Newborn Medicine
Recent Graduates
Kristen Tropea:
Dr. Tropea graduated in 2012 and was one of the chief fellows in the Harvard Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship Program in 2012. She received her medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and completed a pediatric residency at North Carolina Children's Hospital at the University of North Carolina. Kristen's research is based in the Harvard Stem Cell Institute under the mentorship of Carla Kim, PhD, with whom she continues to investigate the role of endogenous lung stem cells in neonatal lung development, injury and repair. She was awarded an Ikaria advancing newborn medicine grant during fellowship to support her research pursuits and was a recipient of an NIH Loan Repayment Program award. In July 2012, Kristen joined the neonatology faculty in the Harvard Division of Newborn Medicine and Boston Children's Hospital.
Ashwini Lakshmanan:
Dr. Lakshmanan graduated in 2012 and was one of the chief fellows in the Harvard Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship Program in her senior year. She received her medical degree from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and completed her pediatric residency and chief residency at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Concurrent with her fellowship, she completed the Harvard Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship and earned her Masters in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Lakshmanan's fellowship research was focused on health services research and environmental epidemiology. Under the mentorship of Harvard faculty Drs. Mandy Belfort, Marie McCormick and Jane Stewart, she designed and implemented a web based survey tool to better characterize access and delivery of follow up care and the effects on caregiver stress. Additionally, she worked with Dr. Rosalind Wright at the Harvard School of Public Health to examine social determinants of fetal stress. Current projects include evaluating the effect of maternal stress on the fetal HPA axis and the effects of air pollution on birth outcomes. Her work has been funded by the Medical Staff Organization at Children's Hospital Boston, the Patient Safety and Quality Commission and a Richardson Grant at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Ashwini's long term goals are to continue health services research in an academic setting. After graduation in 2012, Dr. Lakshmanan moved on to a faculty position at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles and the University of Southern California.
Kenny Kronforst:
Dr. Kronforst received her medical degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and completed a pediatric residency in the Boston Combined Residency Program at Boston Children's Hospital. Her fellowship research under the mentorship of Dr. Ofer Levy was focused on developing a novel murine model of intravenous Staphylococcus epidermidis infection. She is currently on faculty at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Michael Prendergast:
Dr. Prendergast undertook his undergraduate medical training at University College Dublin and a pediatric residency in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children and the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin. He completed his PhD under the mentorship of Prof. Anne Greenough at Oxford University prior to and during his fellowship. Dr. Prendergast's work focuses on antenatal assessment of impaired lung growth in infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernia and antenatal infection or inflammation. He was awarded the Von. L. Meyer Award during fellowship to further support this work. Following fellowship, Dr. Prendergast joined the faculty of the Harvard Division of Newborn Medicine and is a member of the core neonatology group at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Agatha Norwood:
Dr. Agatha Norwood completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience at Pomona College and her medical degree at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. She then joined the Boston Combined Residency Program in pediatrics, during which she worked on a prospective, multicenter study on the predictors of outcome after treatment of bronchiolitis in the emergency room. During fellowship, Agatha worked under the mentorship Dr. Charles Nelson in the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience to examine the neural correlates of attention and memory in infants with HIE. Following fellowship, Dr. Norwood joined Harvard Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Graduates Drs. Jennifer Anderson and Padmaja Itikala in neonatology practice at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, NM.
Sara Bates:
Dr. Bates received her medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, during which she was awarded an international grant to study diagnostics and treatment of congenital heart disease in Ecuador. She completed a pediatric residency at Massachusetts General Hospital prior to joining the Harvard Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship Program. Sara undertook research with Harvard scientist Dr. Beth Stevens focused on the role of complement proteins in the development of epilepsy using a well-established hypoxia ischemia animal model of seizure induction, for which she was awarded the Von. L. Meyer Award. Dr. Bates joined the Harvard faculty following fellowship and is currently a member of the neonatology core group at Massachusetts General Hospital.
