Speaker Profile

Ph.D., Professor, UCSF

Biography
Dr. Laird directs the Laboratory of Germline Development, Fitness, and Aging. Her basic research program is motivated by solving infertility, reproductive aging, and understanding the effects of prenatal exposures to endocrine-disrupting chemicals and psychosocial stressors. She is involved in the intersection between science and society as deputy director of the UCSF P30 EaRTH Center (Environmental Research and Translation for Health). After a bachelor’s degree in Physics from Harvard, she entered stem cell biology as a PhD student at Stanford in the lab of Irving Weissman. She trained as a postdoc in developmental genetics with Kathryn Anderson at Sloan Kettering Institute. Her research has been recognized by an NIH New Innovator Award (DP2), an award from the W.M. Keck Foundation for Biomedical Research and she was recently appointed as a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator.


 Session Abstract – PMWC 2023 Silicon Valley

Track 3 - January 26 9.00 A.M.-4.30 P.M.


Track Co-Chairs:
Linda Giudice, UCSF
Yoel Sadovsky, UPMC

Researchers have long been recognizing the uniqueness of women’s health and its substantial effect on clinical practice, acknowledging the increasing appreciation of the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to health and disease. In every organ system, there are diseases that are unique to women, more common in women than in men, or characterized by differences in disease course in women compared to men. This Track will focus on the following topics related to Women’s Health:

  • PMWC 2023 Award Ceremony:
    Pioneer Honoree: Marcia Stefanick, Stanford
  • Chronic Diseases in Women
    - Marcia Stefanick, Stanford (Chronic Disease Prevention) - Marina Sirota, UCSF (Endometriosis)
  • Stem Cells, Preimplantation and Prenatal Genetics
    Chair: Akash Kumar, MyOme, Inc. (Ploygenic risk score)
    - Teresa Sparks, UCSF (Prenatal genetic diagnosis)
    - Nathan Treff, Genomic Prediction (Reducing polygenic disease risk through embryo selection)
  • Precision Health for Mothers and Babies
    Chair: David Stevenson, U. of Stanford (Introduction: Towards Precision Health for Mothers and Babies)
    - Aleks Rajkovic, UCSF (Genomics of Pregnancy Loss)
    - Ivana Maric, Stanford (ML for Early Prediction)
    - Nima Aghaeepour, Stanford (AI-Driven Prematurity Taxonomy)
  • Precision Health for Mothers and Babies: Components of Pregnancy Health
    Chair: Yoel Sadovsky, U. of Pittsburgh (Placental Health)
    - Marina Sirota, UCSF (Leveraging Molecular and Clinical Data)
    - Brice Gaudilliere, Stanford (Multiomic immune profiling)
  • Value of Early Risk Prediction, Screening & Digital Intervention in Pre-term birth Avoidance
    Chair: Leslie Saltzman, Ovia Health
    - Sydney Strickland, Labcorp
  • Reproductive Aging (PANEL)
    Chair: Aleksandar Rajkovic, UCSF
    - Diana Laird, UCSF
    - Jennifer Garrison, Buck Institute
    - Nikolina Lauc, GlycanAge
    - Christian Kramme, Gameto
  • Achieving Equity in Precision Medicine
    - Aida Habtezion, Pfizer
  • Sex Differences
    - Noel Bairey Merz, Cedar Sinai (CV disease)
    - Danit Ariel, Stanford (Transgender Health and Sex Differences)
  • PMWC Showcase:
    - Amrie Grammer, Ampel Bio Solutions