OMPHI Current Fellows
Gabriel Rodriguez
I received my MSPH in Health services research and policy in 2017 from Emory University and I am completing my PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Georgia. My research focusses on how Interpregnancy intervals affect maternal and infant health outcomes. In January 2020 I came to collaborate with the INTERGROWTH-21st Research Team as part of the ongoing INTERPRACTE-21st project as part of the data monitoring and analysis team.
SONIA DEANTONI
I graduated as a Medical Doctor from the University of Turin and I am currently specializing in paediatrics and neonatology. My main interests include nutritional management, growth and neurological assessment of term and preterm babies.
In October 2019, I joined the INTERGROWTH-21st Research Team and I am currently working as an OMPHI International Research Fellow for one year. I am mainly involved in patient recruitment for the INTERPRACTICE-21st Study and in the assessment of body composition of both term and preterm babies.
LIOR DRUKKER
I am a fetal medicine doctor and a clinical and research fellow in Maternal-Fetal Medicine. I divide my time between clinical work at the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Unit, Women's Centre, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and conducting research at the Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health (Obstetrics & Gynaecology), University of Oxford. My primary clinical and research interests are ultrasonography in prenatal diagnosis, maternal-fetal medicine, automation of ultrasound, and computer vision image analysis.
My main research project is the Perception Ultrasound by Learning Sonographer Experience (PULSE) project, aiming to learn to develop novel imaging analysis (using machine learning and computer vision methods) that will aid operators and improve diagnostic pregnancy imaging, ultimately seeking to automate ultrasound analysis for clinical purposes. My mentors are Prof. Alison Noble of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Prof. Aris Papageorghiou of the Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health.
I obtained my medical degree at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. After that, I completed training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Shaare Zedek Medical Centre, Jerusalem, Israel.
María Clara Restrepo-Méndez
Received her MSc (2008) and PhD (2012) in Epidemiology from the Department of Social Medicine, Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel) in Brazil. Her doctoral thesis earned her the 'CAPES Thesis Award 2013' for the best doctoral theses in Public Health in Brazil, which provided her with the funding to spend one year as a visiting researcher in London at the Department of Medical Statistics at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. María Clara’s research focuses on understanding the long-term consequences of early adverse exposures on the health and well-being of women and children. Her research has also made contributions to the understanding of social inequities in maternal, newborn, and child health. María Clara has worked at the International Center for Equity in Health at Universidade Federal de Pelotas (Brazil), and at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at University of Bristol (UK) as Senior Research Associate. She has also worked as research consultant for international organizations such as Unicef, WHO and GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance. She is currently working as an OMPHI Research Fellow at University of Oxford, looking at the mechanisms potentially responsible for preterm birth and small for gestational age and their interactions, using thorough phenotyping of clinical, growth, epidemiological data in the INTERBIO-21st Newborn Case-Control Study.
DANIEL OROS
I am an Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Zaragoza, and Consultant in Maternal and Fetal Medicine at the Hospital Clínico Universitario of Zaragoza. I obtained my medical degree at the University of Zaragoza, and completed my residency program in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Hospital Clínico Universitario of Zaragoza. Following this, I was a Research Fellow at the Maternal and Fetal Medicine Department of the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona, while undertook subspecialist training in Maternal and Fetal Medicine. During that time, I did my PhD thesis at the University of Barcelona, on the neurodevelopment in late onset IUGR fetuses. I obtained a Masters Degree in Research Methodology in Health Sciences at the Autónoma University of Barcelona. I am also a board member of the Perinatal Medicine Section of the Spanish Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
My clinical and research interests include intrauterine growth restriction, preeclampsia and prematurity. Currently I am particularly interested in the methodological assessment and clinical implications of fetal Doppler reference ranges.
Michelle Fernandes
Michelle Fernandes is a neonatologist and researcher in international early child development (ECD). She holds a Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Research Training Fellowship at Southampton’s MRC’s Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre; an Academic Clinical Lecturership at the University of Southampton and a Senior Honorary Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on (i) understanding the interplay between factors affecting brain development during the first 1000 days of life, (ii) developing tools to better measure ECD, internationally and at scale, towards developing a universal surveillance system for the early detection of delays and (3) evaluating scalable, family-centred interventions to promote/rescue ECD. Over the past decade, Michelle has been involved with 17 ECD research projects spanning 21 research groups across 14 countries, with research awards from the NIHR and MRC (UK); NIH and USAID (USA); and ICMR (India). Michelle has served as a technical advisor to the WHO’s ECD Initiative, and the Gates’ Foundation HBGD Knowledge Initiative. She has been instrumental in developing three novel ECD tools: the Neo-NDA, the OX-NDA©TM and the INTER-NDA; the latter have been applied in over 15,000 children from 14 countries. As part of the INTERGROWTH-21st Project team, she co-led the construction of the first international ECD standards, complementing the INTERGROWTH-21st fetal and the WHO child growth standards. She previously held NIHR Academic Clinical (2016-2020) and Career Track Fellowships in Paediatrics at Southampton (2020-2021) and was awarded the Clarendon Fund, Exeter K Pathak and Wingate Foundation Scholarships for her PhD at the University of Oxford (2008-2011). She is currently also a Research Fellow at WINDREF, Grenada and at the University of Turku, Finland, and serves on the editorial committee of Archives of Diseases in Childhood.
FEE BENZ
I am a first-year graduate entry medicine student at the University of Oxford and have previously completed a bachelor's degree in Experimental Psychology. My main interest are prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal factors associated with auditory processing disorders in early life. I joined the INTERGROWTH-21st Research Team in January 2022 as part of the data analysis team.
Sabrina Heyl
I graduated in 2019 as a Medical Doctor from the University of Buenos Aires. From 2014 to 2019 I held the position of teacher assistant and lab instructor at the Department of Neurophysiology of the Medical School of Buenos Aires. I first joined the INTERGROWTH-21st research team in 2013 during my medical studies. My area of interest is neurodevelopment in infants.