Medical Director, HCA Healthcare and HCA Research Institute
Boston Children’s Hospital, Division of Fetal Medicine and Surgery, Boston, MA; HCA Healthcare and HCA Healthcare Research Institute, Nashville, TN; HCA Texas Maternal Fetal Medicine, Houston, TX; Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, Houston, TX
Dr. Kjersti Aagaard, M.D. Ph.D. MSCI is the Medical Director of HCA Gulf Coast Division and Texas Maternal Fetal Medicine and National Director of Perinatal Research. She carries research scientist appointments with Boston Children's Hospital at Harvard Medical School and the Oregon National Primate Research Center.
Prior to joining HCA, Dr. Aagaard served for two decades as the Henry & Emma Meyer Endowered Chair and Professor in Obstetrics & Gynecology and Vice Chair of Research at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. Dr. Aagaard’s impact has been nationally recognized with receipt of numerous awards over the years, including the Michael E. Debakey Excellence in Research Award (2015), the Nature Award for Outstanding Scientific Mentorship (2019), election to the ASCI (2019) the SRI President’s Achievement Award (2020), and the SoT Translational Research Impact Award (2023). With continuous NIH funding since 2005, she and her team members have shared their landmark discoveries and developed technologies that have enriched translational and discovery science, particularly within perinatal and pregnancy-related research. Dr. Aagaard has been supported in this work by funding from the MoD, BWF, USAID, Gates & Thrasher Foundations and NSF. Nationally, she has served on multiple NIH and National Academy of Sciences Committees and Advisory panels, and was a permanent member of the NICHD Pregnancy & Neonatology study section through 2017. Dr. Aagaard’s & her teams set of sentinel set of scientific contributions has resulted in over 300 original manuscripts, centered around (1) developing novel and relevant primate models for translational research, (2) conducting high impact discovery science via 'omics technologies, and (3) executing high impact clinical trials research.
When not caring for patients or engaging in research, you can find her with her family (including her fur babies) running or riding the trails around their home in Tomball Texas.
