Kjersti Aagaard, M.D., PhD, MScCI., is the Henry and Emma Meyer Professor & Endowed Chair in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. She serves as Vice Chair of Research for Obstetrics & Gynecology, and a professor of in the Departments of Molecular and Human Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics. She is a member of the Center for Reproductive Medicine, Digestive Disease Center, Eisenberg Center for Decision Sciences, the Center for Microbiome and Metagenomics Research, and the School for Tropical Medicine. She is a co-Director in the Baylor College of Medicine MSTP MD PhD program. Dr. Aagaard joined the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Childrens immediately after completing her fellowship in 2007. Her career as a physician-scientist has included active and supported efforts in research, clinical care, education, mentorship and public health advocacy. Her clinical interests include emerging obstetrical infectious diseases, preterm birth, diabetes and hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, maternal smoking and environmental exposures, and the detection and diagnosis of congenital and genetic anomalies. Her clinical and translational research interests parallel her clinical interests, and focus on the role of the microbiome in pregnancy and early developmental programming, and the impact of key exposures in pregnancy (such as nutrition, diabetes, maternal high fat diet, smoking, and environmental chemical exposures) on fetal development and later in life disease. Dr. Aagaard has been continually funded by NIH since her fellowship, and additionally supported by March of Dimes, the Gates Foundation/USAID, the Thrasher Foundation, and the Burroughs-Welcome Preterm Birth Initiative. In 2007 she received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, in 2015 the Michael E. Debakey Medal for Excellence in Research, and in 2018 the Nature mid-career Mentor of the Year Award. She was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigators in 2019, and was just selected to receive the Society for Reproductive Investigators (SRI) President’s Award in 2020.
You can find Dr. Aagaard caring for patients at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women and Ben Taub Hospital, leading her basic science and clinical research teams at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s, teaching in the medical or graduate school, or volunteering in the community. You may also see her running the trails with her husband, Dr. Jim Versalovic, any of their 5 kids and their two dogs (Sadie and Zoe), or spot Aagaard in the middle back of the pack at any one of several marathons around the globe.