Boland Lab

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My name is Mary Regina Boland. I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Informatics in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. I am also a Senior Fellow in the Institute for Biomedical Informatics and an Affiliate Member of the Center for Excellence in Environmental Toxicology at University of Pennsylvania. I am also an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical and Health informatics (DBHi) at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. I lead the Fertility and Health Informatics Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. I am also a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (FAMIA).

Currently, I have published over 65 peer-reviewed publications in journals and respected informatics conferences, including 12 as first or senior-author this past calendar year (2021)!

I am the Vice Chair of Data Science for the AMIA Informatics Summit 2022 in Chicago, IL. The AMIA conference is taking place in March 2022! I hope to see you there!

Research Summary

On the informatics-side, my work focuses on developing novel and interesting data mining methods that integrate data from electronic health records, observational health data and genetic data. On the clinical side, my work focuses on the relationship between environment and disease, especially during the prenatal / perinatal period. Because developmental effects due to the environment can be hard to study in adult populations, I use birth-related data (such as birth month) as a proxy for the environment at birth (perinatal) and prior to birth (prenatal). I have a combined 16 years of experience!  This includes 4 years in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan area, 7 in New York City Metropolitan Area (Columbia University) and 5 so far in the Philadelphia Metropolitan area (UPenn).

Recent News

• Dr. Silvia Canelon's paper published in JAMA Network Open on Stillbirth among Sickle Cell Trait individuals!  S Canelon, S Butts, MR Boland. Evaluation of Stillbirth Among Pregnant People with Sickle Cell Trait. JAMA Network Open. 2021; In press.
• Dr. Jessica Meeker just graduated (May 2021) with a PhD in Epidemiology from my lab. She is currently an Epidemic Fellow at the CDC and her latest paper was just published.  JR Meeker, HH Burris, R Bai, LD Levine, MR Boland. Neighborhood deprivation increases the risk of post-induction cesarean delivery. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). 2021; In press.
• Lena Davidson's comprehensive review was recently published in Briefings in Bioinformatics! L Davidson, MR Boland. Towards Deep Phenotyping Pregnancy: A Systematic Review on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Methods to Improve Pregnancy Outcomes. Briefings in Bioinformatics. 2021; In press.

Recent Senior/First Author Publications

• MR Boland, N Elhadad, W Pratt. Informatics for Sex- and Gender-Related Health: Understanding the Problems, Developing New Methods and Designing New Solutions. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). 2021; In press.
• JR Meeker, HH Burris, R Bai, LD Levine, MR Boland. Neighborhood deprivation increases the risk of post-induction cesarean delivery. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). 2021; In press.
• S Canelon, S Butts, MR Boland. Evaluation of Stillbirth Among Pregnant People with Sickle Cell Trait. JAMA Network Open. 2021; In press.
• MR Boland, L Davidson, S Canelon, J Meeker, T Penning, JH Holmes, J Moore. Harnessing Electronic Health Records to Study Emerging Environmental Disasters: A Proof of Concept with Perfluoralkyl Substances (PFAS). Nature Digital Medicine. 2021; In press.
• JR Meeker, HH Burris, MR Boland. An Algorithm to Identify Residential Mobility from Electronic Health Record Data. International Journal of Epidemiology. 2021; In press.
• JR Meeker, SP Canelon, R Bai, LD Levine, MR Boland. Individual- and Neighborhood-Level Risk Factors for Severe Maternal Morbidity. Obstetrics & Gynecology. 2021; In press.
• L Davidson, MR Boland. Towards Deep Phenotyping Pregnancy: A Systematic Review on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Methods to Improve Pregnancy Outcomes. Briefings in Bioinformatics. 2021; In press.

Education

PhD Biomedical Informatics, 2017 Columbia University, 2013-2017

Doctoral Thesis: Systems-Level Approach to Understand the Seasonal Factors of Early Development with Clinical and Pharmacological Applications

MPhil Biomedical Informatics, 2016 Columbia University

MA Biomedical Informatics, 2012 Columbia University, 2010-2012

Masters Thesis: Associating Periodontal Diseases with Medical Conditions by Linking Medical and Dental Records

BS Bioinformatics, 2010 Saint Vincent College, 2006-2010

Undergraduate Thesis: Functional Annotation of Putatively Conserved Non-Coding Regions in B. Floridae

Minors: Computer Science, History