Sex Differences in Cardiovascular Physiology and Pathophysiology

Dr. Babbette LaMarca completed her Ph.D. in 2004 from Microbiology/Immunology, postdoctoral training in Physiology and joined the UMMC faculty in 2008. She is a professor in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a secondary appointment in Ob/Gyn, as Thesis Director of Maternal Fetal Medicine Fellowship Program. She serves as peer reviewer for the AHA/Immunology Section, Preeclampsia Foundation, NIH/NHLBI since 2014 and was Chair-AHA Clinical Endothelial Vascular Biology Clinical 2014-2017. Dr Lamarca has published over 100 peer review articles and presented 150 abstracts at national or international meetings. She is active in the American Physiological Society and was the At-Large Councilor for Membership 2012-2016 for the Water and Electrolyte Homeostasis Section and has served on Committee on Careers in Physiology and currently serves on the Awards Committee 2016-2019, she is currently the Basic Science Councilor for Perinatal research society. Dr. LaMarca serves on Editorial Boards for Hypertension, AJP-Regu and Clinical and Experimental Hypertension. She is a mentor for UMMC Base Pair program, member of Institutional Biosafety Committee, Graduate Faculty, Research Advisory Committee, the Women’s Health Research Center, at UMMC. Her previous awards include the Young Investigator from Inter-American Society of Hypertension, 2012 Young Scholars from American Society of Hypertension, a recipient of Excellence in Research from UMMC (Bronze 2010, Silver 2012 and Gold 2013) and the 2015 recipient of the Henry Pickering Bowditch lectureship from the APS. Dr LaMarca utilizes various animal models of preeclampsia to examine mechanisms of this disease. Dr. LaMarca combines basic science with clinical research to investigate how inflammation mediates renal and placental dysfunction leading to hypertension during preeclampsia.

Dr. Barbara T. Alexander, Ph.D., FAHA, FAPS, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in Jackson MS, has made major contributions to our understanding of the link between birth weight and blood pressure with a special emphasis on the mechanisms by which insults during fetal life lead to sex differences in the developmental programming of hypertension. The author of over 90 publications, Dr. Alexander’s research has been funded by the National Institutes’ of Health (NIH) and/or American Heart Association (AHA) for over 20 years. Dr. Alexander’s research has been recognized by numerous awards throughout her career including the Arthur Guyton New Investigator Award from the Consortium for Southeastern Hypertension Control, the Merck Young Investigator Award of the AHA, the American Society of Hypertension Young Scholar Award, the New Investigator Award of the American Physiology Society (APS) Water and Electrolyte Section, the Excellence in Research Award Platinum Level at UMMC and most recently, the Harriet Dustan Award for Excellence in Hypertension Research from the AHA. She is an elected faculty member of her institution’s Alpha Omega Alpha Chapter and is a Fellow of the AHA and the APS. She has served on the organizing committee for numerous scientific research conferences and provides extensive service to her professional societies and her institution. She was a member of the Leadership Committee of the Council on Hypertension during her service as Editor for the AHA’s Connections Newsletter and role as Chair of the AHA Membership Committee. A former Councilor to the APS, she has held numerous other leadership roles in the APS and is active in APS committee involvement. Dr. Alexander is an Associate Editor for Biology of Sex Differences, a BMC journal for Springer Nature. A member of the editorial board for several journals, she is a standing member of the Hypertension and Microcirculatory Study Section for the NIH. Dr. Alexander serves as Director of Basic Research for the NIH / Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE), Mississippi Center for Excellence in Perinatal Research. She also provides service as a Core leader for another NIH COBRE, the Cardiorenal and Metabolic Diseases Research Center. She is a founding member of the Women’s Health Research Center and the Developmental Disorders Research Center at UMMC. Dr. Alexander has an extensive list of current and former mentees from the undergraduate to the post-doctoral level, many who are now established investigators that continue research in areas related to perinatal health.