Joy-SarahYumikoVinkMD

Summary

• As a Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist, I am constantly moved by the emotional and clinical tribulations that patients and their families endure as a result of spontaneous preterm birth, particularly those at the cusp of viability. Despite extensive efforts to reduce the frequency of preterm birth, little progress has been made and the rate of preterm birth has increased by 36% since the early 1980s. To date, the therapeutic armamentarium to prevent preterm birth remains limited and inefficacious because preterm birth likely involves elaborate interactions between genetics, tissue properties and the environment.
  
  Over the last eight years, as a physician-scientist at Columbia University Medical Center, I have engaged in studies of cervical remodeling and helped to establish the Collaborative Cervix Research Group (CCRG) at Columbia University. The CCRG is now a collaborative group of leading physician-scientists, scientists and engineers from various departments (including OB/GYN, Anesthesiology, Engineering, Biological Sciences, Systems Biology and Pathology) whose main goal is to tackle the problem of premature cervical remodeling and spontaneous preterm birth.
  
  My overall goal as a physician-scientist is to provide excellent clinical care to my patients and as a physician-scientist, also develop new methods to identify and prevent premature cervical remodeling and thus prevent preterm birth.