HMI'27 Invited Speakers

Tanya L. Alderete, PhD

Associate Professor
Department of Environmental Health and Engineering
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Tanya Alderete is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, with a joint appointment in Epidemiology, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD in the Systems Biology of Disease from the University of Southern California, followed by postdoctoral training at USC’s Environmental Health Sciences Center.

Dr. Alderete’s research sits at the intersection of environmental exposures, the human microbiome, and maternal and child health. Her team uses multi-omics approaches to investigate how early-life environmental exposures, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), shape human milk composition, the gut microbiome, and infant growth and development. By integrating molecular, microbial, and exposure data, her research seeks to uncover biological pathways linking environmental exposures to health across early life.

Her contributions have been recognized with the 2024 Tony McMichael Mid-Career Award from the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, the 2023 Provost’s Faculty Achievement Award, and the Health Effects Institute’s Rosenblith New Investigator Award. Her research is supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

Kathy Giacomini, PhD, BSPharm

Dean, School of Pharmacy
Troy C. Daniels Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences
UC San Francisco

Dr. Kathy Giacomini, is the current Dean of the University of California, San Francisco School of Pharmacy. She is a world renowned scientist as a leader in the field of membrane transporters with a focus on genetic polymorphisms. She cloned, characterized and discovered the endogenous role of the human transporter, OCT1 (SLC22A1), and recently de-orphaned SLC22A10, SLC22A24 and SLC22A15, discovering physiologic and pharmacologic substrates of the transporters. Her current research is focused on transporters in the human blood brain barrier, the topic of today’s discussion.

Amy Hair, MD

Associate Professor
Program Director of Neonatal Nutrition
Medical Director of TCH Milk Banks
Division of Neonatology
Division of Nutrition
Department of Pediatrics
Baylor College of Medicine
Texas Children's Hospital

Dr. Amy Hair is currently an Associate Professor and Neonatologist in the Section of Neonatology and Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. She is the Program Director of the Neonatal Nutrition Program, Medical Director of the Texas Children's Hospital Milk Banks, and Associate Director of the NICU Intestinal Rehabilitation Program. She is the Director of the Dr. Diane Anderson Neonatal Nutrition Conference held yearly in March that is well known for providing updates in neonatal nutrition.

Dr. Hair received her undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Georgia and her MD from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. Her postgraduate training included a pediatrics residency at the University of Virginia, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in neonatal-perinatal medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine and in nutrition at the USDA/Agricultural Research Service Children’s Nutrition Research Center in Houston.

Dr. Hair’s research focuses on neonatal nutrition, specifically growth and the use of human milk in very low birth weight infants. Dr. Hair is the principal investigator for multiple ongoing research studies including a R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study fatty acid absorption and the liver-gut-microbiome axis in preterm infants. Dr. Hair is recognized internationally as an expert in human milk and neonatal nutrition.

Berthold Koletzko, MD, PhD

Deborah (Debbie) O’Connor, PhD, RD

Earle W. McHenry Professor
Canada Research Chair in Human Milk and Infant Nutrition
Chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences
Temerty Faculty of Medicine
University of Toronto
Canada

Dr. Deborah (Debbie) O’Connor is the Earle W. McHenry Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and a Canada Research Chair in Human Milk and Infant Nutrition. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the American of Nutrition and the Canadian Nutrition Society. She also holds scientific appointments in the Translational Medicine Program at The Hospital for Sick Children, and the Department of Pediatrics at Sinai Health in Toronto. At SickKids, she served as Director of Clinical Dietetics and Breastfeeding Support from 2000 to 2012 and then as Associate Chief of Academic and Professional Practice until 2013. She was the inaugural Chair of the Advisory Board for the Rogers Hixon Ontario Human Milk Bank.

Prior to arriving in Toronto, Dr. O’Connor served as scientist in industry. For more than three decades, Dr. O’Connor has pioneered innovative approaches to improving neonatal nutrition for the most vulnerable infants primarily through clinically embedded blinded multicentre randomized controlled trials. Her work includes developing and testing multi-nutrient fortifiers and protocols to support human milk feeding in hospitalized infants, enriching infant formulas with essential nutrients, and leading transformative initiatives in donor human milk banking and shaping official international guidelines for use.

Margaret H. Rabotnick, PhD, MPH

Postdoctoral Scholar
Department of Pediatrics
Human Milk Institute
UC San Diego

Dr. Margaret Rabotnick is an in vitro developmental toxicologist and postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego, where she works with the Human Milk Institute. She earned her PhD in Toxicology and MPH in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of Michigan and her BS in Environmental Science from UCLA. Her interdisciplinary training spans mechanistic toxicology, exposure science, maternal-child health, reproductive biology, and human lactation.

Dr. Rabotnick’s research examines how environmental, nutritional, and pharmacologic exposures during lactation influence mammary gland function, human milk composition, and infant health. Her doctoral research investigated how endocrine-disrupting chemicals, particularly per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, alter placental signaling and maternal lipid metabolism during pregnancy. Her postdoctoral work expanded this focus to the lactation period, integrating human milk biospecimens with mechanistic mammary epithelial and infant adipocyte models to study milk composition and early-life metabolic programming.

Her current research focuses on developing a functional human mammary organoid platform that recapitulates key features of lactation biology. This model is being designed to investigate mechanisms regulating milk synthesis and secretion and to screen environmental chemicals, pharmaceuticals, dietary compounds, and other factors that may influence mammary function and milk composition. Her long-term goal is to develop human-relevant experimental tools that advance medication safety, exposure guidance, lactation science, and future innovation in human milk production and research.

Sasirekha (Sashi) Ramani, PhD

Associate Professor
Molecular Virology and Microbiology
Baylor College of Medicine

Kim Updegrove

Bridget E. Young, PhD

Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Director of Research – Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry

Dr. Bridget Young is the Director of Research for Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine at the University of Rochester. Dr. Young's research interests are in early infant nutrition. She studies the impact of obesity and insulin resistance on bioactive components in breast milk, and resultant programming effects in the infant. She particularly focuses on the effect of oral insulin in human milk on infant pancreatic function and intestinal maturation in the neonate.