Team - H4P

Research Faculty

Krista Huybrechts, MS, PhD

Krista F. Huybrechts, MS, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an epidemiologist in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She also holds an appointment as adjunct Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. Her research centers on the utilization, comparative safety and effectiveness of prescription medications in pregnant women and their offspring, and on studying the outcomes of medications for mental health disorders in vulnerable populations. She also has a special interest in research methodology and innovative research applications in relation to both these fields of study. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology and Therapeutic Risk Management, and is a member of FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee.

Sonia Hernandez Diaz, MD, DrPH

Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, MD, DrPH is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her area of interest is drug safety evaluation from non-randomized data, with a special emphasis on the design, conduct, and analysis of studies in pregnant women and their infants. Hernandez-Diaz is Past-President of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology and Past-President of the Society for Perinatal and Pediatric Epidemiology Research; and currently serves as a Special Government Employee and voting member for the FDA Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee; as a Member of the NICHD Pediatric and Obstetric Pharmacology Study Section; and as Member of the TERIS Advisory Board.

Brian T. Bateman, MD, MSc

Brian T. Bateman, MD, MSc is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. His research interests focus on pharmacoepidemiology in pregnancy and the epidemiology of pregnancy-related complications. He has particular interest in the use of opioids during pregnancy and its consequences, the safety of cardiovascular medications in pregnancy, predictors of severe maternal morbidity and mortality, and medication safety in the perioperative period. He is on the editorial board of Anesthesiology and is an editor of the upcoming edition of Chestnut’s Obstetric Anesthesia: Principles and Practices. He is a voting member of the FDA’s Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee. He has served as a technical consultant to the Joint Commission, expert reviewer for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, on study sections at the NIH and PCORI, and grant review boards for funding agencies from several other countries. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology

Kathryn Gray, MD, PhD

Katie Gray, MD, PhD is a junior faculty member at Brigham & Women's Hospital in the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine. She completed her MD PhD in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, followed by Ob/Gyn residency at Emory University and a combined fellowship in Maternal Fetal Medicine and Clinical Genetics at Brigham & Women's and Boston Children's Hospitals. Currently, Dr. Gray is supported by the BIRCWH training program and spends 75% of her time performing research focused on the genetics and metabolomics of reproductive traits, including preeclampsia and postpartum hemorrhage. She serves as a consultant to the Pregnancy Team on clinical obstetric and genetic issues. Dr. Gray's clinical time is centered on reproductive genetics and clinical obstetrics, including obstetric ultrasound, consultation, and labor & delivery.

Shirley Wang, PhD, ScM

Shirley Wang PhD, ScM is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Epidemiologist in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She is a pharmacoepidemiologist focused on developing innovative, non-traditional analytic methods to understand the safety and effectiveness of medication use in clinical care as well as facilitating appropriate use of complex methods for analyzing large observational healthcare data. To that end, she has developed enhancements to epidemiologic study designs and analytic methods as well as led efforts to guide appropriate use of complex methods for analyzing large observational healthcare data. Shirley has been involved with the US Food and Drug Administration’s Sentinel Initiative since 2011 and her methods work has been recognized with awards from two international research societies. She recently led a joint task force for the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) and the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) focused on improving the confidence of decision-makers in utilizing real world evidence through increasing transparency and reproducibility of healthcare database studies. She is also a writing group member for a National Academy of Medicine white paper on executing and operationalizing open science.

Yanmin Zhu, MS, PhD

Yanmin Zhu, MS, PhD is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Epidemiologist in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her current research focuses on the utilization and outcomes of commonly used prescription medications in pregnant women and their offspring. She also has a special interest in linking large existing databases to obtain rich information across multiple data sources and establishing advanced methods to generate evidence on medication use during pregnancy for clinical practice.

Timothy Savage, MD, MPH, MSc

Timothy Savage, MD, MPH, MSc is an Associate Epidemiology in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a pediatric infectious diseases attending physician and Associate Hospital Epidemiology at Boston Children's Hospital.

Research Staff

Loreen Straub, MD, MSc

Research Specialist

Elyse DiCesare, BA

Research Assistant

Heidi Zakoul, BA

Research Assistant

Lily Bessette, BS

Research Coordinator

Students, Fellows, and Trainees

Elizabeth Suarez, PhD

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Carolyn Cesta, PhD