAM study (Glucose Levels Across Maternity), a prospective cohort study of 800 healthy pregnant women undergoing continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) during all three trimesters of pregnancy to better characterize glycemic patterns associated with adverse perinatal outcomes independent of a diagnosis of GDM. She is also site-PI for 2 NIH funded multicenter studies: (1) MOMPOD study: evaluating the safety and efficacy of the addition of metformin to insulin therapy in women with Type 2 diabetes and (2) TIME study: evaluating the timing of delivery among women with gestational diabetes.
Kristin D. Gerson, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Dr. Gerson is a Maternal Fetal Medicine physician scientist and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and MD/PhD from the University of Massachusetts. She completed Obstetrics and Gynecology residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Maternal Fetal Medicine fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. She trained in the Elovitz Laboratory during fellowship. She is the recipient of the Foundation for SMFM/AAOGF Research Award (2020-2023). Her laboratory conducts fundamental research exploring microbiome-metabolome interactions governing cervicovaginal epithelial barrier disruption and premature cervical remodeling in preterm birth.
Sara Kornfield, PhD
Director of the Maternal Wellness Initiative (MWI) in the Penn Center for Women’s Behavioral Wellness (PCWBW)
Sara Kornfield, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and the Director of the Maternal Wellness Initiative (MWI) in the Penn Center for Women’s Behavioral Wellness (PCWBW). The MWI is a perinatal care-mental health integration program which seeks to enhance health care service delivery in obstetrical settings for pregnant and postpartum women with mental health problems. As part of this initiative, Dr. Kornfield provides psychotherapy at the Helen O. Dickens Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. At the PCWBW she provides clinical consultation and ongoing psychotherapy related to women’s behavioral health across the lifespan and is certified to provide care to the transgender community. Dr. Kornfield’s research focuses on developing a brief treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder during pregnancy. As ensuring access to quality mental health care is part of her clinical and research mission she is also exploring ways to integrate maternal mental health and substance abuse care into pediatric settings such as the NICU. She also contributes to the IGNITE team in the investigation of the COVID-19 pregnancy cohort and longitudinal follow-up of maternal mental health and pediatric outcomes.
Jennifer Lewey, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Director, Penn Women’s Cardiovascular Health Program
Dr. Lewey is a cardiologist who take care of women with heart disease or at risk of heart disease, with a particular focus on pregnancy and the postpartum period. Her research program is focused on maternal cardiac health. Her current projects focus on improving the quality of care delivered to pregnant women with heart disease, understanding and reducing racial disparities in maternal outcomes, and identifying innovative strategies to prevent heart disease in postpartum women.
Dr. Rebecca Waller
Assistant Professor of Psychology
I am an Assistant Professor in the clinical area in the Department of Psychology at Penn where I direct the Emotion Development Environment & Neurogenetics (EDEN) Lab. In the EDEN Lab, we study the earliest origins of psychopathology and personality development. In particular, we study the environmental contexts that children grow up in that can give rise to maladaptive social and behavioral development. We also investigate how the early environment (e.g., prenatal, neighborhood, parenting practices) interacts with genetic risk to influence children’s socioemotional development and risk for psychopathology by shaping both brain structure and function. Work in the EDEN lab is strongly translational because we use our research to inform prevention and treatment efforts to help promote positive psychosocial development and maximize the well-being of children and families.
Arthurine K. Zakama, MD
Clinical Fellow
Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine
Dr. Zakama is a first-year clinical fellow in Maternal Fetal Medicine at Penn Medicine. She completed her OBGYN training at UC-San Francisco and her medical degree at Duke University. She is passionate about equity in obstetrics. With this mission, she is interested in applying reproductive justice frameworks to evaluating the immunological impacts of racism on Black women’s perinatal outcomes with the goal of creating interventions to address these adverse perinatal outcomes. She is also interested in community-centered research with the purpose of advancing forward the perinatal concerns of the local community in which she serves.