Donna Santillan, PhD is a Research Professor and has been the division director since 2011 (co-Director 2011-2013) and the Vice Chair of Research since 2020. She is the Director of the WHTR and the IHK. Dr. Donna Santillan has numerous collaborations internal and external to the department, college and university. She has played key roles in the development and submission of numerous grants for which she was a co-investigator. Most notably, this included the $10 million Maternal Health Initiative award. 

In 2024, she received the Leadership in Research Award from the UI Office of the Vice President for Research as part of its 2024 Discovery and Innovation Awards. This is a lifetime achievement award for contributions to research. Her own research is focused on improving the health of women during and after pregnancy. She primarily focuses on the short and long-term effects of medical and environmental exposures during pregnancy on the mother and child. These include studies on vaping, hypertension, high temperatures, pesticides, and per- and poly uoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The most recent work has focused on the environmental exposures and have been part of a strong collaboration with the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination (CHEEC) at the University of Iowa and with the Heartland Health Research Consortium. 

She currently has 97 publications with 60 of these occurring in the past 5 years. She values training the next generation of researchers and is the Associate Director of Workforce Development in the ICTS. In this role, she oversees the undergraduate Certificate in Clinical and Translational Science and the Masters in Translational Biomedicine, is a certified facilitator from the National Research Mentor Network and facilitates 8-week mentor training sessions at least once per year and has personally mentored or co-mentored over 100 learners including undergraduate students, graduate students, and fellows in her lab. She is the co-Director of the OBGYN Resident Research and the PI of an active NIH R25 to train undergraduate students in translational science.
 

Dr. Kristina Thiel’s laboratory at the University of Iowa, established in June 2022, focuses on developing personalized and precision treatments for gynecologic cancers, particularly uterine (endometrial) and ovarian cancers. Dr. Thiel was previously a member of the department within the lab of Dr. Kimberly Leslie. She was awarded an NCI K22 Transition Career Development Award and joined the tenure track in 2022. The lab’s research encompasses both basic and translational studies aimed at improving patient care. Through these initiatives, Dr. Thiel’s lab is making significant strides in advancing the understanding and treatment of gynecologic cancers. A major project in the lab, led by PhD student Kaitriana Powell-Smith, explores next-generation progestin therapy as a safer and more effective treatment for early-stage endometrial cancer, supported by a Department of Defense Translational Team Science Award. Another key area of investigation involves targeting deleterious p53 mutations in gynecologic cancers. The lab is developing novel RNA-based therapeutics, known as aptamers, to disrupt the activity of mutant p53 proteins and restore chemosensitivity, a project funded by an NCI K22 Transition Career Development Award. Dr. Thiel’s lab has achieved several notable milestones. In February 2025, she and Professor Rahul Singh from the Department of Computer Science received a pilot grant for their project integrating advances in computing and biomedicine to analyze organoids. That same month, her team published a study on enhancing progestin therapy with a glucagon-like peptide 1 agonist for the conservative management of endometrial cancer. In November 2024, she and Co-Principal Investigator Dr. Danielle Pessa-Pereira were awarded the Oberley Seed Grant from the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center for their research on tumor microenvironment-mediated chemoresistance in ovarian cancer. 

Additionally, in August 2023, as part of a collaborative team with Miles Pufall (Biochemistry at UIowa), Kim Leslie (University of New Mexico), Jay Gertz (University of Utah) and Christy Hagan (University of Kansas) she secured a $2.5 million Department of Defense Translational Team Science Award to study hormone therapy in endometrial cancer. Through these initiatives, Dr. Thiel’s lab is making significant contributions to advancing the understanding and treatment of gynecologic cancers.
 

Serena “Banu” Gumusoglu, MSc, PhD first joined the department as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Mark Santillan’s lab after graduation from the University of Iowa Neuroscience program where she studied effects of maternal stresses in pregnancy of neurodevelopment in the lab of Hanna Stevens MD, PhD (Psychiatry). After her postdoctoral fellowship, the department recruited her to join our tenure track faculty. 

Her lab employs translational approaches to understand how pregnancy complications - such as infection, stress, and conditions like preeclampsia - affect both offspring neurodevelopment and maternal brain health. Her research primarily investigates the placenta-brain axis, exploring how neuroimmune and endocrine factors, including extracellular vesicles and immune cells, mediate communication between the placenta and the developing brain. Additionally, her lab examines the prenatal origins of neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism, with the goal of improving early detection and intervention strategies. Another key area of her work involves studying the biological mechanisms underlying peripartum psychiatric disorders, such as postpartum depression and anxiety, to enhance mental health outcomes for birthing individuals. Dr. Gumusoglu has received numerous accolades for her research, including the prestigious Rex Montgomery Dissertation Prize in 2020 for her outstanding doctoral work on maternal immune mechanisms and offspring neurodevelopment. She has successfully competed for funding from the NIH, AHA, and the prestigious Burroughs-Welcome Next-Gen Pregnancy Award.

