KjerstiMarieAagaardMDPhD, MSCI

Summary

• Kjersti Aagaard, M.D., PhD, MScCI., is a practicing Maternal Fetal Medicine physician and Medical Director with HCA Healthcare Gulf Coast Division. She carries academic appointments at Boston Children’s and ONPRC. Before joining HCA, Dr Aagaard was the Henry and Emma Meyer Professor & Endowed Chair in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. She served 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 was a co-Director in the Baylor College of Medicine MSTP MD PhD program for 13 years. 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 environmental exposures, and the detection and diagnosis of congenital and genetic anomalies. Her clinical and translational research interests parallel her clinical specialties. 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, received the Society for Reproductive Investigators (SRI) President’s Award in 2020 and the Society of Toxicology Translational Research Award in 2021. She has been a SuperDoctor every year since 2014.