5/13/25: Connors-MGBRI Center Symposium: Incorporating Sex Differences into Research

Over 120 attendees from 14 different academic institutions came out to the inaugural annual Connors-MGBRI Research Symposium on Tuesday, May 13^th, 2025 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The event started with introductory remarks by Connors-MGBRI Research Center for Women’s Health and Sex Differences co-chair, Hadine Joffe, MD, MSc. This was followed by the keynote address, “Artificial Intelligence Biases in Health and Biomedicine: Challenges, Consequences, and Solutions,” given by Davide Cirillo, PhD, MSc, Head of the Machine Learning for Biomedical Research Unit at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and author of “Sex and Gender Bias in Technology and Artificial Intelligence: Biomedicine and Healthcare Applications.” Dr. Cirillo was introduced by another Connors-MGBRI Center co-chair, Dawn DeMeo, MD, MPH.

Laura Holsen, PhD, third co-chair of the Connors-MGRI Center, then presented the Connors-MGBRI Research Awards. Five submitted abstracts were chosen to receive Featured Speaker Awards and those PIs invited to present their research at the Symposium, along with receiving a certificate and $1,000 prize.

• Jiajia Dai, MD, PhD, Research Fellow, Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine – Massachusetts General Hospital
  “Sex Differences in Glucocorticoid-Induced OA: Mitochondrial Dysfunction and PGC-1α/SIRT1 Role”

• Ludger Goeminne, PhD, Research Fellow, Department of Genetics – Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  “Predicting female reproductive aging though plasma proteomics”

• Hannah Reiter, BS, Clinical Research Assistant, Department of Psychiatry – Massachusetts General Hospital
  “Examining Sex Differences in Social Media Use and Persistent, Distressing Psychotic-Like Experiences in Children – Findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study”

• Xingyan Wang, PhD, Research Fellow, Department of Medicine, Division of Preventive Medicine – Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  Sex-Differentiated Genetic Influences on Plasma Metabolites and Coronary Artery Disease Risk: Evidence from the UK Biobank GWAS

• Samantha Meints, PhD, Pain Psychologist, Assistant Professor of Anesthesia, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine – Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  A Mixed-Method Examination of Chronic Pain Stigma In Females With Chronic Pelvic Pain

*Dr. Meints was unable to attend in-person, thus her talk was pre-recorded and is available on the MGBRI website.

In addition to these five speaker awards, eight abstracts were chosen for Poster Awards. These PIs were also presented certificates of their awards.

• Logan Brown, MS, Graduate Student, Cardiology Division, Massachusetts General Hospital
  “Prediction of Pregnancy Outcomes Using ECG-derived Estimation of Cardiorespiratory Fitness in an EHR Pregnancy Cohort”

• Claire Castro, PhD, BSN, Instructor, Department of Medicine, The Cardiovascular Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital
  “Placental Senescence and Its Functional Implications in Peripartum Cardiomyopathy and Preeclampsia”

• Rachel Gioscia-Ryan, MD, PhD, Clinical Fellow, Department of Anesthesiology Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Division of Critical Care, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  “Female sex is an independent risk factor for permanent pacemaker implantation following cardiac surgery”

• Lumen Constance Hirwa, BA, Research Assistant, Department of Medicine, Division of Women’s Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  “Barriers and facilitators of national scale-up of a women’s cancer early detection program in Rwanda”

• Sergey Karamnov, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  “Preoperative Hormone Therapy and Long-Term Mortality in Female Patients Undergoing Cardiac Surgery”

• Aoxing Liu, PhD, Research Fellow, Department of Medicine, Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital
  “Genetic drivers and cellular selection of female mosaic X chromosome loss”

• Camila Lopes-Ramos, PhD, Instructor, Department of Medicine, Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  “The Impact of X Chromosome Inactivation Patterns on COPD Outcome”
• Ambreen Sonawalla, MBBS, Instructor in Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children’s Hospital
  “Chronic Traits: Candidate Drivers of Both Later Menarche and Increased Risk of CAD in Women”

The event finished with three sessions of poster sessions presented in the Satter Atrium. 68 different submitted abstracts were presented on e-posterboards to scores of attendees, 16 of which belonged to Connors Center-funded investigators. All posters can be found here. We are proud to foster a community of sex-informed research and thank everyone for attending!