Mark Santillan MD, PhD is a tenured Professor in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. At the end of his MFM fellowship, Dr. M. Santillan was supported by the ICTS KL2 program to obtain his PhD in Translational Biomedicine. At the end of that program, he was selected to be a national NIH Reproductive Scientist Development Program (RSDP) K12 scholar. Work from these training programs allowed for successful competition for many American Heart Association (AHA) grants namely the Strategically Focused Research Network grant focused on mechanisms of preeclampsia. The SFRN grant is similar to an NIH PPG with a significant training component. He has had long-standing funding from the AHA including co-PI on an Innovative Research Award, Population PI on a Hypertension Strategically Focused Research Network grant, PI of a Collaborative Award in conjunction with Magee Women’s Health Research Institute, and mentored scholars on AHA Career Development Awards and NIH K12, K01, and T32 grants. This finding resulted in issued patents for the diagnosis and therapy of preeclampsia (currently licensed by Advanced Prenatal) as well as the development of a new mouse model. He has been able to use this new mouse model to study the effects of preeclampsia to long-term and short-term neurological and cardiovascular effects to the mother and offspring. He recently completed his R01 about the prevention of preeclampsia. 

He has led multiple CTSA supplement studies to study the role of race and rurality in preeclampsia and co-leads the NIH funded project (Element E) within the 28-million-dollar Iowa CTSA Award. In addition, his research lab benefits from funding from private foundations and intramural grants. Notably, being from a disadvantaged background and underrepresented group in science, Dr. Santillan is sensitive to the barriers faced by scholars. As a physician-scientist, he is also passionate about helping to build the careers of other OBGYN scientists. Dr. M. Santillan has served as the co-Director of Scholarly projects for the OBGYN residents for the past 14 years. In this role, he oversees the 23 OBGYN residents to ensure that they are receiving mentorship, are meeting deadlines for deliverables toward completion of their scholarly projects and have prepared a presentation and manuscript of their work. 

Personally, he has mentored many leaners ranging from high school through postdoctoral clinical and research-intensive fellows. Three of his past postdoctoral trainees are currently academic faculty. In addition, he mentors several junior faculty by serving on their career trajectory committees and meeting with them individually to review grant proposals, paper submissions, and national presentations. The M. Santillan laboratory has fostered the careers of trainees ranging from undergraduates to graduate/medical students to fellows and early career investigators. He also directs the Clinical-Translation Core as a co-I of the NIH P50 Hawk-IDDRC (Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center) to train scholars to develop their own clinical cohorts. His publications have been cited over 1900 times. Further, he has significant experience in trainee evaluation as the co-chair of the Evaluation committee for the national NICHD Reproductive Scientist Development Program. Internationally, he holds leadership positions with CoLab (Executive Committee), an international collaborative of over 50 institutions focused on sharing clinical data and bio samples for perinatal studies. He has held national leadership positions for the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine, American Heart Association, and American Physiological Society. Notably, Dr. M. Santillan currently serves as a review committed member for the current American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology National Blood Pressure Guidelines Committee.
 

Christian Pettker, MD was recruited to the University of Iowa from Yale University in 2024 to take the position of Chair and Department Executive Officer of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. His research interests focus on patient safety and healthcare quality. 

For 20 years at Yale, he was involved in nearly all of the prospective clinical and translational research projects that have involved pregnant patients on Labor and Birth and the Unit. While at Yale he was principal investigator at Yale for the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Maternal Fetal Medicine Unit Network. 

His primary research since MFM fellowship has focused on patient safety and quality improvement, with direct clinical applications. This work has been published and his work around the Yale obstetric safety and quality program is one of the few projects in obstetrics to show improvements in patient safety resulting from programmatic institution of practices and principles of quality improvement. Much of this work focused on studying and developing teamwork paradigms and developing protocols, guidelines, and checklists.

Abey Eapen, MBBS, DRCOG, PhD, FCRI returned in 2023, to the University of Iowa in the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility (REI) as an Associate Professor. He completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham, UK and his REI fellowship at Midland Fertility Services in Tamworth, UK. 

His research interests include recurrent pregnancy loss and recurrent implantation failure. He has combined his clinical work with his research by starting a Recurrent Pregnancy Loss (RPL) clinic. Patients in this clinic are invited to participate in his clinical study of telomere length in RPL. His work in RPL is currently funded by a grant from Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Association through the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. He is a first-year Clinical Research Training Program Scholar through the ASRM - CREST Scholarship funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
 

Bradley Van Voorhis, MD is a tenured Professor and is highly regarded for his clinical studies demonstrating improved outcomes using elective single embryo transfer in IVF. His research efforts to improve the safety of in vitro fertilization (IVF) through increased use of single embryo transfer (SET) has influenced infertility physicians worldwide and drawn national publicity. 

In 2003, Dr. Van Voorhis founded the University of Iowa Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Fellowship Program and directed the program for 12 years. Van Voorhis has served as president of two leading societies in his field: the Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility (SREI) and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART). In 2019, he received the University of Iowa Alumni Achievement Award. Recently, he began a collaboration studying human ovarian follicular fluid protein levels using a highly innovative approach which allows for the identification of over 1000 proteins in this fluid. This protein data will be combined with patient characteristics to use artficial intelligence techniques to identify novel proteins and pathways that may help to explain ovarian dysfunction and infertility associated with aging, endometriosis, PCOS and obesity. While Dr. Van Voorhis is planning on retiring in 2025, his legacy will continue in the clinical and research programs he has built.